I always laugh at the cruel irony of music videos being closed captioned. It sort of seems like the televisions stations are rubbing it into the deaf community's face saying "This is what you should be hearing."

I'd imagine CC is also useful for the hard-of-hearing as well.

Not those who believe everything they read, if the mistakes in my C.C. are representative of all the captioned show out there.

It's better than nothing. My dad can't make out most of what's on tv these days, especially since everyone talks so fast.* CC gives him a fighting chance to figure out what's going on.

*and hell, most shows are "lit" so darkly that you couldn't read lips if you wanted to.

Closed captioning is great whether you have hearing problems or not. It even enhances kids' literacy skills.
What?! It's true! I read it somewhere!!

I keep the closed captioning on most of the time, recapping or not. It started as a habit of my husband's, because his sister is Deaf, and he grew up watching captioned TV. Now I have a hard time watching TV without captions.

But it is also useful for recapping, especially with mumbly actors. They also sometimes change the script at the last minute, so there's not time to change the captions, and I find that interesting. Because I'm a huge nerd.

As someone who is hard of hearing, I'd be lost without captioning. It's better in terms of timing and accuracy on a recorded show but usually delayed and nearly unintelligible when it is real time, like on the news or a sports show. If you really want to understand how inane most sportscasters are, hit the mute button and read their commentary instead of listening to it.

I love having the CC on, except for live events like news & sports. (And pro wrestling, which is neither.) EWD, however, hates it, so I only get to have it on occasionally.

I would think all of the recappers use CC. That way they avoid having to say "That part's a little fuzzy. And I'm not even drunk."
It drives my kids crazy, but it is my preferred mode for watching a movie. It eliminates the need for "what did he just say - rewind it please." I sometimes watch TV (with the CC on) and listen to music from my stereo at the same time.

I'm sure Keckler has never had that problem with Enterprise. The "not even drunk" part, I mean.

It's not like we'd believe them when they say that anyway.

It's also helpful for the night-owls (aka: me ) who want to watch TV without waking the whole household up. Also, if I'm listening to music. And closed captioning on music videos is actually helpful because i can't understand half of what they're saying most times. and because I am a control freak who must know all the words or none of them.

Closed captions are very handy indeed, and best on videos, where they've been reviewed. When watching TV, though, I tend to listen more than watch, so CC wouldn't really help. Maybe I need a voiceover: "Luka is now brooding."

I used CC, well subtitles (that's kinda the same thing, right?), in south america and it really helped me with my spanish. The audio was in english and the subtitles in spanish.

I never turn the captions on, ever. It ruins both comic and dramatic timing for me.

Same here. It makes me more aware that the actors are reading a script when I can see the script printed on the screen. It completely kills my ability to lose myself in the fantasy.

Its also great when your Mom calls you and talks to you for 40 minutes during your show. Because God knows that flipping through channels is more important than paying attention to the person who gave birth to you.

It does drive most of my family batty though, but too many actors mumble.

I have noticed that sometimes, the caption pops on the screen before a given line is said. That can be a bit of a spoiler. But I do like it for deciphering mumbly actors.

To me, there's nothing bad about the closed captioning because they obscure the popup banners at the bottom of the screen, most of the time, and they give my eye something to focus on while I watch TV. I'm flighty, so if I don't have something to read, I get distracted by shiny things and forget to follow the narrative that's on screen.

The beautiful thing about closed captioning with TiVo is that you can watch it without caption but if there's a particularly mumbly scene, then you just turn the captions on and rewind. I do the same thing with the English subtitles on DVDs. Some DVDs don't have them though (Joan of Arcadia, I'm looking in your direction. If God was one of us, he'd have a bit more concern for the hearing impaired.)

I use CC a lot. The only thing bad/annoying about it is when I'm watching the news, and they put on some talking head that I don't know. They'll show the person's name and title on the screen, but it's always obscured by the CC. So I have to quickly turn the CC off for a second so I can see the person's name before they take it off the screen. Otherwise, it's great.

If you really want a treat, watch Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare with the CC on.

I mostly just turn them on on the off chance there'll be some humorous description of a noise, like Joan of Arcadia's infamous "struggle grunts." I've heard something about a show where a dog barks and the captions actually say "woof woof woof," which I find hysterical.

Yep, that's why I love the captions as well. I process information strictly by sight, and I can never pay any attention to what I'm listening to. Captions help me focus and pay attention. Sadly, I've lived for the past year with an old television incapable of displaying captioning. As a result, I miss out on all the nuances of my favourite shows that I have to pick up from TWoP. (Not that I mind visiting!)

There's a scene in a zombie-infested subway tunnel (don't ask) from the Alias season 4 finale that has, I have heard, the most amusing captions ever, because Every. Single. Background. Noise. is captioned. I have the tape, so I could see it myself, but I'm afraid it somehow won't live up to the description.

I always have to have the CC on during Jeopardy so I don't miss hearing the answers, but mostly I use it to watch Saved By the Bell while I blowdry my hair.

