Talk:Closed captioning

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"and in some cases, illiterate individuals" What??! —Noldoaran (Talk) 05:08, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

ttt

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[edit] captions vs subtitles in australia

I've reverted the last change that asserts the term "captions" is distinguished from "subtitles" in Australia. Here's why:

I live in Australia (Melbourne) and among the deaf community here as well as the hearing community the two terms are definitely used interchangeably. I recognise that in some official literature the terms are distinguished, yet equally in much offical writing on the matter they are not. The official use of the term 'Supertext Subtitles' is widespread - it refers to subtitles for the deaf/hearing impaired with sound effects etc (ie. equivalent to USA Closed Captions). In the TV guide such programs are represented with the letter 'S'. Sometimes the terms are presented side-by-side : "Supertext Subtitles (Closed Captions)". Certainly, in common use the words are understood to mean the same thing, and in Australian sign language they are both translated with the same sign.

I understand the need to distinguish between the concepts, however that is easily achieved with the terms "subtitles" and "subtitles for the deaf/hearing impaired" or any number of other possible descriptors.

I did a quick google on australian sites and found the following examples:

vic gov health Subtitles for TV : Television with built in closed Teletext allows deaf people to access supertext subtitles currently broadcast on some programs. This allows deaf people to read dialogue directly from the screen.
deaf soc nsw Closed captions or subtitles display dialogue and other audio information, such as music and sound effects.
AAD - Aust Assoc of Deaf "Television subtitles are enjoyed by Deaf and hearing-impaired people throughout Australia."
accesibility.com.au Teletext Decoders :Many television programs have subtitles transmitted with the picture. Some videos also contain subtitles or subtitles. Though an ordinary TV does not display them, there are TVs and VCRs with decoders that will put the subtitles at the bottom of the screen
ABC TV govt broadcaster Supertext Subtitles : This symbol indicates television programs which have Supertext subtitles, or closed captions, for deaf and hearing-impaired viewers. Further information about Supertext subtitles and teletext equipment may be obtained from...
deafness forum Teletext-enabled television or video display sets must always have the subtitles/captions on.
[1] Date: 02-18-04 15:41. Do you guys really have Bewitched in Subtitles/captions over there???
[2] dunno: Its boring to watch with NO subtitles here in Australia!! There are several TV programmes here don't have CC :dunno

Therefore I reverted the wording to read "In Australia, the terms 'captions' and 'subtitles' are often used interchangeably." Please reply here if any disagreement, or contact me on my talk page. I'm very open to discussion! :) -- ntennis 00:23, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More on captions vs subtitles in australia

Living in the U.S., I don't have direct firsthand experience with the Australian media, but I did speak to quite a few Australians during the research for my books about closed captioning, and I found that virtually all of them used the terms "subtitling" and "closed captioning" interchangeably, so I'd have to go along with ntennis on this one.

- Gary Robson 26 Apr 2005

[edit] Captions vs. subtitles

I've been to the Australian Caption Centre twice and visited SBS's captioning and subtitling operations. I intervened in an Australian human-rights complaint concerning captioning.

Supertext is not a generic term for captions or subtitles in that country; its an ACC trademark.

Captions are captions in Australia (and New Zealand) and subtitles are subtitles. The only English-speaking country that confuses subtitles and captions is the United Kingdom (and Ireland).

Sadly, Gary D. Robson and the other contributor are simply wrong about this.

[edit] And yet more

So we have an American (me) and a Canadian (Joe Clark) that have been told different things by our contacts in Australia. We have an Australian (ntennis) editor, however, that makes several rather compelling arguments toward the terms caption and subtitle being used interchangeably in that country. Despite Joe's visits there, I think ntennis is far more immersed in the culture, being a resident. Who would be a reasonable authority to break the deadlock here? Perhaps someone from the Australian Caption Centre?


