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 Post subject: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 15:44 
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Hi all, happy new year!

I just got my first ld player
Pioneer ldr-c5 without manual. How do I turn on subtitles?

Sorry for dumb question, I can't find the answer...
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 16:28 
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Hi,

I dont know your Pioneer player - are you sure that is the correct product number ?

answering your questioin, there 3 types of subtitles possible :

CC (NTSC only US and JP), I see you are from Europe, TVsets today in EU dont support CC, therefore you need something like a MYCAP Junior TV Closed Caption Decoder Adapter, you can still find those, this is to be placed between video output of LD player and input of TV.

LD-G (NTSC JP only), if you dont have a JP player which support LD-G, you need a external device like Pioneer LG-1, this has video in/out and requires digital sound input from LD player

TELETEXT (PAL only - very limited used on LD's), this can be directly accessed on most EU TV sets if you connect your LD player directly to your TV (dont use a scaler as it removes VBI TXT info)

As I dont know your set-up, most likely you are have to look for an external CC decoder.

Br, Edwin
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 16:54 
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LD is not DVD. Closed Captions, Tetetext, and CG+G are the various ways to have subtitles with LD but you’re not guaranteed to have any of these, especially in Europe.

Most major US discs (so, many thousands) will have Closed Captions which will more or less require American gear to decode but that’s going to be the largest overall pool of discs with subtitles...in English...for movies already in English. If you want them in another language (the film or the subtitles) then that is a lot less common, sadly. (There are a lot of European movies I’d like to buy Japanese editions of but they only have burned in subtitles in Japanese so it’s sort of pointless...). American editions of foreign movies on LD usually have burned in subs that in some cases look better than any of the subs you can get now, such as anything Animeigo ever did. Burned in subs *usually* look much better than TT/CC/LD+G.

Good luck!
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 16:58 
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Just wondering if the OPs LD player is actually a CLD-R5 Japanese market player?
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 17:21 
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Oops, midel is lcd-R5 seems to be japanese model. Fat fingers...
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 01 Jan 2021, 19:50 
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Does it matter? CC is a TV thing, LD+G is useless. If it’s JDM it won’t do teletext. The player doesn’t really matter in most cases.

So you want a CC decoder, an American TV, or a teletext device (sorry, I actually don’t know how TT works...).
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 19 Jan 2021, 23:08 
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I think even modern TVs sold in Europe have Teletext decoders in them, though I haven't bought a TV in a while (I still haven't gone 4K!) so I could be wrong. To use teletext subtitles, press the "text" button on the remote (if you don't have a text button on your remote, hit the subtitle button and select teletext). If you just see a mostly black screen with coloured bars at the bottom and a few numbers dotted about it's almost certain that the disc doesn't have teletext. If you do see an index screen, you would then type the page number for the subtitles - traditionally in the UK the page was 888 but LaserDiscs may use different pages; for instance my Jurassic Park special edition UK boxset has teletext subtitles on page 168. However, very few PAL LaserDiscs bothered with teletext subtitles (which is a real shame; my suspicion is because unlike closed captions, Teletext requires more bandwidth than VHS has, so even though LaserDisc can carry it since they weren't bothering for VHS they didn't bother for LaserDisc either); so the majority of PAL releases contain no subtitle data at all. In theory you can get a Teletext decoder if your TV doesn't support it, but in practice I don't think there are all too many of them in existence so good luck finding one.

Here is a screenshot of the index screen:

Image

And here is an example of teletext subtitles in action (note that each speaker has a different text colour; this is a common convention in areas that use Teletext subtitles. Though oddly the font size used on this disc seems to be the standard size; subtitles on TV broadcasts in the UK would typically use the double height font for extra readability so I don't quite know why they haven't done so here):

Image

One nice thing about most European TVs having built-in Teletext decoders is that the TV will render the Teletext in the same place no matter what you do with the picture. So when I enable the zoom function on my TV this happens:

