Closed Captioning On DVD
Dear Gary: For years I was a LaserDisc (read: movie) buff and because of my dependency on subtitles I was very pleased with the closed-captioning of most movies. As you know, unlike the USA, in Europe there are no TV sets with a built-in CC decoder, so I was very happy with my imported CC decoder (MyCap), and as a result, was able to read the spoken words. With the coming of DVD, something strange happened. With most of the titles I was able to switch the subtitles on (via the menu) and was able to read the text without the use of the CC decoder. However, many titles have stated on the label: Closed Captioning (or CC), but I’m unable to get any captioning on the screen, with or without the CC-decoder. Especially the Artisan movies have no subtitles via the menu, but all state CLOSED CAPTIONING on the label. Can you answer the following questions: Is Closed Captioning on LaserDiscs something else than on DVDs? Why does my CC decoder not work with DVDs? Is there another decoder on the market that works with DVDs also? One last question. Until recently, all Disney DVDs had English subtitles, but the last titles (Tarzan, Aristocats, etc.) are announced with NO subtitles in English. Do you know if this is true and if so, do you know if there is a reason for that policy? I hope you can clear things for me. P.S.: I eat your magazine (this is a directly translated expression and means, I love your magazine so much that I can almost “eat” it.)
Aad de Graaf, The Netherlands
Story & Special Features Review Editor Laurie Sevano Comments:
Thanks for writing us about the closed captioning issue with DVDs and your decoder. While I can’t answer why movies that are labeled CC or Closed Captioned don’t play on your set, I can tell you that what we’ve discovered is that many of the titles, especially from Universal, actually say Captioned. This means they do not utilize the decoder but the same types of “closed caption” captions are on the disc, encoded as a subtitle, bypassing the use of the closed caption decoder. Closed Captioning on DVD is essentially the same as it is on LaserDiscs as far as we know at WSR. I will save your email address, and if I come up with any other information, I will pass it along to you, but you might check to see if the discs only say “captioned.” You can also check our Web site www. widescreenreview.com and do a search on the field “Closed Captioned.” When you click on the DVD search button, then choose Advanced Search and then click the Yes button. Or, you could click “No” to see if the movies you are having trouble with do not actually have closed captioning. If we can’t get the closed captioning to work through our system, even if it has English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing, we label it as “No”s closed captioning. As far as your Disney question goes, I’ll have to check into that. I know that a recent article in our magazine pointed out that some of the new DVD releases were excluding the English subtitles because it was hurting the ticket sales of movies still in theatres in Europe (rumor has it that there ARE many DVD players in Europe that can play Region Code 1 discs!). I suppose it might have something to do with this, but on previously released titles, only Disney knows for sure. I hope this helps.
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