Closed captioning not working properly

Hello Lewis. We want you enjoy your programming plenty including the closed caption for you to understanding on all your TVs, and we apologize for the time have taken. We want to help you to get out of this issue. We notice you have been working with agent over the phone and troubleshooting steps that you have done, to find the root cause and the best solution I will contact you by PM to request your account information. Gloria, DIRECTV Community Specialist

Hello, I am having the same issue since we replaced our old box. Captioning is spotty or non-existent and this includes any programs that we record. Very frustrating because I am hearing-impaired and I miss so much of the conversations that make the shows worth watching. I have resorted to streaming via Roku to get the full experience lacking on my DirecTV box. If this continues, I plan to drop some channels by changing to the 'basic' package and stream exclusively.

I hope this helps. We finally discovered that it was the DirecTv DVR box that was the problem. We tried EVERYTHING, and nothing worked until I finally got DirecTv to agree that it might be the DVR. After that was replaced, close captioning worked fine. There were still some isolated instances where it didn't work perfectly, but the new box resolved the majority of the problem. If you want to know what is even better, we just switched to DISH because DirecTv just priced us out of everything. Their close captioning is excellent.

Hi Lewis. Thanks for your insights. We’re happy you've found a TV service that works so well for you. If your needs change, we hope you consider DIRECTV for your entertainment services in the future. Kenneth, DIRECTV Community Specialist

It is the content providers that add the CC, not the TV providers like DTV.

In our case, it was the DirecTv DVR that was the problem. Those close captions that were coming through were only partial, like every other sentence. The new box pretty much resolved all those issues.

Next time just do a rest of the box. That fixes it 95% of the time. My closed captioning acts up sometimes and when I do a rest it goes back to normal. But the times it does not get fixed it what's being sent to Direct TV from the channel provider. Either way a lot of people are having issues and DIrect TV needs to fix this.

Oh yes, we tried reset too, more than once! Didn't realize so many others have this issue too....

@lewisdm Yes it's an issue DTV needs to fix.  You said a new box fixed your issue ?

I’m on my 3rd box! This only happened to me after having installed that demonic Gemini box. After taking it off (both install & removal done by DirecTv) has this started happening. Live tv (like news) works brilliantly. Even nightly recorded news plays back fine. The picture is also fine on both of those. Anything else? No good. Shows recorded (series or movie) show about half to very sporadic captions. On demand? Barely show any captions. They usually are just randomly flashing words-so far apart that you forget there’s supposed to be captions. To me, this location (the main DVR) still thinks that awful Gemini streaming box is still on here somehow. I think that because every show from my DVR list pauses with that spinning dots circle before playing. The live tv shows do not. Also, it takes a few minutes for the picture to become totally clear. 

I do resets, and everything works for maybe a day. If I stick with regular recordings, it may last longer. As soon as I play an on demand recording? Off it goes, and from then on, the rest don’t work either. It’s absolutely maddening!!! Like the others, I need captioning because of hearing loss. And like the others, it only happens at this location-my other 2 tvs are fine!!!  They’ve got to do something about this. I’ve had DirecTV since 2004, and am at my wits end! I can’t imagine changing to dish. I have 2 houses, both in areas where we lose power because of storms-which is why cable tv isn’t an option. Help!!!!

I noticed that after i do a reset it works but then the close captioning starts acting up 2-3 days later. Words are misspelled, missing, poor grammar and such. This has to be an issue on DTV's end since so many of us are having issues with it.

DTV has nothing to do with CC except to display it, while it may display incorrectly at times. It is the content providers that add it to their programs during production.  Live programs have people listening and typing it in.  

DTV should be telling the networks that the CC is incorrect. It has everything to do with them. That's the problem right there acting like it's not their problem.

Shannon02

the CC is simply not working on the main box—the other 2 tvs in the house are fine! It’s DirecTVs coding of that location or something! I can pause a show on which it’s not working, go in the other room, open the show, rewind it, and the captioning that was just a mess on the main box is perfectly fine on the mini locations tv. It’s NOT the provider!