Closed Captioning Issues with Bell

[David1953]

I did get in touch with someone at Bell, and was able to get through to a rep at a higher level. However, the most he was able to do was verify that my CC settings on the box were correct, which they were. He then mentioned that it was probably an issue with the providers, or the TV settings. Also, he seemed unwilling to check out the problem for himself with a 6131 hooked up to a TV in their office.

I could not get through to him that I have ruled out providers by checking programming from the same networks at my friend's house, by viewing them through an Eastlink box, where all was fine.

Also, I could not get through to him that the CC for HDTV has to be done by the box, not the TV, and he actually suggested that I contact Samsung to ask them about TV Cc settings.

I admit that this was not a very satisfying experience, irregradless of the fact that the agent was very polite, spoke clearly, and I understood him well.

[57]

Although the CSR may have been polite and tried to help, obviously he was out of his depth and should have transferred you do someone that may have been able to assist properly.

[David1953]

He did claim 13 years experience at Bell, 57.

Also, I did ask him if he has ever read the Digital Forums, and his answer was no. I even directed him to this thread, but he gave no answer.

Ironically, the original level 1 rep who answered the phone DID say that she has read the Digital forums all the time, and also, quite ironically, she almost seemed to be more willing to help than the higher level guy. I only wish my luck had been better, and that I had received the same rep who assisted jhb50. It is all the luck of the draw, and it is Bell's policy that you cannot ask for a specific rep and have them call you back.

My thoughts are that I will be cancelling my contract early, and swallowing a $100 cancellation fee.

[jhb50]

Just had a great on-line chat with a Dish network "Closed Caption Specialist".
Are you listening Bell? He checked their known issues and could not find a report of my type of problem, but he said if I was a Dish Customer that he would fill out an Engineering Report, and that the process works well and fixes are done with updates. This echos what Bell said and did. I was lucky to get a Bell Rep knowledgable in Closed Captions! Now I can only wait and keep resetting the 9241 until it is fixed.

[David1953]

I wish my luck had been as good as yours, jhb50, and things seem even better in the good old US of A. I am stunned that Dish even has closed captioning specialists! Sometiimes I wonder, at least with some reps, if they even care if the problem is fixed. At least you did get someone who appreciates your problem, and is willing to do his best.

I was thankful for the chance to give my evaluation of the agent through the usual feedback process, and I have to say that I did not give my rep an A plus or anything. The biggest issue with my agent was the unwillingness to even check to see if the problem could be reproduced with their equipment in their office, which would have taken 10 minutes of their time at most.

I wish there was a way to get in touch with your agent.

[vcr_fv]

I use Shaw, using the DCT3416 by Motorola. I do not have an HD TV yet, but I do get the HD channels. I am using Vancouver, BC Cablevision.

I tried your test and here are the results for me:

All three channels (CBCNN on channel 26, CBC-O on channel 79 and CBCHD on channel 209) all roll, but once in a while, channel 26 (which is my SD channel, I think) is fixed caption and THAT is definitely when I get the gibberish thing going.

I seem to get the gibberish on the fixed captions only. The rolling captions work great from today's test.

But thank you, JHB50, for explaining the fixed and rolling captions. I didn't know about that and I've been a captioned reader for the past two decades!

This is helping me to understanding (just a tiny bit) what is happening, where I'm getting sloppy captions, which seems to be happening more lately with the new developing digital age.

[jhb50]

Just to update my original post:

I have now been thru 6 9241 receivers, and each has had different problems including frequent rebooting, or static overlays but the common problem has been the failure of the HD channel closed caption characters to complete their formation on the last line of rolling captions after the 9241 has run for a few hours. This also effects popup captions which fail to show periodic popup lines.

These problems make HD TV unwatchable for hearing impaired viewers.

I have diagnosed this down to a 'box' problem since it occurs with different TV's and with different cables, and more importantly will act differently or not at all with PVR playback, meaning the "Bug" is is in the decoding and overlay of the captions on the rendered video.

