What's the difference between close caption and subtitle

[james]

Most TVs support close caption and seems DVDs have it. Can SVCD contain close caption? If true, I really do not need to have subtitles.

[saber]

I second the motion. My player doesn´t displays svcd subtitles.
Somebody knows if that (the CC trick) can be done?

[Kedirekin]

As I understand it, true close-captions are encoded in one of the scan lines in the verticle blanking interval of broadcast television.

Also, as I understand it, SVCDs only compress the visible portion of the picture (that's why NTSC SVCDs have 480 lines, instead of the full 525 scan lines in the NTSC broadcast spec).

So I don't think it is possible to put true closed captions on an SVCD.

I don't know if there is anything special in the DVD spec that allows closed captions to be 'inserted' back into the signal to the television, so I can't discount it. However, I have seen DVDs with a subtitle stream for the hearing impaired, which kind of implies that DVDs can't do true closed captions. James, simple question - what makes you think DVDs have closed captions?

[Kedirekin]

This looks like a good site for info on closed captions.

http://www.robson.org/capfaq/

It does say that DVDs can support closed captions using something called 'user bits'. It doesn't explain how this works.

Interestingly, there is a limitation on closed captions to less than 60 charaters per second. I think some of the subtitle streams I've seen would violate this in some scenes.