TV on the internet
Internet television allows you to "catch-up" on television programs that you missed on broadcast TV by watching them online via a catch-up video service.
The ABC’s iView remains the only online ‘catch-up’ video service in Australia which carries a significant amount of captioning, with all prime-time programs from ABC1 and ABC2 captioned on iView. This is in contrast to the UK and US, which has seen multiple online players provide levels of captioning ahead of Australia.
In the UK, the BBC’s iPlayer provides captioned access to approximately 80% of its programs, and the ITV Player plans to extend captioning to 70% of programs on its online catch-up service. While the BBC iPlayer launched captions on its catch-up service in 2008, the ABC’s iView began captioning in March 2010.
In the US, captions are available on the online players of NBC, ABC, PBS and FOX, but not CBS, with NBC the first to introduce captions in 2007. The levels of captioning on these players vary, and there has been criticism of how some of them display the captions. They are usually, but not always, available the day after the TV broadcast.
The BBC has announced that an international version of the iPlayer will be launched sometime in 2011.
ABC iView
ABC iView is the ABC’s free online catch-up TV service that allows you to watch ABC programs on-demand on your computer, Playstation 3 or internet TV. Programs are usually available for 14 days after broadcast, with new programs added each day.
iView provides closed captions for all ABC1 and ABC2 primetime shows that are captioned for television broadcast. Programs with closed captioning are identified on a particular program’s information screen under the heading ‘Captions’ that will be ‘Available’, ‘Unavailable’ or ‘Live’ (live captioned).
Programs that have been live captioned at the time of broadcast will have the same captions on iView and may include some spelling mistakes and text somewhat out of sync with the audio.
To turn on closed captions on iView you click the ‘CC’ button at the bottom right of the screen. You will then see text saying ‘Closed captions enabled’. This will become your default setting until you turn closed captions off.
Note that captioning will appear up to two hours after the program becomes available on iView and programs that premiere on iView, if shown in primetime, will be captioned after the original broadcast.