It also seems to be related to the size and speed of the bottom line, because short lines ~12 characters never fail nor do lines that fill slowly due to slow speech, so my belief is that the "Box" runs out of CPU power and "drops" those portions of each character that are missing, just like frame drops in video playback on a PC.

While I reported this to Bell, no fix appeared in the latest software version.

The only fix is to reboot the box and captions will be restored for a few hours. The problem with this is that any active recordings on the box will be terminated by the reboot.

It is most annoying and frustrating.

My only hope is that Bell will come out with a newer PVR that I can get them to switch for me. Does anyone have any info regarding this?

[Angelfish]

I often use the CC feature on my 6141 while watching HD programming both live and PVR'd and the CC (although not perfect) is reasonably ok.

[jhb50]

The problem is unique to the 9241. Either its firmware or the power of the box as I reported above. It has nothing to do with the 6141.

[Wolfe.Mtl]

I am now seeing real problems with closed captioning on HD channels with Bell's 9241 receiver and of course no-one at Bell has ever heard of anyone else with any problems. I have seen these problems with 3 separate 9241's so I am assuming that it is a software problem (or an inherent problem with the receivers themselves) rather than just my set. Until my 9200 was recently replaced there were far fewer errors.

At present I am seeing full lines of text, followed by half-height lines, lines of text displayed showing just the upper half, lower half, or a white bar thru the middle of the text. Captioning displayed as one pixel yellow lines, often mixed in with full lines of text. Truncated lines with half words and words running together. Also text flashing by so fast it can never be read.

Is anyone else out there seeing these aberations, or I am I just unlucky to have seen this performance of three separate 9241 receivers?

I was really excited to see the addition of the Hollywood suite channels, but have yet to see one movie captioned, although each info description says that each and every one I have watched is CC.

Are we going to have to start watching broadcast TV to be able to understand what we're watching?? It drives me nuts that most illegal downloads from the net have legible sub-titles available and my TV service can't provide a reliable CC option.

[57]

Is the CC problem discussed here regarding the 9241 also present on the 9242? You may be able to get a 9242 since they seem to be available for the MPEG4 swap. (I searched the 9242 thread for CC issues and didn't see any...)

I see that jhb50 has been through 6 9241s so it's not the individual STB.

[Wolfe.Mtl]

I found an offer on Bell's Site for a promo for a free PVR rental for 3 years if you have 3 services with Bell. I will never turn down free equipment, and they sent me a 9241. Picture dimmed and brightened, and they replaced it. Closed captions sucked. The same week they sent me a 9242 to replace my 9200, (9200 had reasonable CC lately). The 9242 worked okay for about 5 hours. The next morning it could not find the satelite and kept rebooting itself! Bell replaced that with a second 9241.

Now both 9241's present CC's in different states of disrepair, I would guess from how long its been since I held the power button down and did a reset.

I spoke to second level tech yesterday while I was on a rant about CC, and he expressed his utter astonishment that the CC's were badly formed during rolling and would advise the powers that be to fix it. Seeing that this thread has been going on since last June with the exact same complaints it would appear that no-one at Bell really cares (or has any idea what do do to "cure" the symptoms).

I am astonished that this thread is so short. I know I couldn't find it and I am sure that if it were better identified we'd have a lot more people bitching about this. Are so few people using CC ??

[lightbender]

The 6131 has the similar issues from what I've tried. My wife doesn't like to watch with CC on, I prefer it but its not a priority. I think most people don't have it as a priority, unless you are hearing impaired. From googling on the subject, it seems to be related to the HDMI interface as CCs are not natively supported on that interface. So perhaps the Bell receivers do a lousy job in supporting CC over HDMI

[57]

So, is CC reliable/workable over component video?

[Wolfe.Mtl]

I've got one 9241 connected by HDMI the other by component. Same results.

The reset (holding the power button for 4-5 secs) does improve it for a short time.

But there has to be a way to get some results.