Equal Access: HDMI is Inaccessible

[Banjo]

Hello everybody, I'm glad to be back here after a lengthy vacation. I finally decided on a subject to cover. I feel that it is quite a serious situation. Please watch the vlog to learn why it concerns the deaf community in a big way. The vlog is captioned.

- To view the vlog, click here.

After watching the vlog, I hope you are now more aware of how serious this situation is becoming. The HDMI is becoming the standard of watching HD contents on HDTV. If we don’t do something soon, it may be too late. The damage is already being done as we speak.

To file a complaint with the FCC (Federal Communications Comission), you can click here to enter the page on their website. I hope you will do your part and support the deaf community in fighting the FCC’s way of approving technology to be used by the public. If a new cable, equipment and more are inaccessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, they should not be approved for mainstream market.

The change needs to be made now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not in a month, not in a year, not in a decade.

Hope y'all can help me out on this one since it concerns the HDMI cable. I love the cable, but they need to start supporting CC (Closed Captioning) now or else.

[arush5268d]

I'm not sure of the technical details behind it, but I was surprised when I found out a while back that HDMI does not support CC

[Leopold BUTTERS]

it doesn't support it?...does mean all BD movies must come with subtitles and all TV shows must have subtitles as well...?

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by Leopold BUTTERS

it doesn't support it?...does mean all BD movies must come with subtitles and all TV shows must have subtitles as well...?

For TV shows, it's impossible. You would need a TV receiver that has a CC decoder built in. But if you want to record something off the TV, the CC will be burnt onto the video.

A lot of people don't want that.

[WriteSimply]

How will the FCC's decision affect Canada, Banjo? You know that I support this cause. But over here, we don't even have CC programming or hardware.


fuad

[arush5268d]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

How will the FCC's decision affect Canada, Banjo? You know that I support this cause. But over here, we don't even have CC programming or hardware.


fuad

There is no CC at all in TV in Canadia...just movie subtitles from DVDs/ Blus?

[My_Two_Cents]

Didn't we have a long-time member about a year ago who made such a fuss about this around here that he got banned? I seem to remember something about this when I first started frequenting this site.

Not saying this isn't important to some. Just curious if anyone remembers the controversy.

[jw]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Didn't we have a long-time member about a year ago who made such a fuss about this around here that he got banned? I seem to remember something about this when I first started frequenting this site.

Not saying this isn't important to some. Just curious if anyone remembers the controversy.

Caligula, yea

[tommyboy81]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

Caligula, yea

bingo

[My_Two_Cents]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

Caligula, yea

That's the one. Thanks.

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

How will the FCC's decision affect Canada, Banjo? You know that I support this cause. But over here, we don't even have CC programming or hardware.


fuad

It affects us in a big way. If the FCC approve them, then we are more than likely to get them here too.

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by Ricshoe

Didn't we have a long-time member about a year ago who made such a fuss about this around here that he got banned? I seem to remember something about this when I first started frequenting this site.

Not saying this isn't important to some. Just curious if anyone remembers the controversy.

Oh yes, I remember him. Well, I'm not sure what it was that got him banned. But regardless, he did share similar sentiments on the captioning issues.

I do think it's quite a serious situation when they are trying to make HDMI a mainstream product when it is not able to transmit CC signals. That's a big issue.

[Banjo]

Originally Posted by arush5268d

There is no CC at all in TV in Canadia...just movie subtitles from DVDs/ Blus?

Actually, we do get both CC and subtitles on DVD and Blu-ray. We get nearly the same products as the Americans do. However, CC on HD programming is still a pain in the neck at times because they will get jumbled up at times even with CC support on the TV receivers.

[wallendo]

There is nothing wrong with the HDMI cable.

Your real complaint seems to be with the entire consumer electronics industry, not the HDMI cable. Your video on your blog does not make sense. Maybe you have tried to "dumb down" your explanations so that the average viewer won't get confused, but your description of events is very over-simplified.

The PS3 completely ignores CC information on Blu-ray disks. Even if it did, no existing monitors would know what to do with CC information coming over a HDMI cable. Your complaint is not with the cable.

I doubt the FCC is going to get very excited about a complaint from a Canadian about a cable (which is just a piece of wire and completely incapable of "stripping" the CC signal as you suggest).

Apparently, what you are advocating is a system where CC information is preserved and hidden alonmg the entire video chain, and can be revealed/decoded at any user-selectable point in the video chain (receiver or display). If that is what you want, then your complaint should be quite specific about that.

Out of curiosity, does component video carry CC information?

[Banjo]

Wallendo, it doesn't make any sense to you because you don't get the whole picture.

It is the HDMI cable that is the problem. I have spoken to some engineers, they said that the HDMI cable is unable to carry the CC signal. I decided to do some research. Turn out it's true. So yes, it is a problem when the HDMI cable will not carry the CC signal. They have updated it several times and it is still unable to carry the CC signal. The signal itself takes up a tiny amount of bandwidth, very tiny. We're talking bytes. I discovered this when I bought my first HDTV approximately two years ago. There are some Blu-ray discs with CC support. For instance, FOX titles. All of them are closed captioned, but I cannot use them through HDMI. I know they offer SDH (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing). However, that's not the point. The point is, if they are closed captioned, they should be accessible through HDMI or any type of cables. No matter what.

So don't tell me that there is nothing wrong with the HDMI cable. If a cable intended for carrying video and audio signals is unable to carry the CC signal, something is wrong with it. Especially when deaf consumers are unknowingly buying HDTV with HDMI support. But should we blame them? No, because they expect them to be able to decode CC signals through any types of video/audio cables.

To answer your question, component cables are capable of carrying the CC signal. All they need to do is add a channel to allow the CC signal to be transmitted from the DVD/TV receiver/PVR/Blu-ray player to the HDTV. It's not really much to ask for.

Besides, the majority of my readerships are Americans. So that's why I'm encouraging them to file a complaint to the FCC. Everybody is entitled to equal access. Especially when there are 30 million deaf and hard of hearing Americans. Oh, one more thing... there's also the Americans with Disabilities Act. The FCC still beat around the bush when it comes to equal access.

Enough is enough.