Digital Television (DTV) is on its way; that technology presents a
whole set of new captioning challenges. But it looks like the powers
that be are aware of the importance of ensuring that DTV is accessible
to people with hearing loss. We'll follow the story here.
The FCC has just
released its rules regarding the provision of closed-captioning for DTV.
The short story is that they have required that DTV be captioned, and
that the captioning be more functional and more configurable than the
captioning for current (analog) television.
February 2001 - Digital Broadcasting recently published a feature
article on the captioning standards for digital television (DTV). For a
summary of the article and a link to the full article, click here.
September 2003 - After all the hoopla about digital television a
couple of years ago, the whole thing seems to have gone away. There's a
bit of a chicken and egg problem here. No one's going to buy digital
televisions until there are digital broadcasts to watch, and no one is
going to broadcast digitally until lots of people have digital TVs to
watch the programming. Anyway, here's some good news
regarding captioning for digital television.
August 2007 - Disability Coalition Reports
Problems in Digital Television Transition
August 2007 - Captioning and Digital TV
August 2007 - Using Closed
Captions in the Digital TV Age
August 2007 - Digital TV
threatens to leave deaf viewers out in cold
September 2007 - FCC Statement on
Closed Captioning for Digital Television (DTV)
September 2007 - More
Captioning and Digital TV
February 2008 -
Digital transition may cause confusion with closed
captioning
February 2008 - Concerns About Captioning and
the Digital TV Transition
February 2008 -
Delivering Captions in DTV - An NCAM DTV
Access Brief
March 2008 - Recommended
Actions for Closed Captioning Problems
March 2008 - More Captioning Issues with Digital
Television
March 2008 -
Digital TV Converter Box
Features
June 2008 -
More Problems with Captioning on Digital
Televisions
August 2008 -
Lots of Issues with Captioning on
Digital TV!
September 2008 - FCC Releases Fact Sheet on
Converter Box Features
October 2008 - Consumers Urged to Apply for
Converter Box Coupons By Year-End
October 2008 -
FCC publishes advisory on DTV Converter Box
Features
November 2008 - New
Captioning Decisions by the Federal Communications Commission - Part 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Editor: Remember digital television? It's been "the next big
thing" for years now. So far, it hasn't really caught on. But it
will - and when it does, it would be nice if captioning just worked! And
it looks as if that just might happen! Here are portions of a press
release from a couple of companies that are working towards that goal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Zentek Technology Group and Agfa Monotype Collaborate on EIA 708B,
Platform-Independent Digital Closed-Captioning Solution
Modular, Pre-Integrated Package Promises to Simplify Digital
Television Development for OEMs and Streamline Deployment of
Accessibility Services For the Hearing Impaired
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- Today Zentek Technology Group (www.zentek.com/index_e.html),
in partnership with Agfa Monotype Corp. (www.agfamonotype.com),
announced the commercial availability of a modular, portable,
closed-captioning package that meets the FCC-mandated EIA 708B standard
for digital television. The integrated solution aims to enhance the
accessibility services that digital television broadcasters and network
operators provide to the deaf and hard-of-hearing population in the
United States and Canada.
This collaborative effort includes closed-caption fonts, a font
engine and program and system information protocol (PSIP) software that
will simplify what is otherwise a custom-built and costly process for
digital set-top box and television manufacturers. The software package
already has been licensed to STMicroelectronics, the leading
manufacturer of integrated circuits for set-top boxes.
According to InStat/MDR, a market research firm based in Scottsdale,
Ariz., the global market for digital television sets is expected reach
58 million by 2007, with U.S. consumers accounting for more than half of
all annual shipments. This growing market includes 28 million
hearing-impaired Americans (roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population),
creating a substantial market opportunity and need for digital
closed-captioning services.
