Captions and Subtitles - Where We've Been and Where We're Going

By Steve Barber

Editor: Many people think captions and subtitles are the same thing, which is incorrect. And the differences are becoming more important as we prepare for the shift to digital television. Here with a great primer is Steve Barber of the Hearing Loss Association of North Carolina (http:// www.nchearingloss.org). This article began life as a post to bhNEWS and is reprinted with Steve's kind permission.

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February 2008

I think there's a long history of why these things are confusing. I'll share my impression of that history and future here in hopes that you experts can correct any misconceptions I might have.

Silent films were "subtitled". I doubt if much though was given to making them "for Deaf of Hard of Hearing"; it's probably more correct to say that they were mostly for hearing people. If they included non-speech sounds, it was because those sounds were also silent in those films.

After talkies, we lost subtitles except for foreign films. Those were intended for hearing people who didn't understand the spoken language, but they could understand the audio on environmental sounds, so they weren't needed. Again, an indication that no one cared about Deaf or Hard of Hearing.

Then, starting about 1980, we had CC on TV shows (originally required a captioning box, but later, 1993, the decoder became a "chip" in all TVs sold in the US larger than 13"). The decoder was able to convert the analog encoded captions to text to display on the screen. It was "closed" because you could turn it on or off. But it was clearly designed for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (despite the fact that hearing "English as a second language" people bought more decoder boxes than Deaf and Hard of Hearing). So, CC, usually included the environmental sounds.

Along comes VCRs, but they worked with the TV (or separate) decoders, so all's right with the world.

Then, along comes DVDs. These are digital storage media, but the players create an analog signal from the digital signal so that our (then) analog TVs could play them. So it was possible for them to have subtitles in multiple language that could be viewed or not, under control of the DVD player. Originally, these supplemented CC, which could also be on the DVD and would be decoded by decoders in the TV, since the TVs were analog. The subtitles were not necessarily for Deaf and Hard of Hearing people, so some didn't include environmental sounds.

Some DVDs started leaving off the CC and just doing subtitles. Others didn't have subtitles but had CC, and of course, some had neither.

Eventually, some started including environmental sounds in the subtitles and calling them SDH [Ed: Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing]. My guess is that is a first step in eliminating CC from DVDs, but I don't really know that.

Then along comes digital and high definition broadcasts, and the plot thickens. Now sources (over the air, DVDs, VCRs, Cable and Satellite Boxes) may either be analog or digital. When the source is digital, a digital/analog converter converts the signal to analog and sends it to the analog TVs. The source is also able to optionally display the subtitles before the signal is sent to the TV.

Then along comes digital and high definition TVs. With these, the TV is no longer an analog device; it's essentially a special purpose computer. It can receive digital signals from the air, or from any digital source, but can no longer handle analog signals. Now you've got to decide which you want, subtitles or CC, and get them turned on or decoded in the appropriate place (the TV or the DVD or converter box). You also have to know how to hook up the TV to those sources, since some connections (e.g., HDMI) can't carry the unencoded CC.

Then along comes digital only broadcast (Feb 2009), and analog broadcasts disappear. All sources are now technically capable of carrying digital captions, which can be displayed or not.