My wife is substantially deaf. We watch TV (currently, an old Samsung) with closed captions 24/7.

I purchased a Panasonic TH-42PWD5UY plasma, thinking it would display closed captions. It apparently will not. Anyone out there with this monitor who can tell me otherwise?!

This is a MAJOR screw-up on my part. My wife can't enjoy television without captioning.

Does anyone know of a satellite receiver and/or OTA STB that would compensate for the monitor's apparent inability to display captions? In other words, even if the monitor doesn't have that feature built in, can an outboard receiver/tuner (satellite or OTA) compensate?

I'm E-T-E-R-N-A-L-L-Y grateful if you can help. My wife has been gracious about my setting up a home theater system in light of the fact that her enjoyment of it is relatively limited. I feel like a real turd about my oversight.

Anyway, thanks for your help... Happy New Year and all the best... this is a GREAT forum...

Dave

PS: By the way, I don't mean to sound like some righteous doofus... but monitors without tuners should be sold with huge bold print disclaimers... "DOES NOT PROVIDE CLOSED CAPTIONING." There are a LOT of hearing impaired folks who would appreciate the warning.

It is hard to believe that modern day sets, of any type, do not have closed caption capability. If I were you I would take it back and exchange it for one that does. If that is not possible, you can obtain captions from a STB like the Zenith 520. I just tried it. I turned the Hitachi CC on and then off and enabled the Zenith's captioning and the captions appeared. Another option is to have her use headphones which should help a great deal.

This set appears to be a monitor, not a TV set. High-def monitors generally never do closed-captioning. They can't because 1. they don't generate the raster and 2. they don't have access to the RF signal. (For NTSC the captioning is part of the retrace. for ATSC it is part of the data stream.) For ATSC, it is the responsibility of the receiver to generate the closed-captions, and I believe all ATSC receivers will. As long as you feed your monitor via composite video or S-video you will see no closed-captioning. (It is technically possible, but Panasonic chose to leave it out, on the assumption that all likely buyers were high-def viewers.)

This also may be an issue with either the national broadcast feed or the locals that the CC data is not be transmitted or passed through. Contact your local stations and bring this issue to their attention.

Richard F. Fisher
Mastertech Repair Corporation, Lawrenceville, GA
770-513-3987 E-Mail - help@mastertechtv.com
Have you been calibrated? ISF and HAA Certified
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Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Toshiba, Harman Kardon, Infinity, JBL, NAD

I just confirmed, my Panny TU-HDS20 provides closed captioing and it works fine. It's an older model, but works great for OTA and DirecTV highdef stuff. You can find one on EBay for around $450ish.
Hope this helps.
Ray

I found that there are two types of closed caption currently being broadcast in my area. A couple of the station broadcast digital caption but the rest broadcast standard caption over DV.

I ordered a SIRT151 Samsung HDTV Receiver and it shows both caption types through the component connection. The Samsung also controls the standard caption, not the TV.

Previously I had purchased a HDV420 Zenith HDTV OAR. It either did not handle caption correctly or there was something wrong with my unit.

Check this thread for more information:
http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=213962&messageid=1039618521&lp=1041259951

I think any stb will do cc for you. I'm using the sony hd200 connected to fujitsu plasma with vga , svhs and single video rca and it works fine on all the inputs.