[snip]
The integrated Zentek solution is a full implementation of EIA 708B
and allows the viewer to change all available properties of the
displayed text: font style, character size, foreground and background
color and edge effect. For example, a hard-of-hearing viewer, who also
has impaired vision, can use the caption "volume control" to
adjust the size of the displayed text to make it more readable. Multiple
active windows also are supported thus enabling a hard-of-hearing parent
to view normal captions while a child watches early-reader captions in a
separate window.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 2007
Edmiston's problem is a familiar story to a growing number of the estimated
31 million hearing-impaired TV viewers nationwide. As high-definition TV
gains momentum in the United States, broadcasters, set-top box
manufacturers and cable and satellite companies are struggling to
provide closed captioning. After numerous complaints and long sessions
on the phone with tech support for SureWest, her cable provider, the
company recently gave Edmiston an updated cable box still being tested
by SureWest engineers. Though things have improved, problems remain,
including last Thursday when the captions slid off the left edge of the
screen. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2007
You should know by now that analog TV is going away,
and ONLY digital TV will be available beginning in 2009. To watch TV after
the transition, you MUST have a digital television (DTV) or have a
converter to change the incoming digital transmission to something your
analog TV can display. If you use cable or satellite, they will provide
such a converter. The other issue of importance to people with hearing
loss is to ensure that closed captioning will continue to work after the
transition. There are currently a variety of issues with existing DTV
broadcasts and receivers, and the engineers are working on those (we
hope). I stumbled on a wonderful primer on this topic, and think it would
be well worth everyone's time to have a look.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
Editor: Here's another NVRC article addressing the issue of captioning
on digital television. The NVRC folks note that it's a bit "techie", but
some of us like that! ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Craig Johnson, a Seattle-based Internet and multimedia producer with an
extensive background in broadcast, wrote an article on August 8, 2007 for
TV Technology News, "Closed Captioning for Digital TV". He says that
closed captioning has become a mature and reliable technology serving the
deaf and hard of hearing community over nearly three decades. Now with the
new closed captioning technology for digital television, there's a
"shakeout process".
"Early reports have DTV captions working reliably one day, then
disappearing the next, or captions running off the right side of the
screen," he writes. "As it was with analog captions during their
introductory phase, the problems can be with source material, with the
broadcaster's signal chain, with a cable or satellite system's delivery
process, or with the viewer's own receiver or decoder box."
Johnson talks about the difference between the captions we are used to
and the captions that are possible for digital TV. They could have more
accented letters and special symbols, different fonts and font sizes, and
there's an ablity to have more text and background colors. One product
manager, Tony Zare, says that the industry has been mostly translated the
captions to look like what we're used to instead of providing these
enhanced caption capabilities.
Johnson thinks that one reason caption viewers haven't been demanding
more is that they are unfamiliar with DTV captions or don't view digital
channels. A provider of captioning technology, Phil McLaughlin, said
"Right now broadcasters have a bit of a false sense of security, because
they've been putting something on the air for a number of years now, and
[with their digital channel] they're not getting a lot of complaints
early-on."
There's also a section on how captioning problems originate, in which a
representative of Rockville, Md's Computer Prompting and Captioning notes
that incompatibility between some different brands of servers has blocked
the transfer of caption data as the video is transferred.
The article, which is rather "techie" can be found in its entirety at:
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0082/t.7727.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
Digital TV offers higher resolution pictures, a
wider aspect ratio, better signal reception, and many new data features.
Among the latter is the new "CEA-708" closed caption format, which is more
flexible than traditional "CEA-608" and offers user configuration options.
However, digital TV does not work the same way as analog TV. Users with
hearing cdisabilities, as well as others who want to use closed captions,
need to adjust their usage patterns to get the most out of their digital
TV. The following Frequently Asked Questions are a starting point to help
consumers use closed captions with digital TVs.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
In response to Chuck Samuels' Speaking Out essay
(Aug. 1) titled "Just get a converter box for old televisions in 2009" . .
. The information he provides on how TV reception will work after the
changeover from analog to digital on Feb. 17, 2009 is clear and concise,
but he overlooked a very large and important segment of the TV viewing
audience - the many people with hearing loss living in this area who rely
on captioning to know what is being said. For some, buying a set-top
converter box may be the answer. However, a big problem may be looming for
viewers with hearing loss who rely on captioning. . . . There has been no
reassurance from the manufacturers that these converter boxes will be made
to pass through the closed captioning. . . . Contact the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration - the agency handling
the coupon information and outreach program - to ask if the set-top box
will pass through the captions that we rely on. Its email is
couponinfo@ntia.doc.gov
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 2007
This new type of television, with images as big as
life is known as HDTV, high definition television (also known simply as
"digital TV"). What you may not have seen are the closed captions that go
with it, even though the new TV sets are required by law to carry the
captions and virtually all programs are required by law to be captioned.
