Hi,
I noticed that the last releases of Warner Bros. TV shows in the United States only have spanish and french subtitles and english closed captions. Is this the new policy of Warner Brothers in the United States or is it an error on several internet pages? Are there any cheap possibilties to display closed caption subtitles on european TV sets?

Reihnold

As far as I am aware it is very difficult to display US CC's on european tv sets. We have had CC's in the UK before but they were not compatible (PAL vs. NTSC amongs other things).

It is possible that it is an error. Some companies have an annoying habit of incorrectly referring to English HOH subtitles as "Closed Captions" or "Captions", especially in the UK. However if it is a US disc then it probably really is Closed Captioned.

Perhaps one of our US members can confirm - codeman?

Cheers,
Mat

No, it is correct. Since about six months ago (March, April or so?) they've abandoned the English subtitles and now only have CCs and Spanish/French subs, leaving many series without subtitles halfway through (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Veronica Mars, Full House etc.) It's a shame. I e-mailed them asking why, I've had no reply yet.

I have just fallen into this trap :wall:

Season 3 of One Tree Hill only has french & spanish subtitles with English Closed Captions.

Although I can enable the closed captions on my pc, is there any way to enable them on a dvd player?

Does anyone know of any multiregion dvdplayers/recorders which have a closed caption facility?

many thanks

Adam

I can confirm this as well. The Animaniacs and Pinky & the Brain DVDs have this particular issue.

To be honest, I don't understand why American DVD companies prefer TV-decoded captions to DVD subtitles anyway... subtitles are guaranteed to be playable on everything, while there are some R1 players that garble the captions when outputting them to the TV, and I don't know of any DVD players that can output captions to high-def outputs... :hmm: At least HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use subtitles in R1.

Hi there.

My first post here!

You CAN play closed captioned R1 DVDs on your UK televisions. I have this device which is called Sarabec VHS CC Decoder. Although its use is supposed to be for VCRS, it actually works on multi region DVD players.

I have such a device. The problem is Sarabec has discontinued the CC decoder. It is no longer being sold. So, you might have to ask around for a second hand.

When and if you get the device, the least requirements are that your TV must be NTSC compatible AND your DVD player can play other regions as well as R2. My TV is PAL/NTSC compatible. Most new TVs are like that anyway.

I'm able to switch on CC for "The Shield" (R1) Season 4.

HTH.

Uncle Johnny

(and no, I'm not really an Uncle )

Thanks for this update Uncle Johnny. I'll see if I can source one from somewhere.

jovihammer, the device is also known as 'Sarabec Video reader'. That might improve your search.

got one of these on ebay last week, hope it works

FYI: Seems to me that Warner has abandoned this policy, because the last seasons of Gilmore Girls (Season 7) and Veronica Mars (Season 3) do have English subtitles. Universal TV DVDs seems also to be a good choice, because they have nice subtitles for the episodes and the bonus materials are subtitled as well (judged by Las Vegas Season 3 & 4 and Heroes Season 1).

Thanks so much for this information Reihnold. :thumbup:

I love the Gilmore Girls so Im now off to order season 7

cheers

jovihammer

SOOOOOOOOOO Warner Brothers have released Season 1 and 3 of Veronica Mars with subtitles but NOT series 2?!

Heroes season 1 extras were not subtitled

Which extra features do you mean? I just checked again and on disc 7 all bonus features are subtitled, with the exemption of the audio commentary and the promotional trailer for other Universal TV shows.