Beware Of The TV Wool Being Pulled Over Your Eyes Thursday, December 22, 2005

In response to my earlier post, I’m on the phone with toshiba, and I think deaf people would be very interested in hearing this.

BEWARE OF WHAT TV YOU BUY. The TV/DVD combo you have may not display captioning from a DVD, because it was only designed to display incoming captioning (i.e. cable, antenna, satellite) but not read off of the disc.

So, boys and girls, you may have a TV that doesn’t read captioning, and not even know it!

It is our expectation as a deaf consumer that when we buy a tv, that the dvd *will* be able to play captioning back, when subtitles are not available. And when the box leads us to believe so, and that they don’t mention it, it is a rip-off.

Something should be done about this. This means that either the movie industry *has* to make subtitles mandatory on their DVDs, or the tv industry has to find a way to make captions available off of DVDs. At the very least, they should inform the consumers of that detail.

Yes, I am upset. I want to be able to enjoy a movie at home with my family, and know that the dvd will work with closed captioning, in the event there is no english subtitles?

The one thing I hate about being deaf is that when you try to call a business using the relay, you get hung up on. Thursday, December 22, 2005

The one thing I hate about being deaf is that when you try to call a business using the relay, you get hung up on.

I’m trying to call the people who distributed Third Rock From The Sun and ask them about problems with the captioning on both seasons.

First time I connected, the secretary at Carsey-Werner Distribution said “Good Morning”, and then hung up. I tried calling back again, the phone was picked up on the 2nd ring and hung up again. Same thing with the third time. Finally they put up the answering machine. This time I left a message, being sure to explain that I was deaf, and that I have to use the relay, and the secretary kept hanging up on me.

The reason why I am calling…I brought home both seasons with me, so I could watch it with my family, only to find out the captions won’t work on the TV. I’ve played it in Windows Media (on my computer), and its perfect, with a black background and white text. PowerDVD, can barely see it, because it is just white text and can be hard to read.

I would use subtitles if they were available, but they are not.

I wonder if its something to do with the hardware or the coding. When a TV with a built-in DVD player switches to DVD mode, it seems to turn off the captioning. I’ve tried going into the menu to enable the captioning on DVD, but it is not always an option. I’ve had the same problem with the movie “Session 9″, in where I couldn’t play it with captions on my TV (Apex), Dad’s tv (which is separate from the dvd player), Mom’s TV (Toshiba), Casey’s TV, and PowerDVD. It only worked on the downstairs tv (which has a separate tv/vcr deck), and in windows media.

Has anybody else had problems with discs that do not have subtitles, but have captions that won’t come up on TVs, even though they are captioned and work with specific TVs/DVD programs?

Ahh frustration!