Originally Posted by Capmeister

The DirecTV HD-DVR model HR20 does have closed captioning over all connections--including HDMI. It has its own closed captioning decoder which many of us at DBSTalk.com have worked very hard to get DirecTV to perfect.

I got an HR20 in October and told them closed captioning was TERRIBLE. The DirecTV engineers monitor DBSTalk.com so I knew they were reading my complaints. After a few months of seeing the receiver get software updates for many bugs NOT related to closed captioning, I complained loudly and they heard me, asking me to give them a little more time. I decided to give them a month more, and within 2 weeks they had made major captioning changes.

After a few more weeks, they listened to our further complaints and made more fixes. Every time they fixed something, I and others got more and more detailed about the little things that needed to be tweaked (I supplied many pictures so they could SEE the problems of which I wrote), and they kept coming back with changes to make it perfect. It's not often a company listens that closely to their users (especially a minority of the user base that uses closed captioning). Spread the word about them--people should know!

I'm not sure if you can see these, but here are some of the threads on the DBSTalk.com forums that transcribe the journey:

HR20 Closed Captioning issues - DBSTalk.Com

HR20 Closed Captioning -- how to make it better - DBSTalk.Com

HR20 Closed Captioning UPDATE (v0x120) - DBSTalk.Com

0x12a - Closed Captioning - DBSTalk.Com

DBSTalk.Com - View Single Post - HR20 - CE07051 - 0x132 Issues

ATTN D* people: Closed Captioning and the HR20 - DBSTalk.Com

An HR20 mini-review, 5 months in - DBSTalk.Com

CE 0x14B and closed captioning - DBSTalk.Com