Closed captioned TV episodes appearing in iTunes

Apple TV has offered closed captioning for many movies for quite some time, and Netflix, which is available through Apple TV, does as well. To enable closed captioning on the Apple TV, go to Settings > Video. There you'll see the option to toggle the service on or off.

I tried this, and it DOES work on movies that support CC....FINALLY

The implementation of subtitles on the Apple TV is horrible, they pop up in a translucent bar that overlays the entire width of the screen and it really detracts from the experience. It's fine on, say, a 2.35:1 movie as the bar is only overlaying the black bar at the bottom of the screen anyway, but on a 1.85:1 it makes it unwatchable for me. I've tried, and I just can't get used to it. Anything that requires subtitles (which for me is foreign language, I have no hearing impairment) gets re-encoded so the subs are burned in to the picture. Annoyingly this usually means the resolution of the subtitles suffers and I get jagged edges on the font, but that's less annoying that the stupid pop up bar.
Sadly, given the aTV gets next to no attention (despite it having the potential to be HUGE) I'm not expecting this fixed anytime soon. Or ever.

Netflix and TV shows are captioned on iPad, iPhone, iPod, and any computer, but captioning does not display on Apple TV despite content saying it does. And yes I have all the captioning boxes selected on the Apple TV...

As a hearing wife of a deaf man, it is frustrating how little streaming content is captioned. Though Netflix on our blue ray device, which is Sony not apple tv, only OPEN CAPTIONED films and TV shows have captioning. So that basically means foreign films are all my husband can watch streaming. Most of the physical DVD's have been captioned by the "content creator". There is still a HUGE disconnect. And what about movie theaters, anyone want to see movies there? Very few available, even in my Los Angeles marketplace.

To run down:

- iTunes on Mac and iOS will playback captions if they are present in the content.
- TV will playback captions for your own content and content bought from the iTunes store, if the captions are present in the content.
- Netflix on Mac will playback captions if they are present in the content.
- Netflix on iOS (iPhone, iPad, TV) will NOT playback captions, even if they are present in the content.

Some Netflix content is captioned, some is not. Netflix claims that they are continuing to add more captioned content over time, but this is difficult to verify, because Netflix doesn't publish statistics of how much captioned content they have. It was very rare to find TV shows on the iTunes store that had captions, but this is starting to change.

All of the captioning push is due to new laws passed by congress last December requiring captions in most online and streaming content, so most of this push into captioning is done to become compliant with the law. It would never have happened otherwise.

Netflix on the AppleTV does not offer subtitles/CC that I've been able to find.

As a result, I only watch with headphones, but it's frustrating that I still wind up missing things due to the lack of captioning.

Speaking as a hearing impaired person, I can say this is what has kept me from buying video from any online source, iTunes, Netflix, or any other. Once subtitles/CC become the norm, I'm all over it.

I'm surprised it has taken this long.

Netflix in Apple TV has subtitles? That's news to me. I know Netflix via web browser does do subtitles, but the Netflix App in Apple TV is missing them last I checked.

As a hearing impaired Mac user, closed captioning is a must. I won't watch content that isn't CC, which is why I haven't bought anything from the iTunes store. If iTunes store content is captioned, I might change my mind.

Some Netflix things have subtitles, but the vast majority do not.