What are Closed Captions?

Closed captions appear as text on the screen, see the picture above for an example.

Captions are transmitted with the digital signal, and can be decoded by a few of the boxes we sell at Hantrex. A particularly good choice for caption capable boxes would be the Healing DST Series or the Humax Personal Video Recorder with hard disk recording. Both these boxes will deliver fantastic captions.

Closed captions are usually colored, and positioned so that they appear under the speaker. That way, you can tell who is speaking what. Captions also relay sound effects that are important to the story line, for example a door creaking open in a horror movie, or a car skidding. These types of sounds are captioned to give the viewer more information than just what is being said.

This is the difference between captions and subtitles, which are generally a translation of just the spoken words in a foreign film.

All TV shows on in prime time are captioned. All news/current affairs shows are always captioned too. This is the law, and TV stations have to comply. For 90% of television watching you're guarenteed to see captions. TV stations have recently signed a deal to increase the level of captioning over the next few years, so we're going to see more and more programs captioned, with a special emphasis being placed on childrens' shows.

Click on the links to the right for more information about technical details and how things work, as well as a run down on what closed captions are.

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