I use CC all the time. Mostly because I have the world's crappiest tv but also because it's funny sometimes.

The funniest thing I ever saw on CC was during this show. When it was supposed to say "blows raspberry" is said "blows dewberry". Dewberry was the name of a contestant on the show.

I love closed captioning. Otherwise my choices are turn the volume up and get blasted by sound effects/music, or miss dialogue. I hate when background music is so loud it drowns out actors speaking sotto voce.

I'll turn it off for sitcoms, because it will ruin the punchline of jokes, and at the beginning of TAR, because it blocks out the starting times (which is the only "time" you really see how close/far apart the teams are.) But for dramas, the news, Jeopardy! it's great. I love to read, so it's two great tastes together for me.

As others have pointed out, captioning descriptions of sound effects are hilarious. Plus you sometimes get an altered script, where the edit room has changed or added/deleted audio dialogue, but never altered the captioning. It's two for one scenes!

Once during the last season of American Idol, they screwed up the closed captioning for the phone numbers. For some reason, even though the voting numbers are already on an on-screen graphic, they still caption them whenever Ryan Seacrest says them. Well, one week they accidentally put the same contestant's number (ending with 01) for the captioning of all the subsequent contestants as well. Since when do deaf and hearing impaired people vote on American Idol? Although that *does* explain why Carrie Underwood won this show and Clay Aiken didn't. ;)

The captions on AI are also funny when they try to decipher song lyrics, and sometimes they fail. The delay bugs, though, but it can't be helped since it's live. Although sometimes the other extreme bugs too. For example, Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare spoils the eliminations for you, so now I look away when he's about to say it.

I basically like captions for previously taped stuff but not for live events, but my old remote that came with the TV broke when I had them set on and I don't know how to turn them off with the new universal one.

I don't like the cc, although I do agree that the descriptions of noises are funny. But for me it distracts from what's going on. When the captioning is on, it covers up much of the picture, plus I tend to concentrate too much on reading and miss what is actually being done. Without the captioning, I can watch and hear at the same time and get the "full picture", so to speak. Also, not being in sync with what's being said just annoys me. It's a pet peeve and I can't get over it. Whether it's the delay for live shows, and the spoilering for recorded shows.

Although, I do hate when the "background" noise drowns out the talking, especially when it's of the main characters. It's fine to drown out the extras, but not the major dialogue that's going on. I don't find that happens too much with TV shows, but am finding it in more and more movies. I might just try using the cc again the next time that happens in a movie I'm watching.

For me, closed captioning is to television what daytime running lamps are to cars: distracting and useless

...

I do like that CC can sometime reveal deleted dialouge or last minute censorship. 24 has a lot of instances of deleted dialouge slipping through CC. And during the first season of The Shield, the CC revealed that the character could say "fuck" when the episode was captioned, but the airings all had other explitives replacing the f-bomb.

I got used to using CC when I had a deaf roommate back in the 80s (had the separate box for it and everything). So, I'm pretty used to it. I don't have a problem getting everything that's going on while the CC (or subtitles for foreign films) is on. Like everything else it just takes a little practice.

I love CC on TV and videos. I actually hate when things aren't CC'd.

I work in a video bar which gets very busy and loud. Because of that sometimes it is hard to hear dialogue when we show TV programs. We started showing the captioning on one of our screens and soon found just about everyone wanted us to turn it on on all of the screens. It makes following dialogue and comedy clips much easier, thus much more enjoyable, in a club atmosphere.

The downside is that the CC sometimes obscures onscreen text and graphics.

And we got a Phillips flatscreen a while back which for some reason positions the captioning centered, a third way down from the top of the screen. So the text is usually in the middle of someone's face. There is no function to change it on that screen, that we can find, so we turn off the CC.

And yes, sometimes the CC text pops up before the spoken words, which can kill comedy timing. For some reason Mad TV has gotten very bad about that with their captioning.

Last fall, my CBS affiliate would consistently have audio difficulties around 9:45. Unfortunately, for the two shows I watch on CBS in that timeslot, that's when key bits of information are revealed, so I started turning the captions on and leaving them on, at least for shows that aren't captioned live.

Sometimes the captions will spoil a joke (the one that comes to mind is the "in good hands" line on 24) and they can be wrong ("There were no survivors...," grr), but I've learned to put up with it.

I don't use CC currently, but my father just got a DVD player and he's one of those guys who has to know what every button does, so he discovered that some of his DVDs can be played in French or Spanish, with captioning in English, French, or Spanish. This is a minor point of curiosity for him, but for me it set me to coveting a DVD player so I can play stuff in French, the language I'm trying to learn, along with captioning in English so I can check my comprehension of the dialogue. I can't wait to play with this feature!

