A couple HDMI questions

[drfsupercenter]

I know the PS3 will show closed caption.You have to enable it in the Blu-ray or DVD movie options.

That's not closed captioning, that's subtitles that are part of the DVD. That's what I'm saying - not every DVD has that. I think all Blu-Rays do, as there's a law saying all new releases have to have captions for the hearing impaired. (I'm not hearing impaired, I just hate having to rewind the movie 50 times to understand someone's accent or something really quiet)

But some older DVDs don't have those subtitles. Only closed caption data, the thing represented by [CC] or the little speech-box symbol. Now, using RCA connections, my TV will show them just fine. But then it also looks horrible due to being 480i. When I play that same disc in my Xbox 360, the captions are gone. It's like HDMI doesn't allow for that. Which is why I'm curious if anyone knows if that's part of the HDMI/HDCP specification or if I'm just having bad luck.

[atifsh]

According to the HDMI Specification, all video timings carried across the link for standard video modes (such as 720p, 1080i, etc.) must have horizontal and video timings matching those defined in the CEA-861D Specification. Since those definitions allow only for the visual portion of the frame (or field, for interlaced video modes), there is no line transmitted for closed captions. Line 21 is not part of the transmitted data as it is in analog modes. For HDMI it is but one of the non-data lines in the vertical blanking interval.

Although an HDMI display is allowed to define a 'native mode' for video, which could expand the active line count to encompass Line 21, most MPEG decoders cannot format a digital video stream to include extra lines—they send only vertical blanking. Even if it were possible, the closed captioning character codes would have to be encoded in some way into the pixel values in Line 21. This would then require the receiver logic in the display to decode those codes and construct the captions.

It is possible, although not standardized, that some measure of content in text form can be transmitted from Source to Sink using CEC commands, or using InfoFrame packets. Again, as there is no standardized format for such data it would likely work only between a source and sink system from the same manufacturer. Such uniqueness goes against the standardization mission of HDMI, which is focused in part on interoperability.

Of course, it is possible that a future enhancement of the HDMI Specification may encompass closed caption transport.

Inshort current HDMI do not support captions..

There are situations when it might work.. like a particular manufacturers TV, DVD and PVR are all designed to work together to this, but its not compatible with other devices for other manufacturers.

[drfsupercenter]

So there's no addon for the PS3 or Xbox 360 that will act as a caption decoder then display it like "hard subtitles?"

And you know, that really sucks. Now if I get an HDMI cable box I won't be able to watch captions! God, I hate standards compliance!

[admin]

Closed Captioning is an analogue service, it only exists in analogue signals. A component connection may still have CC, but definitely not HDMI, which uses a different digital standard that hardly anybody supports. This is why in the past, there were DVDs with only CC, but now, almost every one of them have subtitle tracks along with CC.

[drfsupercenter]

Oh, I get what you're saying.

But what about my old DVDs? I like playing the TV shows I record in my settop DVD recorder using an upscaling player, as the DVD recorder via 480i just doesn't look very good. And they obviously have no digital subtitles.

Is there some addon for the Xbox 360 or PS3 that can decode closed captions and display them like subtitles? (Kinda like the -subcc switch in mplayer)

[admin]

It's up the player I suppose, but I don't know if any player can actually do that at the moment (I don't think so), although the Xbox 360 mentions something about CC here:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/xboxmediafaq.htm

[Wombler]

Inshort current HDMI do not support captions..

There are situations when it might work.. like a particular manufacturers TV, DVD and PVR are all designed to work together to this, but its not compatible with other devices for other manufacturers.

Wow that seems like a fairly basic oversight in the HDMI spec.

Makes you wonder why they didn't think of that when determining the standard.


Wombler

[drfsupercenter]

That guide is for Windows Media Center 2005... I don't have that. I just have it hooked up to my TV... not through a computer.

I've heard that you can install Linux (or something like that) on a PS3... I wonder if there's a port of mplayer that can run off it and display the captions.

[townlakes]

This HDMI switch from Octava worked the best and was compatible with my PS3, Xbox and cable box. Got more inputs on it than I need not, but I may add a DV camara to it.