OK Joe, as I noted earlier the terms are distinguished in some official contexts, following the North American use of the terms. This is clearly the arena you have been involved in. However, both "on the ground" and in some other official contexts (eg. the national broadcaster's own websites, see above), there is a different system of terms being used. Australia tends to be influenced by both American and British culture, and often multiple terms co-exist here (eg. apartment/flat, color/colour) while the canonical preference tends to be for the British version (maybe residual pandering to the Empire?).
When you talk about the UK and Scotland "confusing" the terms captions and subtitles, which to you have a natural, self-evident, and universal meaning, you reveal your ethnocentric bias. These countries (like Australia) just have a different system of terminology: eg "subtitles" and "subtitles for the hearing-impaired". There is nothing confusing about it for us locals! The only one who seems to be confused is you. This is from wikipedia page American_and_British_English_differences:
It should also be noted that most American words can be freely interchanged with their British versions within the United Kingdom and English-speaking Commonwealth nations without leading to confusion, though they may cause irritation. It tends to be only when the situation is reversed that real problems of understanding occur.
Please have a look at that page for a crash course in dialects of English, as well as Australian English and dialect.
The usage and meaning may well change and the terms captions and subtitles may come to be distinguished in general usage by the Australian people - however until that happens, wikipedia should regonise the terms as they are used - not as you (or anyone) would like them to be used.
Therefore, I am reverting the text to read "the terms are sometimes distinguished but often not".
By the way a few points of etiquette on discussion pages: always sign your posts! This can be done by typing four tildes like this: ~~~~
When replying to a previous post, indent your replies with a colon. New headings are for new topics. See Wikipedia:Talk_page.
ntennis 03:17, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lecturing on linguistics now, are we?

Let me see. You're lecturing a 25-year expert on captioning, who also has a degree in linguistics and speaks and writes the curious amalgam of influences that is Canadian English (neighbour:organize:tire vs. neighbour:organise:tyre vs. neighbor:organize:tire) on what to call captions in Australia?

Not only have I visited captioners *and subtitlers* in Australia, who have no trouble differentiating the two, I've watched captions on Australian television, and by golly, don't they call captions captions and not subtitles? I mean, check the credit at the end of the program.

It gets better: I've had real-time captioners producing CART text of my own speech in Australia, and everyone working on that task called what they do for broadcast "captioning."

It gets better still: Why do all the recent government documents about captioning, including settlements reached with broadcasters and movie exhibitors, use the word "captioning" and not "subtitling"? (I intervened in a couple of those proceedings.) Could it be because captions are called captions in Australia? And because showing up to a subtitled version of The Stepford Wives is slightly different from showing up to a captioned version? (I did the latter, by the way.)

As for your claim that calling captions subtitles and also subtitles subtitles is never confusing, well, that's rather rich, isn't it? Would you like to to sit down with me and watch a DVD with captions or subtitles? If you don't think the terms are confusing, then my preference is for Chinese. But wait-- that's not what you meant, is it?

So I'm rereverting the edits. I have all the time in the world to keep doing so, too. We can go to arbitration if you want. 70.51.142.239 23:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A few more sources

Let's see.

  1. You all know about the Australian Caption Centre, which is not, curiously enough, called the Australian Subtitle Centre.
  2. One of Auscap's major competitors is a joint venture between ITFC and WordWave called Captioning & Subtitling International (note the two terms); they just won a captioning contract with ABC. When that contract came up in the senate, the topic discussed was captioning, not subtitling.
  3. The HREOC’s splash page on captioning discusses captioning, not subtitling.
  4. The Deafness Forum Australia is running a caption quality campaign and not, it is interesting to note, a subtitling quality campaign.
  5. The former National Working Party on Captioning was not, in fact, called the National Working Party on Subtitling.

So no, captions are not typically called subtitles in Australia. – joeclark 23:50, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)