Image

For NTSC discs, being in the UK and liking subtitles, I decided to buy a closed caption decoder. I actually was pleasantly surprised at how straightforward this was for my personal setup. I did a bit of searching on eBay and soon discovered the Contemporary Research VCC. It's a very basic closed captions decoder but it's all I really needed. The main important feature is it takes composite video in and provides composite video out (albeit with BNC connectors as often seen with professional equipment, so you'll need to have BNC to RCA adaptors). I notice there's the very similar VSCC model on eBay right now for very good prices if you want one (the only difference is in addition to the composite output the VSCC also has S-Video output; I've no idea how good its comb filter is). I wasn't really sure what to expect when I bought it but in most respects I was reasonably pleasantly surprised. I rewired my setup to go via the closed captions decoder; this also meant getting rid of the big ugly SCART cable I was previously using. At one point I connected up both at once so I could flick between the two for a side by side comparison; I could notice no difference in picture quality whatsoever going direct vs via the decoder. It also passes things like PAL signals through without alteration. However it's worth noting that when powered off it doesn't passively pass video through, so if you want it to be a permanent fixture in your system you'll need to keep it powered on all the time. It has a common barrel plug connector for DC power (12V centre positive drawing 100mA max) so you should be able to find an AC adaptor without difficulty, though I'm currently using a step-down transformer with the supplied 120V wall wart because I'm too lazy to go searching for one through my house for the right 230V power brick.

Anyway, most later American titles will have closed captions, as this was well-established in the home video world by then. Some Japanese releases have them too, but I'm not sure how prevalent this is (I don't have too many Japanese releases).

Here's a screenshot of my American copy of the Jurassic Park special edition boxset which has Closed Captions, running through my decoder:

Image

You'll notice it looks like everyone is shouting. This is because for some unfathomable reason, the usual standard with closed captions is for all dialogue to be in ALL CAPS. Descriptions of non-speech sounds are in mixed case. I've no idea why they chose to do this as it makes dialogue (the main thing people are going to be reading) much more painful to read, but there you go... You'll also notice there's no nice colouring for who is speaking (this is simply because the Closed Captions standard does not support this, I believe), but on this disc at least they seem to be making an effort to position the captions appropriately.

One significant issue with using an external decoder is it doesn't always mix well with widescreen releases. Here's what I get if I zoom the picture on my TV:

Image

Fortunately my TV allows me to reposition the zoomed picture. So I can shift it up a little to reveal most of the captions without putting any real picture off the screen, which is fine for titles that mostly place the captions on the bottom, but if they start getting adventurous putting them on both the bottom and top there's no way I can see all the captions besides zooming back out. Anyway the shifted picture looks like this:

Image

If you use a widescreen TV but it doesn't let you shift the picture in zoom mode, then you might want to consider trying to find a closed captions decoder that lets you adjust the drawable area (good luck with that, I don't know if such a thing exists!)

As for LD-G, I'm afraid that I know very little. I don't have too many Japanese releases and even fewer have LD-G so for me it just isn't worth the cost of a decoder right now.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 20 Jan 2021, 00:06 
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It’s true that there are JP titles with CC but they are extremely rare. I can only think of three, all of which are big anime boxes more or less designed for export. Memories, Tenchi Muyo In Love, and Ghost in the Shell.

LD+G was more common, usually used on later Hollywood movies. Sometimes you get both CC and LD+G and they look almost the same.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 20 Jan 2021, 00:41 
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signofzeta wrote:
It’s true that there are JP titles with CC but they are extremely rare. I can only think of three, all of which are big anime boxes more or less designed for export. Memories, Tenchi Muyo In Love, and Ghost in the Shell.

LG+G was more common, usually used on later Hollywood movies. Sometimes you get both CC and LD+G and they look almost the same.

Right, that makes sense. I happen to own the Ghost in the Shell release as one of the few Japanese titles I have which is probably biasing my expectations!
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 02 Sep 2022, 19:10 
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Just thought I'd mention, I recently upgraded my TV to a Sony A95K. It has a composite video input (albeit behind an irritating 3.5mm jack plug that I had to find the right adaptor for) and will decode teletext — confirmed with my PAL Jurassic Park release. It also allows for repositioning the image so I can use it with my closed captions decoder, but obviously it was too much to ask for the TV to be able to decode closed captions natively!
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 02 Sep 2022, 19:30 
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Interesting to know, thanks. I nearly bought that new Sony OLED recently but ended up buying an LG C1 with a C2 EVO panel instead. It's a shame to lose the ability to decode Teletext on a couple of my discs but CC should work fine I hope.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 05 Sep 2022, 07:28 
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signofzeta wrote:
It’s true that there are JP titles with CC but they are extremely rare. LD+G was more common, usually used on later Hollywood movies. Sometimes you get both CC and LD+G and they look almost the same.


