Closed Captions in the Digital Era

At our Closed Caption Event and SMPTE meeting on 21 Oct 09, Jack Davis, Director of Engineering at KTXL-TV Fox 40 in Sacramento discussed closed caption compliance for broadcasters and exactly how Fox 40 has implemented closed captioning technology. In addition to his engineering responsibilities at the station, Davis fields calls from viewers who have trouble with their captions at home. Often the user settings in the TV set are the culprit. For example, if Spanish captions are displaying instead of English, or vice-versa, the TV set may need to be changed from CC1 (service1) to CC2 (service 2) in order to display the desired language.