I presume that anonymous contributor 70.51.142.239 and Joe Clark are the same person?
Most of your arguments come down to a blustery "i'm an expert! how dare you criticize me!" it's a kind of inverted ad-hominem argument and proves nothing. Please try to calm down, put ego aside for a moment and respond to the points made. Remember that Wikipedia is a collaboration - not a territorial war!
I understand very well the need to distinguish between a film with subtitles of sound effects etc and one without. I watch them regularly, both on TV and DVD, where I use the 'subtitles' menu and select the "English subtitles for the deaf/hearing impaired" (which I'm sure you wish was titled 'captions' instead). There is nothing confusing about this! (but perhaps Joe Clark would fare better with Chinese). It becomes clear if you apply the following definition:
In Australia, the term 'subtitles' is mostly used a general umbrella term for any text that appears on the bottom of the screen, and the terms 'captions' or 'subtitles for the deaf/hearing impaired' are subordinate terms that refer specifically to subtitles that describe dialog as well as additional audio information.
None of your examples contradict my assertion about the subtitles/captions terminology. I'll repeat, for the third time - yes, some official contexts in Australia, as we have both pointed out, like to distinguish between the terms captioning and subtitling. This is mainly AusCap, following the North American use of the terms (it's no surprise that the private sector is influenced by North America, and the government is influenced by the private sector, especially when discussing international contracts).
Even on the Australian Caption Centre's own website the terms "captions" and "subtitles" are being used differently to the Joe Clark definition (it appears the Australian Government is using the term "subtitles" here where the Australian Caption Centre using "captions"):
Through assistance from the Federal Government’s Department of Family and Community Services, the Australian Caption Centre manages the Subtitled Video Project (SVP). The project’s objectives are to cover entertainment video releases within Australia that have not been captioned when first released internationally and to cover video releases of Australian titles & television series.
Here's another excerpt from AusCap's website (this time about New Zealand):
Mr Kim Robinson, a Deaf resident of Blenheim, New Zealand, has taken a complaint to the NZ Human Rights Commission regarding the lack of captioning on the cinema version of The Lord of the Rings. [...] He proposes that movies should be screened with subtitles which Deaf viewers would see by wearing special glasses.
(post note - I used a variety of these terms and concepts as this case was a 'test case' to see which bait the fish would bite. Language is not a Human Right in New Zealand, therefore I had to look at other ways to ensure that the issue gets the attention it deserves without having to go into the lingual arguments. To date the case is still being worked on by a group of representatives from the Deaf/Hearing-impaired and Cinema Industry. This has resulted in [3] being created.) Regards - Kim Robinson


This is from the organisation that endorses the subtitles/captions distinction! If you look further, especially community organisations and situations of everyday use by Australians, you will find the term 'subtitles' is mostly used a general term for any text that appears on the bottom of the screen, and is commonly used by both deaf and hearing Australians to refer to what North Americans might call captions. In my work here in Australia (I work in television) and in my personal life in the Deaf community here, everyone I know uses the terms in this way. Also remember that the contributor Gary Robinson found the same thing when researching for his books on captioning: "virtually all [Australians] used the terms "subtitling" and "closed captioning" interchangeably".
'Captioning and Subtitling International', the organisation you referred to to back up your claims, is (strangely enough) international - it's not Australian! According to their own website, they are an amalgamation a company providing services to Europe (principally the UK) and a company that operates in North America. So it's no surprise that they use both terms in their name (note teletext subtitles for the deaf in the UK), and of course, it says nothing about use of the terms here in Australia.
The other organisation you referred to, Deafness Forum, in a press release about the very campaign you are talking about, begins their press release with the term "captions" and then later uses the term "subtitles". The two terms are being used interchangeably.
DEAFNESS FORUM AND AAD CALL FOR LATEST SONY BLOCKBUSTERS TO BE CAPTIONED - Since 4 May 2001, open captioned films have been available to cinema distributors in Australia through Tripod Captioned Films and the response from Australian audiences has been very enthusiastic. However, not all movies are available in open caption format.[...] This has led to complaints from Deaf and hearing impaired cinemagoers in Australia [...] One cinemagoer has said "by the time we eventually get to see the movie with subtitles, everybody who hasn't got a hearing loss has already watched it on the big cinema screen without subtitles."
Furthermore, throughout the Deafness Forum's policy on sporting venues, they use the term "subtitles/captions" (they want TVs in the gym to play with the CC decoder on). And (we're starting to see pattern here) their info page on "Television Access" carries the heading "Closed Captioning (Supertext Subtitles)".
So you've "visited" Australia as an overseas consultant on captioning. This is enough evidence that we accept your description of language use in Australia? Congratulations on your linguistics degree - perhaps you should refer back to your course notes about language variation.
I've put a 'factually disputed' tag on the top of the page until this is resolved. -- ntennis 02:25, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
This seems a little harsh. The argument is somewhat minor, and doesnt really pertain to the majority of the facts in this article. --Bonus Onus 02:41, May 3, 2005 (UTC)
I'm open to other suggestions! However as the article has been reverted three times by Joe Clark times to the same wording, and I have tried to re-phrase or re-word the information three times, I felt the dispute warranted a tag (see Wikipedia:Dispute). Please suggest a better approach to a resolution. :) -- ntennis 02:58, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
The subject matter we're disputing is a tiny fraction of what's contained in the article. I, also, believe that the disputed banner is a bit much. I disagree with Joe on this one, but it's just not major enough to drag down the whole article. How about if we simply don't mention Australia and New Zealand in that sentence? And, just for the record, ntennis, it's "Robson" not "Robinson." Thanks. Gary D Robson 21:49, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Whoops! Sorry about mis-spelling your name Mr Robson. As you probably noticed I already removed the reference to Australia and New Zealand rather than face an edit war. I accept your proposal to keep Australia and New Zealand out of the article and remove the 'dispute' tag - please go ahead and do so. As the issue is (hopefully) laid to rest for the moment, I will, however, remind contributors that Wikipedia is actively trying to remove North-American bias and become more relevant to all parts of the globe. This solution is a step backwards in that respect. Cheers. -- ntennis 04:55, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Further on subtitles/captions