Turning on the Closed Captions is just too much of a pain-in-the-ass for me. I have to go up to the TV, go through the menu, select the option, then close the menu. It's especially annoying if I want to turn them off and on in a quick fashion. So, more often than not, I watch TV without them. On DVD, however, I love captions and subtitles. I prefer the subtitles to the captions, since the captions display all the sounds while the subtitles just display the dialogue. Unfortunately many DVDs come with either subtitles or captions and rarely both.

I can't live without CC. I'm addicted to them. It's like my TV screen is naked without them - but then I'm also from a country where all things foreign (and sometimes even strongly "dialected") is subtitled.

Back in college we did some CC in my translation class. It was a real bitch - but a lot of fun too (you only have x spaces pr line and y seconds to get the meaning acroos). I spent god knows how many hours on just capturing 5 pages of manuscript. After we turned in our CC assignments, our prof found the best lines and "put them on the TV." It was one of the highlights of the class - if not the only highlight. We got to sit there and yell "that's my line, that's my line."

I'm addicted to closed captioning also. I hate to watch a movie or tv show without it being on and probably spend as much time reading the show as watching it. I'm not deaf or hard of hearing. I guess I'm just an appreciator of the written word.

eta: I meant to say I'm "not" deaf or hard of hearing. I could have sworn I included that word but I have a tendency to leave out words here and there when I'm writting messages. Guess my hands are quicker than my eyes ::sigh::

I find I tend to forget to watch the show and focus on the captions when they're on. That said, there are times when that's a blessing, it's much less annoying to read terribly written dialogue than hear it.

Does anyone know if the use a computer to close caption the news? Sometimes it prints things I don't think anyone could think was right.

I think they use stenographers for live TV. Shorthand is done phonetically, so that might explain a lot of the mistakes.

My little TV turns the closed captioning on automatically every time you mute the TV and there's no way to get it to come on without muting, but that's never really bothered me because I usually only want it one way or the other.

One of my weird quirks is that I get really embarassed when I know a character or contestant or whatever is about to get embarassed, but for some reason it's easier to take if I mute the sound and just read the words instead of hear the person say them. Unfortunately, while my closed captioning comes on when I mute, it takes a couple of seconds for it to start and so I end up missing a bit of dialogue. It also takes a few seconds to readjust if I change channels, which is a pain.

I keep debating whether or not I want to read this thread or not, because I know I'm going to have to say something eventually and I really enjoy being a lurker.

I do closed captioning for a living. I've only been here for about 5 months, but it's really interesting and thoroughly enjoyable job. I don't do the live stuff... they run court reporters in here to do the live stuff. I do anything from 30 year old game shows to shows that are currently airing, so there's always a nice variety.

It's harder than you think.. there's a lot of rules to follow and things to know and research to be done, not to mention that I have the tendency to get emotionally involved in every show I do. But I love it, and really this is the perfect job for me.

Just my two cents.

I am severely hearing impaired, but my hearing is helped a bit with hearing aids. I enjoy music, and I love watching MTV, VH1, etc. If the videos aren't captioned, I can't understand the music. Lyrics are what make a song for me since the music can be somewhat iffy for me, hearing wise. If there was no captioning on MTV, I would raise hell, quite frankly. I've already raised hell for the fact that VH1 Country turned off all their captioning a few months ago. Because I called them, they turned them back on.

And yes, I DO vote for American Idol. I can't stand it when people have stereotypical attitudes towards the hearing impaired. We DO like to watch shows that hearing people watch, y'know. And yes, my hearing aids help me to hear the people singing. It may not be as loud as you may hear it, but I can still enjoy it.

As far as the humorous descriptions of sounds, I don't really see it as all that humorous. I watch Joan of Arcadia, and I saw the "struggle grunts" thing...didn't really think much of it since that's what closed-captioning is. They are SUPPOSED to describe the sounds. And that's what was going on..they were struggling and grunting at the moment.

If anyone has any other questions, let me know.

Are you thinking about Hell's Kitchen? That is live on Fox. Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares is on the BBC. They Bleep out every other word Ramsey says.

Yes, I was referring to Hell's Kitchen...I thought Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares was just a funny nickname for that, after all it does fit ;)

I don't think HK is live though, because the captioning is basically accurate and matches up on time with what the people say, if not coming on screen before they say it like I previously mentioned.

We just replaced one of our 20-year-old TVs with one that comes with closed captioning. My husband is somewhat hard of hearing and finds the cc'ing does make a world of difference for him. And I've come to love it, as it does cut down on a lot of frustration when you're not sure what someone said.

It's also a lot of fun to compare the cc'ing to what's actually said in dramatic shows [some are more accurate than others], and especially when watching the news. There, the captions are way behind the actual speech, and flagrantly inaccurate much of the time. We just ROTFL.

I use CC all the time. It helps when your watching something that is kinda naughty (basically anything on FX) and you don't want your parents to hear all the cursing.

It's also funny to watch it during live events and to see the cappers screw up.

The one thing I hate though is for reality shows that are competitions (Survivor, The Apprentice, Kept) and the results are secret. They CC is always a second or so behind and its hard to keep up with CC and the live tv.