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CEA to Release Updated Captioning Standard
Later this summer, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is expected to release CEA-708-C, Digital Television (DTV) Closed Captioning. It is an update of CEA-708-B, which was in part adopted by the FCC in 2000 when it amended its rules to require closed captioning display capabilities for DTV receivers starting July 1, 2002.
Changes to the standard will include the incorporation of two recommended practices: CEA-CEB8, which offers guidelines for the use and processing of data that is in compliance with EIA/CEA-608-B, Line 21 Data Services, and CEA-CEB10-A, which provides implementation guidance for manufacturers using CEA-708-B. The objective is to provide examples of the usage of commands and functions defined in the standard, while providing clear definitions of terminology without adding any new requirements. A secondary objective is to coordinate among CEA, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers the areas that each group’s standards govern in the creation, transport, and display of digital closed captioning throughout the distribution and delivery chain. That is, the creation of programs, contribution to the network or syndicator, distribution to the local broadcaster, routing through the broadcast plant, and transmission to the home receiver. This activity has been productive and beneficial to all parties.
“The CEA-708-C improvements will aid understanding and should not affect existing encoders and decoders or the manufacturers of these devices. The objective is not to make changes or add new requirements—it is to improve the standard, which in itself would be easier to implement,” says Robert Blanchard, chair of CEA’s DTV closed captioning working group.
Even though new functionality is not being added to the standard, it still offers a number of features not found in CEA’s other closed captioning specification, CEA-608-C, which provides specifications for closed captioning for analog televisions. These features include user-friendly elements that make it easier for consumers to customize closed captions to meet their needs. “The idea is to make the closed captions more readable for the hearing impaired, who possibly are also somewhat visually impaired,” says Warner W. Johnston, co-chair of the CEA working group that produced CEA-608-C under CEA’s television data systems subcommittee, and a member of the DTV closed captioning working group.
Other features outlined in CEA-708-C include multiple language options, so that viewers can read captions in one language and listen to the audio in another language. This is a useful feature for what is believed to be the largest group of closed captioning users: hearing people learning English as a second language.
Blanchard says he hopes more of the closed captioning capabilities offered by CEA-708-C will soon be leveraged by caption providers. “There are certain features such as window colors and borders that have been underutilized and we hope that caption providers will soon embrace the features provided by CEA-708-C.”
Despite the advantages offered by DTV closed captioning, CEA believes there’s still a need for its analog closed captioning standard, CEA-608-C. And even though analog over-the-air broadcasts are set to end in 2009, the organization is still developing updated versions of the standard; it released CEA-608-C last year and expects to release at least one more version in the future.
“Although CEA-708-C includes a method for carriage of CEA-608-C analog captions, it will be a long time before CEA-608-C goes away entirely,” says Johnston. “We are talking on the order of 10 to 20 years before it goes away.”