Deaf People Screwed By Henson/columbia... Again

[WOMAN! WOMAN!]

ARGH! This is freakin' ridiculous. After Scarecroe said the Peter Sellers and Harry Bellefonte Columbia DVDs had the closed captioning logo, I drove quite a ways to a Best Buy. Scarecroe's right, the logo IS on there. I got all excited (again), bought them(again), brought them home and got jazzed for a Muppet night (again), and (again)... no captioning. I don't believe this. Bad enough that the online promises of captioning for Vols 1 and 2 were false, but this time it's actually on the BOX, and still nothing!

Columbia Tri-Star, its partner company Sony Pictures and possibly Henson Entertainment obviously do not give a flying fig about their customers. I've sent e-mails to every CEO I can find (and finding the e-mail addresses is extremely hard. I don't even know if my notes will actually get there). If I get no reply like before, that's it. I'm finished with this. Fooled me once, and shame on them. Fooled me twice, and never again.

 

[Janice & Mokey's Man]

I'm really sorry you're havin' to go through all o' this...this is a harsh injustice for the deaf and hard-of-hearing!!



I sure hope your messages get through!

 

[MissCandice]

Wait a sec,it said right on the box that there was closed captioning and it wasn't there? How about contacting the Better Business Bureau and complaining of false advertising? That is not cool!

 

[Luke]

Yeah because they advertised it on the disc they might be able to encode it onto the next run and give you that - i'd email the main Columbia address and CC it to Henson.

 

[Super Scooter]

Hmmm. Often times on those DVDs, the Captioning doesn't come from the TV. It comes from the disc. Have you checked the options on the DVD? Perhaps there's a button you can click on in there that will bring up the captioning.

Well, that's the way it is on most of my DVDs.

 

[Zack the Dog]

What are the perposes to make DVD's with nothing on them? they are not going to make money if people do not buy them.

Every dvd SHOULD maditroy have Captioning, widescreen ex, that should be the main perpose of putting it on dvd, not just slapping the VHS on a disk like someone made it in there garage or basement, then with the case saying that it dose have captioning and it doesn't? how wrong it that! I even enjoy the captioning, it clears up somethings if they are kind of hard to hear or your not sure what a word is in a song or something, i think it should be in a few different languages too.

Zack,

 

[WOMAN! WOMAN!]

Originally posted by MissCandice
Wait a sec,it said right on the box that there was closed captioning and it wasn't there? How about contacting the Better Business Bureau and complaining of false advertising? That is not cool!

Yup, the box says it's captioned, but it's not. That's a good idea about the Better Business Bureau. I'll try that.

Super Scooter, you mean subtitling, which is similar to TV captioning but is programmed on the disc. No, the DVDs aren't subtitled either.

Luke, do you know the main Columbia address? I looked all over for it, but couldn't find a Columbia site -- it always refers to the Sony site. My emails to Sony's execs all bounced back.

HOWEVER, the Henson company did reply! Here's what they said.
---------------------
Dear Andrea,

We have attempted to deal with this closed caption decision by Columbia TriStar but with little response.
Also, we have had this complaint from others and have asked that they contact Columbia TriStar. Perhaps if they heard from you it would help. Their Customer Service number is: (800) 860-2878 or (310) 244-6804.

-------------------------------------
Yay, Henson! I feel a little better about it now. I'm going to ask my husband to call.

 

[frogboy4]

I will call too. That's the worst kind of false advertising. Henson is probably livid. It could have been a slip up in the graphics dept, but if it says captioned, it should be. I don't see how anything isn't captioned these days.

This issue is kind of personal to me too because my grandparents on my mother's side were both hearing impaired all their lives. I remember them sitting next to each other in their reclinders and watching 2 different TVs with the caption on. My grandather did a lot of work for the deaf community. They were really special people.

Anyway, I remember HBO being captioned all the way back in the 80s. I know that because they were the only people I knew that had cable and I'd watch Fraggle Rock over at their house way back then.

So either Columbia is cheap, or ignorant. I hope this gets cleared up soon.

 

[ZootandDingo]

Originally posted by WOMAN! WOMAN!
Columbia Tri-Star, its partner company Sony Pictures and possibly Henson Entertainment obviously do not give a flying fig about their customers.

I'm pretty sure it's just Sony's general sloppiness. The quality in their home video releases has really dropped in the last decade or so, which is odd because they were such a pioneer in the medium. But still I dare anyone to watch the pan&scan version of "Multiplicity" without getting a migraine.