Originally Posted by hulsw

I get 18 digital tv stations here. I do not pay for cable or satellite. They very very very rarely have closed captioning operating on the digital TV stations. My guess is that the FCC is not requiring it of the digital stations (ATSC) until the NTSC cutoff date in less than 2 years. I can scan through the 18 channels with CC on and almost never see it operating. So that is likely to be your problem.

If I am watching "Law and Order" in HD there is no closed captioning, but then I can switch over to the analogue TV station and watch the same "tv station" and the closed captioning is working. So presently the situation is that there just is not much closed captioning going on on ATSC stations. Even PBS, which is usually pretty advanced when it comes to features that benefit the public (I worked at PBS AM/FM & TV stations in the 70's) has never had closed captioning operating on any of the 3 public stations I get here (42, 17 and 2).

When you see the words "HD ready" or "HD compatible" that means the "tv" is nothing more than a display unit with connectors to hook up an ATSC tuner. It probably has a NTSC (the old standard) tuner built in.

HDMI input to your "hd television" is only using your television as a display. Nothing more or less. It does not decode anything at all. So if you want to see closed captioning when using the HDMI input, whatever you are watching MUST do the decoding. Think of it as being a very expensive computer display.

Depending what "component video" input you are using, with what model TV, it is the same situation as the HDMI connector. The tv is doing nothing more than being a display.

A few weeks ago was the deadline where importers had to stop importing "high def tv's" that did NOT have an ATSC tuner built in. (ATSC is the new standard for "digital tv") . So these problems will not be as prevalent. However it will not have any effect on the HDMI or component video inputs that I have described.