Well, you know, it's not ad hominem to list sources and state eyewitness histories. If necessary, I can also go into the storeroom here and look up the inch or so of printed matter from Australia on the topic of captioning.

Is it just barely possible that my qualifications are relevant, and that they are actually more relevant than working in TV in Oz and knowing a few deaf people?

The link I provided to the Captioning and Subtitling International Web site, had it actually been followed, would have shown you that they use "captioning" to describe what they do in Oz. They may be a foreign-owned company, but they are nonetheless carrying out business in Australia.

It is relevant that I have a B.A. in linguistics because I was being accused of a kind of language imperialism in imposing an americanism (I'm actually Canadian) on the glorious and independent British and Scottish people. Captions are called captions in Australia and not because I think they should be.

Clearer now, ntennis?

[edit] Not the ideal solution

Even if it's only a relatively minor point of the article, it's disappointing that the issues regarding the distinction between "captions" and "subtitles" had to be resolved by removing the mention of Australia and New Zealand from the article.

At the grass-roots level in the Australian deaf community the two terms aren't distinguished and so it seems misleading to suggest that there is a clear-cut distinction. Perhaps we could incorporate that into the article - that at an official level the terms are sometimes distinguished, but within the community itself they are not distinguished?

Mija 04:50, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you, Mija. Unfortunately, our Canadian spokesman, Joe Clark, based on a couple of visits with people at the highest level of captioning in Australia, has decided to speak for the Australian populace at large, and I don't particularly want to get in a petty "you add it and I'll take it out" edit war with him. It's counter-productive, and it's much easier to just leave Australia out of that paragraph at the moment. Gary D Robson 15:25, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I don't need an American lecturing me on what's correct for Australians

This is a request for Gary D. Robson, an American, to stop implying that because I'm Canadian I must be incorrect on the topic of the terms "caption" and "subtitle" in Australia. The crux of the argument is that I'm not Australian, so my expertise-- despite my firsthand knowledge-- can be ignored. But Robson isn't Australian, either. Where does that leave him?

