Captioning Support Sucks

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Seb — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 15:03:37 GMT

Acctually you're far from alone. In several European countries (including Sweden where I'm from) foreign TV-shows and movies (and that includes American) aren't dubbed but rather use subtitles. This means that in these places alot (if not most) TV/DVD is viewed with captioning and therefore alot better. However, the hardware and software support on the client side is terrible. Because of this reason alot of TV channels use open or "burned-in" captioning. This is even worst. Because now you can't disable them if you're like me and don't want them.

I think that the DVD implementation is usually excellent except for the fact that they have a fixed size ugly font which usually is difficult to get a smooth rendering of on HD screens. The size of this text is usually adapted for small TVs. DVD-playback on a projector screen 80-120" with subtitles is just bad. I've solved this myself by ripping the text using VobSub or similar software. The subtitles are saved in Unicode and then I can have the software render the text any way I please. Using VSFilter this works in any DirectShow player except ofcourse MCE (grr! hint hint). Utilizing this kind of flexibel rendering of subtitles is really something I hope is implemented in Blueray/HD-DVD.

On another note, a superb DVD implementation is the multiple audio streams. Some european TV channels (but far from enough of them) utilize the DVB support for this to broadcast both dubbed and non-dubbed audio (which you'd know is excellent if you're a non-German-speaking person visiting Germany).

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Mark Sowul — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:49:28 GMT

I use closed captioning sometimes; I don't really have any of the issues you're talking about (I'm in New York, who knows). My only complaint is how there's no quick way to turn captions on or off. I think that should be in the context menu of a TV program, as opposed to say, "Create CD/DVD" which could be relegated elsewhere.

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Peter Rosser — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:19:10 GMT

Mark: We support a button on the remote to toggle caption display, but I don't think any of the OEMs have implemented it (and the reference remote doesn't have it either). There is keyboard shortcut (CTRL-SHIFT-C).

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Mark Sowul — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 04:26:55 GMT

I was wondering if there was a remote button to do it; of course, it doesn't help if none of them have it. The keyboard shortcut will do in a pinch though, thanks.

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Joku — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:27:33 GMT

The Media Center is non-existent product in my country since here the subtitle/captions are separate in the transport stream, such that you can switch between no captions and captions of different official languages.

That's the theory ..

There's only a handful of non-STB devices that (after years of fight) almost work with the system used here (dvb text or something, I am not sure what's the real name of the standard). In fact just week ago I was reading a comment from leading computer magazine reviewer about how reviewing the Media Center is pointless just because of the total lack of support for this.

From the PC devices, it shown in recent tests
www.nebula-electronics.com
has the one of the best support for the captioning standard used here. It might be sensible for MS to purchase that code for good MCE/Vista experience here instead of spending too much time of trying to re-do the wheel.

re: Captioning Support Sucks

Swede — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 14:57:52 GMT

Oh please, please, release an update for MCE 2005 which enables DVB subtitles! MCE is somewhat useless without it!