Determine whether the video input on your television is coming directly from an antenna or from a cable box. If coming from a cable box, find the specific input to your television that requires closed captioning. In the United States, all off-the-air television signals are currently digital television.
Set your TV to display closed captioning. Generally you must review your specific model menu display and change captioning from "off" to one of the options typically marked "CC1." Closed Captioning can be in several languages and thus will have multiple selections.
Set your cable box to generate closed captioning if you still don't observe closed captions being displayed. This may be necessary for digital broadcasts where the captioning information is not transferred to the television set. In that case, the digital box must superimpose the captions to the video image.
Change your cable box to television set connection if necessary. HDMI cables do not carry the captioning signal information. Composite cables can also fail to display captioning. High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) transmits uncompressed data for the best possible audio-visual quality.
Select the captioning option you desire when playing back a DVD. In this case, the captioning information is inserted into the video by the DVD player itself from information recorded on the DVD.