Did you know there is a difference between the captioning of analog television (608) and captioning of digital television (708)? Comparing the two, there have been many more advances made to 708 captions than 608 captions. Analog captioning has fewer capabilities than the digital television captioning. Analog television captioning is becoming less common as most channels are digital, and people are loving the 708 captioning and want it for every channel.
In order to see 608 captioning, one must have a decoder built into the television or as a separate device, and it is capable of displaying languages such as English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese. When viewing 608 closed captioning, the caption will be in white capital letters within a black box, where 708 captioning has three different text sizes, eight different fonts, 64 colored backgrounds, and many more languages for closed captioning to choose from. Digital television captioning allows many more viewers to watch programs. With closed captioning services, providers can convert 608 closed captioning to 708 closed captioning, but cannot convert 708 closed captioning to 608 closed captioning. This isn’t possible, because there are many more capabilities of the 708 captioning that would not be supported by 608 closed captioning.
Analog televisions with 608 captioning are becoming a thing of the past, and the high-definition and standard-definition digital broadcasts with 708 captioning are making their way to the top. Soon, with the extinction of analog televisions, people will no longer accept the 608 captioning converted to 708 captioning. Viewers will notice a difference between the 708 captioning and the 608 conversion and will want them all to be 708 close captioning. Welcome to the era where everyone depends on digital.