Our cable service (CableOne) recently upgraded the TV Guide iGuide on our Motorola DVR's (I have the DCT6412 III) and the Close Captioning stopped working correctly. We use to be able to watch the Close Captioning generated by the DRV, but its no longer displaying. (We now use the TV's generated CC.) And to top that, on all digital channels the close captioning is dropping letters making it unreadable. One of the CableOne's techs came out to look at it, and left scratching his head. Has anyone else experienced this problem? I've posted more about this problem w/ screen shots at my blog http://www.programwitch.com/?1496
Got a reply from CableOne support: This is, NOW, a known issue with Motorola on the latest DVR's released. They are working on a fix for this issue. We can bring out one of the DVR's released last year that has the same option on it. The closed captioning on these work great. ... Thanks for your patients.
Yes, we have CableOne and a DCT6412 Phase III installed on 1/6/06. Closed Captioning displays fine on channels 2-99, but is garbled on channels 100 and above. I have been trying to solve this problem for a week thru CableOne (who wanted to switch out the Phase III for a Phase II box), Motorola (who forwarded my two email support inquiries to the "appropriate department" with no response in over a week), and other PVR blogs. A lot of talk about this problem with no solutions. Nice to hear that Cable One and Motorola has responded to you that this is a known problem that is being worked on.
Yesterday CableOne gave me an older dual tuner DVR STB and the close captioning on the higher channels are working again. It still won't generate the CC via the DVR, so we are using the TVs. This is also the first STB I've had that didn't have RF (Cable) out. Its all video out. I'll get the model number later and post it.
Wrote down some info from my latest STB Model: DCT S/W Ver: 73.41 Firmware 10.10 Even though we now have CC ungarbled on high channels, we may have lost CC on Univision. I know this seems odd. I'm going to check the other non-DVR STB in the house to see if CC is on that channel. DVR generated CC still does not work. I still bet it was the iGude software breaking it.
I, too, am not able to see the closed captioning when watching a playback from my DVR. However, I noticed that when I managed to slow down the playback, the captioning will appear. This only last a few seconds and is hardly a viable option. The way that I can slow it down is pressing the REPLAY button OR pressing the PAUSE, then press PLAY on the remote control. It is good for only a few seconds and I have to time it when there is an actual dialogue being displayed. I just sent an e-mail to COX, my service provider, to see if there is a way to slow down the playback slightly. Maybe this is the needed clue for a viable solution? Yours, Radar
I have received a reply from Cox Communications about not being able to get the captioning, which I thought were because the playback was too fast. Here it is, verbatim, "The close closed caption feature is something that is processed on your TV and not the DVR. So by recording something on the DVR it does not save the information required by your tv to display closed captions." It does not make sense, because the closed captioning was available tonight for the shows I recorded last night. There were some gaps, but it is better than not getting any at all, as was the case the night before. I do not know why there are inconsistancies. Plus, I had said that I could see a few seconds of captioning when I manage to slow down the playback. I appears this is not something that is going to get solved very soon. Yours, Radar
I don't know why they would say that. We recorded Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs last night and watched it later with "close captioning". I'm of the mind that many cable techs don't know all the ends and out of the cable boxes they support. If they can hook it up and see all the channels I think they are fine. The last cable tech that came to our house didn't even know about the close captioning settings on the dvr. ------- I tried your pausing/replay trick last night with no results. The only close captioning I see is generated from the TV. I'm going to give up trying to get the DVR's close caption generator to work until there is a new firmware update. I get no help from any tech support I've tried, because they just don't know what I'm talking about. --------- To Review: To get to the DVR's close captioning settings. Turn off the box, click on settings and you will see this menu: note: picture above has Analog set as T1, normally it would be set to CC1, we were playing with the settings when I took this pic Push settings again to exit the menu. Turn you box back on. Before the last software update this function worked. Now it doesn't.
Read an article on Digg that Comcast may move to TiVo's software for the DVR's http://digg.com/technology/Upgrade_your_Comcast_Moto_6412_DVR_to_TiVo_Software_
I have since realized that the COX DVR will record and play Closed Captioning when I record shows on the digital channels. The shows that are still being broadcast using the analogue will not properly display the Closed Captioning. I realized this because my favorite weekend shows are still on the old system and my favorite weekday shows have digital channels available. It took me two weekends to realize this. I have given up the DVR. It does not matter if the TV Closed Captioning is on or not on my setup. I have tried all the combinations of TV CC on & DVR CC off, TV CC off & DVR CC on, and bot TV and DVR CC on(4th option would be both TV & DVR CC off). I decided that the digital system has not matured enough to deal with the needs of the hearing impaired. I will try again at a later time. Thanks, Radar
