How to disable subtitles in Tata Sky HD

Renegade · April 6, 2013, 3:50pm

Ok so I have been thinking of asking this for months now. How do I disable the subtitles in Tata Sky HD set top box.

They are annoying and distracting. I don’t know why but half the time I end up focusing on those instead of the picture and have to make a conscious effort to ignore those. Completely ruins the pleasure of watching Star World or Star Movies. Its much convenient (and time consuming) to download something off the torrent and watch that instead.

logistopath · April 6, 2013, 4:04pm

Simple answer. You can’t. I believe there was a discussion about this in GT some time ago, and I had asked a similar question. It is high time the channels start giving an option to choose subtitles.

Renegade · April 6, 2013, 4:28pm

Well thats too bad. How hard can it be for them to provide this option. So is it the same with other DTH providers too?

fragpic · April 6, 2013, 4:36pm

Subtitles are present in the broadcast feed itself, so it is impossible to remove them.

Rahul1 · April 6, 2013, 4:40pm

Yes, poor hardcoded with subs broadcast. I find it annoying. But unfortunately there is no other way.

I am sure implementing this feature is not a big deal.

Raghav_K · April 7, 2013, 3:14am

I too was searching for a way to disable them…

axeman · April 7, 2013, 4:29am

reliance hd box allows you to select language of subs or completely delete them as well. the subs show up ONLY if you have set a default language for the subs, else you need to manually choose them. similar to selection of language.

fragpic · April 7, 2013, 4:32am

^^^^
I have a reliance HD dvr,but I have no option to disable the subtitles.
how did you get it??

axeman · April 7, 2013, 4:45am

main menu - settings - place where you need to enter a 4 digit pin - and there is an option there. dont have the box now.

6pack · April 7, 2013, 7:50am

its hard coded into video stream by each channel and i think its there for hearing impaired people.

agantuk · April 7, 2013, 8:12am

^ It also helps in cases where the TV volume can’t be raised, or when people have difficulty in following the dialogues. However there should be an option to turn it off for people who don’t require it

Ethan_Hunt · April 7, 2013, 8:30am

It’s not just Tata Sky, but other providers have a similar situation. I’m using the standard In-Digital set-top box and almost every US TV channels airing movies and TV shows have hard-coded subtitles in them. It was present right from the time when we had standard cable transmission.

6pack · April 7, 2013, 9:05am

maybe there are no set standards for turning on or off such closed captions or subtitles.
Source: Closed captioning - Wikipedia

Originally, CC information was included in the picture (“line 21”), but there is no equivalent capability in the HDTV 720p/1080i interconnects between the display and a “source”. A “source”, in this case, can be a DVD player or a terrestrial or cable digital television receiver. When CC information is encoded in the MPEG-2 data stream, only the device that decodes the MPEG-2 data (a source) has access to the closed caption information; there is no standard for transmitting the CC information to a display monitor separately. Thus, if there is CC information, the source device needs to overlay the CC information on the picture prior to transmitting to the display over the interconnect.

Many source devices do not have the ability to overlay CC information, for controlling the CC overlay can be complicated. For example, the Motorola DCT-5xxx and -6xxx cable set-top receivers have the ability to decode CC information located on the MPEG-2 stream and overlay it on the picture, but turning CC on and off requires turning off the unit and going into a special setup menu (it is not on the standard configuration menu and it cannot be controlled using the remote). Historically, DVD players, VCRs and set-top tuners did not need to do this overlaying since they simply passed this information on to the TV, and they are not mandated to perform this overlaying.
Many modern digital television receivers can be directly connected to cables, but often cannot receive scrambled channels that the user is paying for. Thus, the lack of a standard way of sending CC information between components, along with the lack of a mandate to add this information to a picture, results in CC being unavailable to many hard-of-hearing and deaf users.