How can this be? After all, the TV Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 stated
explicitly that, "As new video technology is developed, the Commission
[FCC] shall take such action as the Commission determines appropriate to
ensure that closed-captioning service continues to be available to
consumers."
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February 2008
When people speak of the digital television
transition, also known as DTV, they are referring to the upcoming switch
from analog television signals to digital television signals. Many
stations are already broadcasting a digital signal, but the 2009 deadline
is the date when television stations will stop broadcasting in analog
format. Much doom and gloom was predicted when this announcement was first
made years ago, with many people concerned that thousands of television
sets would become instantaneously useless. Through the advent of a
relatively inexpensive set-top converter box, most analog televisions will
be able to receive and display a digital television signal. In consumers'
understandable myopia, there was a question that remained unanswered-how
would the new boxes work with closed captioning?
Full story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February 2008
Yes, we're transition to digital television (DTV)
and the switchover date is in February 2009. And yes, there are a
multitude of issues with captions on DTV. And hopefully lots of smart
people are working on these issues. Here's an excellent primer on the
topic from the folks at the National Center for Accessible Media.
The document is dated October 2002, so things like contact information
is out of date. But the technical information is right on!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
Jeffrey Krauss has written a great article that
offers a very clear discussion of two looming problems with captions on
digital television (DTV). One problem is that broadcasters are required to
continue broadcasting analog captions even after the switch to DTV (a fact
that seems to be escaping many of them), and there is no standard way to
convert digital captions to analog captions. The second issue is that the
HDMI interface (which is the preferred way to connect many digital
components) does not support the transmission of digital captions!
Everyone with an interest in captioning should understand these two
issues, and this article will help you do that!
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
If you're interested in getting a converter box to
allow you to digital TV signals on your analog TV (only needed if you want
to view over the air television - not required for cable and satellite
users), then you might want to check out this site. It has lots of great
information about the various features that some of the boxes have.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2008
It's a complex problem that will grow more evident
as a growing number of viewers -- especially the deaf, hard-of-hearing and
elderly -- make the switch to HDTV sets. What it comes down to is this:
There should be no problem with closed captions if your TV gets an
over-the-air digital signal. But if your HDTV is hooked up to a cable box
via an HDMI cable -- the preferred choice for the best picture and sound
quality -- you can't get closed captions the way you have in the past. I
thought my new HDMI-connected HDTV was broken because when I pushed the CC
button on the TV's remote, nothing happened. "If you're using a cable box,
it's the cable box's job to open up the captions," explained Tim Taylor,
vice president of engineering and facility operations at VITAC. "HDMI
doesn't pass the closed caption data." OK, so you turn on the closed
captions through your cable box rather than your TV. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2008
DTV brings better pictures, better sound and more
channels and features. But closed captioning, the stalwart scroll of text
that accompanies dialog, has proven trickier than many broadcasters-and
their deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers-might have once figured. Closed
captioning has been around for more than 20 years, and has been required
on most broadcasts and cable presentations since Jan. 1, 2006 . . . .
There are plenty of problems, it turns out. June 27, the FCC Disability
Access Working Group reported numerous flaws and foulups in a report to
the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee. The group and advocates for the deaf
and hard-of-hearing have pointed to muddled, misspelled, mis-sized,
misplaced and poorly timed captions-particularly in live programming such
as news and sports, but also in some taped programs.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2008
The Federal Communications Commission has prepared
this Consumer Advisory on selected features in 41 digital-to-analog
converter boxes that it has purchased. Converter boxes are to be used with
your analog television to receive digital signals broadcast for free
over-the-air to your antenna. All the converter boxes listed here are
certified under the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) converter box coupon program and, therefore, are
eligible for purchase using a coupon issued by the NTIA. Coupons are worth
$40, and are applied towards the purchase of converter boxes, which
generally are priced at $40 to $80. Visit NTIA's website at
www.DTV2009.gov or call 1-888-388-2009 for more information on how to
request up to two coupons per household.
Full Story
