# CEA608 Caption support?

**URL:** <https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183>\
**Category:** Archived\
**Tags:** roku-developer-program\
**Created:** [August 17, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183 "2012-08-17T14:17:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jaycharles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jaycharles](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/jaycharles)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183/1 "2012-08-17T14:17:45Z")

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My HLS server implementation supports injection of SEI data for CEA608 captions, which work fine on Quicktime and VLC.

Is there a brightscript API for reading and displaying CC1 captions in Roku?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![TheEndless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@TheEndless](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/TheEndless)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 2:38pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183/2 "2012-08-17T14:38:24Z")

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Currently, only SRT files are supported for captions. Roku is “planning to support closed captioning via SMPTE TimeText in a coming software update” but there’s no ETA on that yet.

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**Author:** ![jaycharles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@jaycharles](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/jaycharles)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 2:49pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183/3 "2012-08-17T14:49:41Z")

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Hmm… sorry to hear that. Seems the rest of the industry is working with CEA608 CC1 via SEI for HLS. Since I’m dealing with live streams, Roku may be a no-go for captioned streams in my use case.

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**Author:** ![TheEndless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@TheEndless](https://forum.developer.roku.com/u/TheEndless)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://forum.developer.roku.com/t/cea608-caption-support/2183/4 "2012-08-17T15:17:38Z")

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As I understand it, SMPTE is the industry standard for broadcast captions. Since most live streams are produced for broadcast (probably too general of a statement), SMPTE makes a lot of sense, as it doesn’t require any extra encoding. For what it’s worth, I believe Apple already support SMPTE for HLS.

Either way, here’s the post with the text I quoted in my previous response: [viewtopic.php?f=34&t=51113&p=346903#p346903](http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=51113&p=346903#p346903)  
RokuPatrick may be able to give you more details, if necessary.