I'll presume that unsigned comment is from Joe Clark, and I'll request that he stop implying that because I'm American I must be incorrect... *sigh*
I had already agreed to not revert your edits before you made your rather pointless posting above, Joe, so why don't you and I stay out of it and let people like ntennis who actually live in Australia decide how to write text applying to their country? Gary D Robson 22:21, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm careful to log in before providing comments. If the system doesn't identify me, the system needs improvement.
The point, nonetheless, is that an American is somehow valiantly defending the right of an Australian to assert that his Australianness makes him right and my non-Australianness makes me wrong. The American is in no position to do so, since he's just as non-Australian as I am. Address the point, please, Gary. Joe Clark
Okay, Joe, I shall address the point. You, a Canadian, have worked with the Australian captioning industry, and you assert that the terms "caption" and "subtitle" are always clearly distinguished, with distinct meanings. I, an American, have worked with the Australian captioning industry, and I assert that the terms are oft confused and used interchangeably, even though a distinction does exist. Given that you and I--both foreigners--disagree, I tend to give extra weight to the input of ntennis, who lives and works in Australia and encounters more of the day-to-day use of both words in both print and conversation. It's not complicated, and it's not personal. Gary D Robson 17:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
While I agree with Gary that members of a speech community know their own vocabulary better than outsiders do, I want to emphasise that this dispute should not be decided on the basis of an individual's claim to authority. It can easily be resolved by looking at the evidence. The original claim that the two terms ("subtitles" and "captions") are used interchangeably in Australia is verified by ample evidence above. I could add many more examples - programs outside of prime time on the ABC (the main government TV station) carry the teletext message "this program is not subtitled", while programs on (commercial broadcaster) channel 7 say "this program was captioned by the Australian Caption Centre". The converse claim, made solely by Joe Clark, that Australians exclusively use the terms in the same way as North Americans, is alledgedly backed up by an "inch of printed matter in his storeroom". Even if these documents exclusively refer to captions not subtitles it can hardly disprove the numerous regular uses of the term "subtitles" by prominent sources (ABC, AAD, Deafness Forum, Aust Govt) and individual Australians which are evidenced above. If we accept Joe Clark's assertion, then all of these relevant Australian bodies and indiviual consumers are incorrectly using Australian English. How odd. ntennis 03:48, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
p.s Can we stop using phrases like "the terms are oft confused". It's like saying Australians "confuse" the terms "flat" and "apartment". We simply use both. Call us adaptable. ;)

[edit] And now, yet another Robson

The other Robson's addition of "improvements" to the discussion of "instant" captioning (a term nobody uses, not even in Australia) does little but add a link to an old article about Ceefax that could (and, according to Wikipedia practice, should) go at the end of the article.

How does this help, exactly?

Another unsigned comment. Joe Clark, I presume? If you don't like what Adrian Robson wrote, fix it, don't just grouse about it. And don't try to connect it to me with your snooty "another Robson" comments--I don't know Adrian, although it wouldn't matter if I did. Gary D Robson 22:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Contrary to Gary's complaint, rewriting an edit that one does not like is not the only solution. I asked the author to defend the edit's purpose. If he can't do that, it's pretty strong evidence the edit shouldn't be there. – Joe Clark

[edit] Use of NCI logo

I'm not sure it's the best idea in the world to use a registered service mark as an illustration for an article on captioning. – joeclark 20:14:42, 2005-08-19 (UTC)

I agree completely. I have substituted a generic symbol, which everyone except NCI uses. I drew this symbol myself and released it into the public domain, so there can be no trademark issues. The design itself has also been released into the public domain by WGBH. Gary D Robson 16:13, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What are Closed Captions?

I had a guess as to what cc-s are, but I wanted to find out. This article is waaaay to long and complicated in getting to a simple statement (definition) of cc. The opening should be simplified and cleaned up. THEN, the article can get into all the technical stuff. The next thing I wanted to know was how some-one can SEE the texts (on t.v.), assuming one has a newer t.v. Maybe the answer is in the article, but I'm none the wiser. Please tell us now, using straight-forward English!

Whoever wrote the preceding comment has a good point. If somebody can come up with a good public-domain picture of captions on a television screen, I'll write a new introduction to the article that explains what captions are to the layman before launching into the technical stuff and applications of captioning. Gary D Robson 16:54, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

_______________________________________________________________________

OKAY HOW DO YOU TURN THE LITTLE FUCKERS OFF? I HAD SOME AMISH PEOPLE COME TO MY HOUSE TO TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX IT AND THEY DID'NT DO ANYTHING EXCEPT THROW A PARTY WITH PITCHFORKS AND SPOONS!

