Why No Closed Captioning?

[Trekkie313]

I love Blu-Rays, but I'm a bit hearing impaired and it really irks me that Blu-Ray isn't compatible with regular Closed Captioning. DVD, VHS and even some LaserDisc had CC...why not Blu-Ray?!

To make matters worse, the way the studios do Subtitling is horrendous. I don't want my Subtitles plastered onto my gorgeous movie, why can't it be down in the letterboxed area?

[Atreyu]

Why the closed captioning is not on the black bar on the bottom is , IMO, 1) Not all movies have the black bars so they are probably just trying to make all their movies look the same. 2) Some people who have projection screens adjust their screens so the movie fits precisely on the screen to give it a more of a movie theater feel.

[Trekkie313]

Originally Posted by Atreyu

2) Some people who have projection screens adjust their screens so the movie fits precisely on the screen to give it a more of a movie theater feel.

I don't know how that factors into it, also is it true that the studios outsource the subtitles?

[Atreyu]

Not sure if the studios outsource the subtitles, but even if they did, they own the film and can dictate where they appear.

[Jeff Kleist]

I love Blu-Rays, but I'm a bit hearing impaired and it really irks me that Blu-Ray isn't compatible with regular Closed Captioning. DVD, VHS and even some LaserDisc had CC...why not Blu-Ray?!

Standard CC requires an NTSC analog signal to work, because it resides in a very specific scanline zone. HDTV closed captioning is done much differently

The move of the subs into the picture frame was as stated above. You should pick up an Oppo Blu-ray player that has the Sub shift feature if it bothers you that much. There are several companies that transcribe and time closed captioning, and usually those are han

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by Trekkie313

I don't know how that factors into it

Well, because for many, black bars are non-existent in their setups, so you can't add content to that which is not displayed.

I'm not implying you are doing this, but I remember a member several years ago who made it his crusade to argue this issue here to the point he was finally banned. You may be able to search for some of the old threads (2007 timeframe) that have a lot if information and reasons why CC is what it is on BDs.

Edit: Found the thread by Caligula - https://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-te...-impaired.html

[Flatnate]

Well I can only throw my .02 cents in on half of the reason. The reason why many studios are putting the subtitles in the picture frame is because there is a lot of folks with high end theaters who use an anamorphic lens in a cinemascope/2.35:1 set up. The projector or the scaler stretches the image vertically and then the lens stretches it horizontally to fill the entire screen. Subtitles in the bottom letter boxed area would be cut off in such a set up.

However, Oppo makes a blu-ray player that will shift the subtitles that are in the black letterboxes area back in to the frame for these folks who use that lens, which leaves me to believe that Blu-ray is capable of moving subtitles depending on how the disc was encoded. You should drop a line or make a plea to Oppo to see if they could enable that feature to work the other way for folks like yourself. Everything I have read says they are a very customer driven company who listens to feedback. Its worth a shot maybe you'd see that in a future firmware update.

Best of luck.