I found this on the net,, but Nothing in Google or Wikipedia.. Need some clarification..

** Quote--  "The available subtitle options is called English SDH (Subtitling for Deaf and Heard of Hearing). SDH involves a distinct colour for each type of dialogue/noise and is the way of the future.

Here's a rundown on how they work:
The subtitles are positioned directly underneath/above a person in order to help identify who was talking.

The following colour schemes are also used:
White - dialogues, each subtitle is placed under the person speaking.
Yellow is used for voice overs (the person speaking is not seen),
*Yellow (preceeded by an asterisk) is used for transmitted voices (telephone, loud speaker).
Red is used for sound effects (ie loud explosions nearby).
Purple is used for the musical score playing in the background.

Turing off the audio for a while, I found that these were a highly effective and innovative method of subtitling and found that it was far easier to follow the film if you were unable to hear than normal subtitles."

Sounds very interesting - I've been aware of "English SDH" but I've not seen any use of different colours in DVD subtitles yet - has anyone here experienced this?  Unquote**

comments anyone on this feature??

when I run a title like this on PowerDVD6 I have the option of playing back both the subtitle and the Closed captioning which then gives me two overlaying subtitles on the frame being played back.

Would this need to be in Feature Requests??  There should also be an option for SDH .. ala tick box.

No, they are not the same. CC are encoded into the video signal (rf) and all TV sets sold in the U.S. must have the ability to decode and display them. CC are not displayed if the signal is connected to the TV by any method other than the antenna connection. (at least on my "profiler system".  I don't remember the exact details, but pretty much all broadcast TV in the U.S. is required to have CC.

SDH is just another "stream" like different audio tracks or other subtitles, and is controlled by the DVD player only. Any TV can display them, since the DVD player is inserting them into the image, no matter what the connection method to the TV.

agreed.., would also be nice to one day see this feature in Invelos..

CC captions need special software either on the TV (happily standard by law in the US), or added in line from the DVD player. One can buy an add-on for under $100 but they are not easy to find even in the US where there is little or no market due to the local TV standard, and most only operate on the yellow composite video input so the video quality is immediately degraded. Many early US DVDs had only the cc captions - NO SUBTITLES - and this led to a lot of confusion as these DVDs frequently were put into use outside the US and of course the captions could not be displayed. Later US DVDs offered both English cc (requiring the software) and regular subtitles, (sometimes not including English), be they for the hearing impaired or not. Users outside the US can only display cc captions if they have a US TV or this add on. I have never come accross a non US TV set that would display them. Cable TV stations outside the US are increasingly using US style captions with different colors too and these can be switched on in the box set up. Australia is an example, but of course not all programs have them and sometimes the broadcaster forgets to switch them on even when they are available. It is all a bit of a muddle but if one knows what to look for and sets up the equipment correctly, hard of hearing people, such as myself, can now do quite well. Blu Ray are happily mostly equipped with subtitles. Yes, it would be nice if standard captions (of a sensible size and design), were universally used but cost cutting and neglect are likely to prevent that! Hope these comments help to clarify the position. Cheers to all the hard of hearing!

Quoting tas314:

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Quoting RHo:

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Actually I would like to see a system where every subtitle gets a language and type attribute. So we could enter e.g. English regular subtitles, German heard of hearing, French trivia, English commentary, French partial subtitles etc..

A similar system should be implemented for audio types as well.

Quite a few (but not all) Anime discs include two English subtitle sets, one with the full translation (for use with the original Japanese track), one with just  on screen signs and sometimes song translation [slates] (for use with the English dub). A few have a third SDH track for the English dub... ADV also use a subtitle track they call "vid notes" for trivia, and cultural notes.

I think the only way to handle all the funky subtitles (remember MST 3000?) would be to change the subtitle screen to work like the audio screen with drop down choices for language in one box and type of subtitle in the second (Subtitle, Slate, SDH, CC, Notes, Novelty...).

Good suggestion, Tom.  That might work.