I would say "not that rare".

Japan LD + CC = > 304 releases
Japan LD + CC/LD-G => 578 releases

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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 06 Sep 2022, 05:22 
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Closed captions actually can be in color and oddly were used more in their early years- as seen here:



Several Mitsubishi demo laserdiscs have interesting uses of caption and the corresponding Text channels which were only used in the 80s on the ABC network to list all upcoming captioned shows, as not everything was required to be at the time.

The trend with closed captioning now (whose analog form is only used now on standard DVDs) is to properly use lower-case lettering rather than all caps. The reasoning before was not all closed caption decoders could show lower-case letters, nor colors.

Wish I knew where to get an external UK Teletext decoder in the US.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 07 Sep 2022, 10:31 
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8traxrule wrote:
Wish I knew where to get an external UK Teletext decoder in the US.

.... or anywhere. Teletext support in TVs is doubtless going to cease very soon, so an external decoder would be nice. I keep finding ebay listings for them, but they invariably turn out to be an internal tv component, or even just the individual chip.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 07 Sep 2022, 11:57 
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nextwednesday wrote:
(...) so an external decoder would be nice.


So far I've seen a NEC model for Europe New Zealand (and Australia): NEC TX-101NZ

Other Japanese models designed for Japan probably only process TELETEXT over NTSC?

https://www.lddb.com/device/caption

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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 07 Sep 2022, 23:17 
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admin wrote:
nextwednesday wrote:
(...) so an external decoder would be nice.


So far I've seen a NEC model for Europe: NEC TX-101NZ

Other Japanese models designed for Japan probably only process TELETEXT over NTSC?

https://www.lddb.com/device/caption

Julien

The TX-101NZ is also the only one I'd identified. It's mono, but I guess the stereo sound can just bypass the unit (if no serious delay introduced) or to an amp.

My concern would be how to control it. For instance, in the example above in this thread, one needs to navigate to teletext page 168 for the English subtitles.
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 08 Sep 2022, 06:07 
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nextwednesday wrote:
My concern would be how to control it. For instance, in the example above in this thread, one needs to navigate to teletext page 168 for the English subtitles.


Remote required I presume...

Image

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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 09 Sep 2022, 12:26 
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Rather than hunting for a specific teletext decoder, it occurred to me that perhaps general purpose set-top receivers could be used as a teletext decoder.

For instance, a PVR such as my Sony RDR-HXD890. It is certainly capable of decoding teletext from an analogue broadcast (in the manual, page 51), so I thought I'd try it with the LD player connected to the Line 1 input (via scart, which includes the composite signal). I used one of the great Pioneer Cinema LDs with teletext subtitles in sundry languages.

Result
1. With the PVR turned off, the signal from the LD player passes through the PVR and on demand my tv displays the teletext information perfectly. As expected. Just like connecting the LD player to the tv directly.
2. With the PVR turned on and Line 1 selected, the signal (video and audio) from the LD player is displayed perfectly (and can be recorded on the hard drive), but the Teletext button on the PVR does nothing. The teletext button on the TV looks for Teletext information but finds none.

So... damn. I guess as soon as the PVR is turned on, the input is converted to the digital domain ready for recording or pumping out through the HDMI output, and this involves stripping off the VBI.

Anyone else tried this with other set top receivers with a composite input?
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 Post subject: Re: Subtitles help
PostPosted: 09 Sep 2022, 12:41 
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I wonder how hard it would be to support captions/teletext in a retro video game scaler. Mike Chi, the Retrotink guy gets a lot of requests as it is but he might be willing to take a look as I believe he's already implemented a TBC for VHS in one of his devices.
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