Subtitles / Closed Captioning: How well does it work?

[a_team]

Hi Everyone:

I have a family member that's considering buying a Boxee unit but was wondering how well the Subtitle & Close Captioning works since this is an important feature for them.

I'm away from town (& my Boxee Box) for a bunch of days but I'd like to give a prompt reply.

I'm aware that for downloaded tv/movie content that there's an open-source subtitle search application that can download subtitles. - How well does this work?

How's the Web-TV Sources for Subtitles and CC? (CBC, CTV, Global, Discovery, History, Etc...? - I'm in Canada)

Any Feedback? Personal Experiences? Pro's / Cons?

Anything is appreciated - I'd like to give an experienced opinion, rather than my 10 seconds worth of playing around.

Thank you kindly,



Al

[Zak.Karachiwala]

We use them all the time to watch tv shows when the kids are asleep. Occasionally opensubtitles is down so it does not work and also sometimes a proper match is not found (wrong episode or series).

As long as you do not rename your files you should be fine. You normally need to wait a day or so for the subtitles to appear and sometimes they are not exact but close enough.

[TheTrooper]

Opensubtitle:
+ Find subtitles in multiple languages for well known movies.
+ fast.


- Not easy to find for not so know movies.
- not always synced, especially on older divx movie downloads, but this could be because there are so many different divx releases?
- Not so many titles with scandinavian languages.
- Not always online.

[TheTrooper]

We use them all the time to watch tv shows when the kids are asleep. Occasionally opensubtitles is down so it does not work and also sometimes a proper match is not found (wrong episode or series).

As long as you do not rename your files you should be fine. You normally need to wait a day or so for the subtitles to appear and sometimes they are not exact but close enough.

What do you meen with not change the name of the file?
Does open subtitle identify subtile based on the release of the the show or movie?

[haveringcottage]

i've used it 10 times.

it worked flawlessly 8 times.

it couldnt find any subs 1 time

it was pooly synced 1 time.

Go figure.

[jdeiro]

The subtitles in itself work flawlessly, but I don't actually like using the subs download functionality.

I prefer to download my SRT's from other sources (addic7ed, for most TV Shows and legendas.tv for movies, as I'm brazilian), as opensubtitles is not very reliable.

Cheers!

[a_team]

Thank you for all your feedback! This is great!

It's reassuring to hear that it works quite well with downloaded file content.

How does it work with a Web-TV episode that streams from a TV broadcasters website?

An example would be streaming a Family Guy episode from a tv broadcaster like NBC? Can you search and download the subtitles, does it come with most streams, or are you SOL for this?

[darcilicious]

Can you search and download the subtitles, does it come with most streams, or are you SOL for this?

Unless it's included with the stream from the website/network, there are no subtitles (that is, external subtitles will not work with streamed content from network's websites).

[a_team]

Thank you Darci! You're the best!

Thanks for letting me know...