I don't understand why a tv show that had captions on broadcast, would *not* have them on DVD. Arent' they encoded into the signal, and the cost has obviously already been incurred. I would think it would cost more time and energy to remove the captions in that case, than just to leave them.

Since it shows CC while watching regular TV then the DVD isn't closed caption or try a new release DVD and it should show up....

CA you list some of the specific titles you've tried that you cannot get to display CC? Maybe one of us can confirm whether or not they are encoded with CC or not.

Good idea, either Mr. Salty or I or both will try to help

C.S.I. Miami
Stargate SG-1 Season 1
Boomtown

These are a few that I have tried and all with the same results. I'll try to add more to the list in a bit. Thanks a lot for your help.

C.S.I Miami has Closed Caption
BoomTown has Closed Caption
Stargate SG-1 Season 1 doesn't seem to have Closed Caption

A couple of years ago I purchased The Cotton Club at Circuit City, since I'm hard of hearing I tried getting the close-captioned turn on since the back of the box have the close-captioned symbol on it, well I could'nt get it to display at all on my 24" Sony Trinitron. I tried watching Mississippi Burning since it was made by the same studio MGM and it worked. Figuring I must have a defected disc I exchanged it for a new one. Well to my dismay that one did'nt even work at all. I was so pissed I tried emailng MGM about the defect and have not heard from them even since.

Then it must have something to do with the way my dvd player is connected or the player itself. Does anyone know anything about the Norcent player other than the ability to change its region coding through a couple of button pushes on the remote?

Yeah, some companies like to screw hard of hearing/deaf people putting closed caption on the back of the cover but it never shows up on the TV! The same thing happened to me, I was looking at Wal-Mart and I saw SnapDragon and I looked at the back of the cover to see if it's closed caption and it showed the CC so I brought it and took it home and start the movie but the captions never showed up and I was pissed, I tried contacting Lions Gates about it but they never replied! I know how you feel, man, it sucks!

Did you get a chance to test any of these dvds to see if the CC shows up for you? I know it says CC on the back of the box, but have you actually had them work for you?

Yes, I did, CSI Miami works, Boomtown works, StarGate doesn't work for me. Maybe somebody who has StarGate Season 1 can check and see if the captions work for them because it doesn't work on the TV for me.

Interesting subject, and one you don't see discussed nearly often enough. There are a few aspects of Closed Captioning that maybe I can bring up, first in relation to TV shows on DVD. Broadcast captions are always copyrighted, similar to the way a translation of an existing work into another language can be copyrighted. So if a TV show airs with captioning (and by next January almost every show will) unless the very same entity that owns the captions is putting out the DVD, the show will have to be re-captioned at additional cost. NBC was showing SCTV late at night a few years ago with (poorly implemented) Closed Captioning, but it wasn't until Vol. 2 that Shout! Factory started including CC on their box sets. Now TVLand is showing SCTV segments without CC, although they're likely to fix that soon.
Complicating matters further for movies on DVD is that many people and companies don't distinguish between player generated subtitles(whether SDH or not) and actual Closed Captions that are hidden in the video signal and decoded by your set. Some Lions Gate DVDs are a perfect example. The back cover of their May makes it appear that the DVD has CC, but instead it has SDH. If the DVD has actual CC, it should feature this logo on the back or the spine:

Or this logo which is specific to the National Captioning Institute, signifying that the DVD was captioned by NCI:

(I think Warner Bros. is the only studio to use NCI exclusively.)
The use of other similar logos - like the "two interlocking C's in a TV" pictogram on the back of the May DVD - seems to stem from the mistaken assumption that any subtitling of an English language film qualifies as CC and can be labeled as such.
Complicating matters even further is the fact that progressive scan effectively disables CC (at least through component connections). If you have a DVD player that can switch between progressive and interlaced on the fly, play a major studio release with your monitor set to decode the CC and watch the captioning flicker out when you switch between the two modes. I'd like to see Fox's practice of including player-generated subs that are textually identical to the CC become standard - but for DVD extras as well as the feature itself.

Do you think that by having my S-Video cable running through a switchbox might be the reason why my CC is not showing up? I don't see how this could be the reason, but it is possible.

It's possible but try it and see

Ok, so I disconnected my s-video from the switchobx and connected it directly into the t.v. The CC would still not show up. So I tried playing the movie through my Playstation 2 and the same results = nada. Does the CC signal travel through the s-cable or do you need the regular video cable hooked up as well to get the CC?
I've tried on these players:
1. Norcent
2. Playstation 2

Is there anything else I might need to do to get the CC to show up? When I watch cable with my Sony Trinitron the CC shows up without a problem. Please help...thanks

Yes, the CC will travel through the S-video cable. It is encoded into the video signal. I also have a Sony trinitron and a dvd player hooked up to it via an S-video switchbox and I can view the CC if I want. However, your problem is either your TV (which you've eliminated since you get CC otherwise), your players, or the connection between your players and the TV. Could it be a funky S-video cable? What the hell, try a different cable if the same one has been used in all your tests. Otherwise I'd have to wonder if your players are stripping the signal somehow.

Anybody here have a Playstation or a Norcent? Can you view closed captioning when using them?

The only thing I can come up with right now is that neither the Norcent nor the PS2 can play dvds and have the caption signal go through. I will have to move another of my dvd players to the front to make sure there is no problem with the t.v. receiving the CC signal from a source other than cable television.

Anyone out there use a Norcent player? If you do, can you get the CC to show up on your t.v.?

I just thought of a idea, why not borrow your friend's DVD player or somebody's DVD player and see if their DVD player can show the captions on the TV and if it does, then it must be your DVD player, maybe your DVD player isn't suited to play closed captions on your TV