Closed Captions Have Vanished on HBO and Showtime HD

Slightly off topic, has anyone figured out why Dish makes it impossible to do captioning directly through the TV. All the other TV menu items work, but not captioning or V-Chip (though I don't care about v-chip) Is this just a function of compression that the TV signal is altered and the TV doesn't recognize. Mpeg-4?

The reason I ask is that my TV will do CC on mute with an OTA signal. There does not seem to be a 1 button solution to turn cc on. It seems that captioning is now entirely a function of the receiver and not the TV while watching Dish, so why can't they create either a CC on mute macro, or cut the receiver audio and turn captioning on with one software subroutine triggered by the mute button? This could be an option in preferences. If not mute since this does involve messing with volume from the receiver, why not use another button such as the PIP button which I never use on my 622 since I have 2 tvs hooked to it.

Am I the only one who cares about this? I like using cc even though my hearing is fine, and I'd use it more if I could turn it on faster.

Chris Nick said:

Slightly off topic, has anyone figured out why Dish makes it impossible to do captioning directly through the TV. All the other TV menu items work, but not captioning or V-Chip (though I don't care about v-chip) Is this just a function of compression that the TV signal is altered and the TV doesn't recognize. Mpeg-4?

The reason I ask is that my TV will do CC on mute with an OTA signal. There does not seem to be a 1 button solution to turn cc on. It seems that captioning is now entirely a function of the receiver and not the TV while watching Dish, so why can't they create either a CC on mute macro, or cut the receiver audio and turn captioning on with one software subroutine triggered by the mute button? This could be an option in preferences. If not mute since this does involve messing with volume from the receiver, why not use another button such as the PIP button which I never use on my 622 since I have 2 tvs hooked to it.

Am I the only one who cares about this? I like using cc even though my hearing is fine, and I'd use it more if I could turn it on faster.

Click to expand...

I'm not an engineer but I'd guess it is a function of compression issues. It would indeed be nice if the TV handled the CC decoding. I keep the captions permanently on, so the one-button access is less of an issue for me, but the caption display generated by my Sony LCD is so much better than the caption display generated by my vip722. The Sony/TV captions have a nice even flow, whereas the vip722 CCs often tend to come in choppy bursts. This is mostly noticeable on captions that scroll vs. captions that appear in blocks.

Right now I'm having problems with CCs on Wash DC local ABC WJLA HD. CCs are all messed up on just that one station, only for HD (SD is fine), and only for the vip722 (OTA and even a Comcast signal coming thru my TV is fine, OTA coming thru the vip722 is not, nor is the Dish Locals version). Only scrolling type CCs are affected so I think it is a timing issue. You can be watching something with the messed up CCs and a commercial will come on with normal CCs, and then the CCs go back to being messed up right after the commercial ends!

I've been trying for five weeks to get this fixed. Dish has blamed it on ABC (obviously not their fault) and then denied there was any kind of problem at all. They then sent a tech out who saw it for himself and confirmed the problem. That was over a week ago, and still no improvement. It is clear that there is no way that it can be anything other than a vip722 problem, almost certainly software vs. hardware. I'm sure they are busy, but waiting 5 weeks+ to get this fixed and having to go thru so much hassle to even prove there is a problem has been a real PITA. Makes me feel like I'm back to dealing with my old cable company!