[edit] LITO

LITO is commonly used to refer to NTSC's Closed Captioning on LIne Twenty One. A simple Google search will show this as well. In the future, please do not remove information unless you are absolutely sure that it is false. --tonsofpcs (Talk) 21:13, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. I followed your Google search, and the majority of the results having nothing whatsoever to do with broadcasting or captioning. Six of the top 50 results have to do with broadcasting, and most of those contain the precise text: "The US "CC" is known widely in technical circles as LITO = LIne Twenty-One! where it lives." -- right down to the exclamation point. I've been working in the captioning field since 1989, and I've met most of the major players in the field. I've also written three books and over 50 magazine and newspaper articles about captioning technology, and I've never heard the phrase before. Having a paltry 230 hits on Google, of which 90% or so seem unrelated, doesn't make it "widely used." Somebody made up a new acronym, and you may be using it widely, but that doesn't mean this Wikipedia article needs to. Gary D Robson 00:07, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, I need some clarification here why Gary D. Robson can get away with listing his qualifications without challenge, but when I do it, some guy whose sole qualification is "I talked to a deaf person once" can attempt to invalidate my qualifications. – joeclark 01:38, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
It's a matter of context, Joe. In this particular example (LITO), I'd be very interested in whether you've heard the acronym before and whether you consider it "commonly used." I stated my qualifications in the previous paragraph because they're germane to the issue of whether LITO is a widely-recognized abbreviation. In the Australian discussion, I really don't think your core qualifications are being challenged. It's just that when we're discussing Australian lingo, an Australian's opinion must be given higher weight, as he is exposed to it far more regularly than you or I. Please do weigh in on the LITO discussion, by the way.Gary D Robson 04:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Supertext

Supertext is definitely a trademark and is owned by the Australian Caption Centre along with the S logo. Networks not using the ACC cannot use the terms Supertext or the S logo, or they'll get sued.

[edit] Not enough History

There's hardly any history or background of the technology that made closed captioning possible. Whose invention/idea was this? How did it come to be adopted worldwide, what motivated television companies to provide this service etc. 68.237.98.55 03:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Closed Captioning of Video Games

Can anyone confirm that the Video Games listed actually create closed-captions, and not open-captions or subtitles? If so, it would be nice to have information on how these games accomplish this task (and of course, information on how to create your own closed captions using some of the game system's hardware). --tonsofpcs (Talk) 06:20, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

I was the one that added Zork: Grand Inquisitor to the list, and I can definitely confirm that it's closed captioning. You have to go into a control panel to turn it on, which is the definition of closed captioning. As for the rest of your question, the games don't accomplish the task: the programmers do. I know of no way for a non-programmer to add captioning to a game. Zork GI, by the way, runs on a computer rather than a console, so there's no "game system hardware" per se. Gary D Robson 22:08, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

could someone explain why exactly video games need cc? is this a joke? Bob A 04:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

CC would permit people with hearing disabilities to understand and play video games. Unless you're advocating that people who can't hear shouldn't be able to play, I doubt we are joking very much. Otherwise, mute your TV and play Halo. --lux 06:16, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Many Playstation 2 games are captioned. I don't know what the motivation of the game designers is for including captions, but I know a lot of kids play games with the sound down to avoid annoying the family, and even with the sound up the funny character voices are sometimes hard to understand, especially for ESL speakers. So a large proportion of people who would be using them are hearing. ntennis 07:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
only new games have audible speech, and even those have subtitles. the older ones (super mario rpg) have no such speech at all; everything is in text. is this so deaf people can read the music being played? i don't get it.
is this so deaf people can read the music being played? The purpose of closed-captioning is accessibility. People can get information on it, including how music is played, what kind of music, who is singing, and what is being sung. In other words, it permits deaf people to understand what is going on, everything that is going on.
But, if it was just the music, that would be fine. Unfortunately, it's not just the music. To put it unkindly, if you're saying ALL games have subtitles, you're actually wrong. Deaf Gamers, based in UK, gives reviews of games that have been recently released. They show that even now, some games are not subtitled. The review of the The Chronicles of Narnia explains that

"The biggest disappointment is that deaf gamers are not going to be able to follow the story because of the absence of subtitles. (snip) when it came to how deaf gamer friendly the game is, it kind of all falls down. As we remarked earlier there are no subtitles. This means all the movie clips are pointless for deaf gamers and the same can be said for the cutscenes. Comments made by the characters during the game are also not subtitled. (snip) Tutorial messages are shown in text which is helpful of course but it's a small consolation when you can't enjoy the game's story. (snip) The most appealing aspect of the game, the story, is lost for deaf gamers though and this puts a big question mark against whether the game is worth playing for deaf gamers. If you enjoyed the movie of the book, then you might want to give it a go, it is a good game after all, but essentially the experience is watered down somewhat from not being subtitled."

Another review is Codename: Kids Next Door
But I don't think you're saying that all games have subtitles, just that most of them have sufficient amount. It's just there's a few games that aren't subtitled. Overall, it's been a mixed bags because sometimes, in simple things, like BloodRayne, the introduction isn't subtitled, even though the rest of the game is. --Lux 23:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
by subtitles, i simply meant dialog being displayed onscreen. all of the older games had everything in "subtitles". there was no speech, there was no singing. the most obvious exeption to me are the two lines from super metroid. and for the newer games like final fantasy x, what's the point of having cc when you can just use "subtitles"? Bob A 23:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
I finally understand where we got confused. From a certain point of view, closed captioning and subtitles are pretty much the same thing. Usually, closed captioning has to be turned on, while subtitles were always on (as in foreign movies or older games), which we agree on. But, DVD (and video games) has pretty much blurred the distinction between the two terms, because they call it subtitles even though it could be called closed-captioning because it can be turned off and on.
But you were talking about closed captioning in the different narrower definition, referring to simply the Line 21 coding in TV programs and VHS that requires a special decoder to use.
In that case, no video games have closed captioning, because they don't use Line 21 and don't need a decoder. They also don't need Line 21 because subtitles should be there already. I think I might have been rude earlier. It's a thoughtful discussion because meanings have changed since DVDs didn't exist before. So subtitles always had to be there, or not. Now that you can change the option to turn it on or off, that makes subtitles more similar to closed captioning. Games are also blurring the distinction further. In this case with people asking about turning on closed captioning in the game, it means that closed captioning and subtitles are now used interchangeably. --Lux 19:26, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Being an avid gamer myself, I tried to offer another example of captioning in games, another one that shows how subtitles in a game can be more useful than simple movie captions. I removed the Mario examples; all of those examples were Mario RPG titles, which have never had spoken dialog in the first place, so they're no more "closed-captioned" than any Super Nintendo game was. The original video game edit, which stated that those games were the "only" games to offer closed-captioning, almost seems like vandalism to me. I also tried to clarify the issue about the method the game uses to display the subtitles; now that I think about it, it might be a bit misleading to compare it to a DVD, as the DVD player itself decodes and displays the subtitles, while a game console does not. If anybody has better examples of games that make use of captioning to help with the actual gameplay, please add them. Werthog 02:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CC #'s

What are the difference between CC1, CC2, CC3 & CC4? 201.135.93.170 18:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I added a brief description. I'll put in more when I have a chance. Gary D Robson 21:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray (BD) Line 21

My understanding is that DVD NTSC video doesn't technically have Line 21 captions, but stores the information as user data somewhere; and accommodating players will place that information over the video signal where the decoder can access it.

More to the point, though, I think Blu-ray does the same thing. In contrast with the current article's reporting under DVD, "HD DVD and Blu-ray disc media cannot carry Line 21 closed captions, so SDH subtitles are used as the sole default method", I have seen Line 21 style closed captions -- separate from menu-accessible "SDH" subtitles -- in Blu-ray product. Early BD players cannot show the "Line 21" content, but I've done so with CyberLink software and I have been told future BD players will also. I assume this is true of HD DVD as well, but have no personal experience with that format.

Consistent with my first paragraph about DVD, I've noticed on a TV/DVD/VHS combination unit that I can access Line 21 from broadcast video, but not from the DVD player--even when I've accessed Line 21 from the same disc on another player (though this may just be a technological shortcoming of the specific DVD player in the combo unit).

[edit] The latest nonsense from U.K. English–speakers

I reverted, in an allegedly "hostile" fashion, repeated attempts to move some business about open captions (which is what they really are called) being termed "in-vision subtitles" in the U.K. and, presumably, Ireland. While this is merely another captioning-related malapropism in those dialects, I know from experience, more of which I have than most contributors to this page, that open captions are indeed misnamed as "in-vision subtitles" over there. What is not true is the claim that closed captions are also called "in-vision." I took that out, but the previous point remains in the article, which should be more than enough for the contributor who was trying to make things worse through inaccuracy.

Now, on the more general point, could a native speaker of British or Irish English please explain when a caption might be out of vision? When you're not looking at it? When it isn't decoded? When it isn't there? – joeclark 20:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I do not support Joeclark removing the merge tag. Subtitle (captioning) as well as Wikipedia:WikiProject Filmmaking and Wikipedia:WikiProject Deaf already have discussions to merge the two articles. Taric25 19:23, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

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