U4 Subtitles

[desm]

We depend fairly heavily on subtitles because my wife has hearing problems. Our new U4 plays subtitles fine from live TV but is near useless on recorded content. At first I thought it was just on .ts files transferred from our old wiz but it appears to be the same on all recorded programs. If I use the Text button and 801 you get large clunky subtitles that are out of sync, if I use the Subtitle button I get a message about subtitles being sourced from Teletext 801. If I do get the subtitles to work they disappear for no apparent reason. Help!!

[Grumpy_Geoff]

Firmware revision?

[peteru]

Clearly too old. Online or USB update to 20180216 will fix it.

[desm]

According to the software update program, the software is up to date.

[peteru]

According to the software update program, the software is up to date.

Please post the screenshot of the version information screen. Unless you are on the beta feed and updated earlier today, it's unlikely you are up to date.

[desm]

Having posted the above about software I notice that the Revision No on the screen is 20180202. Is this the latest? From the numbers it would seem it isn't.

[desm]

Screenshot attached.

[peteru]

Right. Best bet is to head over to the Beta section of the forum and download the 17.5 20180216 USB image.

Before you use the USB image to update, check here.

[desm]

Thanks for the suggestion peter, I'll give it a try.

[desm]

I assume that running the update will delete timers and settings, will it also delete recordings?

[MrQuade]

I assume that running the update will delete timers and settings, will it also delete recordings?

No, If you perform a settings backup prior to the update, then you just choose the "restore settings" option on the initial setup wizard and everything will be restored properly.

Even if you choose not to restore your settings, your recordings will always be safe.

[Grumpy_Geoff]

I assume that running the update will delete timers and settings, will it also delete recordings?

No, If you perform a settings backup prior to the update, then you just choose the "restore settings" option on the initial setup wizard and everything will be restored properly.
...

Well, that really depends on whether desm has to set up from scratch or not - in other words does he have the buggered initial config or not. desm needs to pay attention to that "check here" link that peteru posted.

[prl]

Clearly too old. Online or USB update to 20180216 will fix it.

That's what I confirmed the problem on.

[desm]

I downloaded the zip file as suggested, unzipped it and saved it to a USB stick, however when I plug it in and rebootusing the rear switch nothing happens it just reboots normally. Am I doing something wrong?

[prl]

I thought I'd posted this this afternoon, but obviously not. U4, Version/Revision 20180216 / 20180216.

We depend fairly heavily on subtitles because my wife has hearing problems. Our new U4 plays subtitles fine from live TV but is near useless on recorded content. At first I thought it was just on .ts files transferred from our old wiz but it appears to be the same on all recorded programs. If I use the Text button and 801 you get large clunky subtitles that are out of sync, if I use the Subtitle button I get a message about subtitles being sourced from Teletext 801. If I do get the subtitles to work they disappear for no apparent reason. Help!!

Hmmm. On my test U4, I just tried recording 5 minutes of a program that I'd checked was being broadcast with subtitled, and the subtitles didn't start displaying until about 40sec after I'd enabled them.

Once they started displaying, if I skipped back to the part of the recording where they were enabled but not displaying, they displayed, and didn't stop for the length of the recording, but that was only a relatively short time, so it doesn't really contradict what you said about subtitles stopping being displayed by themselves

So it seems there's something in the firmware that's holding back when subtitles start displaying after they've been enabled on a recording playback.
That seems to be the case even if the subtitles had been displaying on the recording and then disabled and re-enabled.

Remember, too, that not all programs are subtitled, but given that you're dependent on them, then you probably know that already. Programs that aren't subtitled will still have the 801 teletext stream, but it won't have anything in it.

[prl]

I downloaded the zip file as suggested, unzipped it and saved it to a USB stick, however when I plug it in and rebootusing the rear switch nothing happens it just reboots normally. Am I doing something wrong?

The USB stick must be formatted as FAT32. Is it?

[desm]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, they're greatly appreciated. I'll experiment further during the day.
Strangely enough subtitles appear to be working this morning. It seems to help if I have subtitles turned on then go to text and punch in 801 then the subtitles appear behind the text, I can then turn off the text and the subtitles are fine???? Obviously more experimentation required,I'llkeepyou posted. Thanks again.

[prl]

Sounds like a useful workaround, but it shouldn't be necessary.

[peteru]

I don't understand the problem. To use subtitles, you press the SUBTITLE button. It then takes a number of seconds for subtitles to appear because they are normally sent a long way ahead in the stream. If you seek back in the stream, the pipelines are cleared and you get subtitles a bit sooner. After that the subtitles stay correctly in sync.

If you are using old U4 firmware, the subtitles will play correctly for a minute or less, then start running really fast and eventually end up running ahead of video.

I don't understand why you are using teletext. In fact I don't understand what the problem is. I think the best course of action is for desm to get onto 17.5 20180216 as suggested and then report back. If the issues are not fixed, then I will require a more detailed bug report.

[prl]

I don't understand the problem. To use subtitles, you press the SUBTITLE button. It then takes a number of seconds for subtitles to appear . ...

But on the U4 this took abut 40 seconds in my testing, which IMO is excessive, and the delay is typically much shorter on the T series models.

[peteru]

But on the U4 this took abut 40 seconds in my testing, which IMO is excessive, and the delay is typically much shorter on the T series models.

This is a side effect of the size of the buffering and rendering pipelines on the U4. The U4 gobbles up a lot more data upfront so that it can keep the decoders fed, even with high bitrate 4k HDR content. In order for the subtitles to start sooner, one would have to completely flush the pipeline and restart playback, which equals to an interruption to viewing whenever you turn subtitles on. The workaround is to skip back with left arrow as soon as you enable subtitles. That will flush the buffers and you'll get subtitles as soon as they are parsed from the stream. It's not possible to display them any sooner than that. In general the broadcaster will embed the subtitles into the stream before they are needed, sometimes seconds ahead of time.

However, your test results do not appear to exactly line up with what desm came here to complain about. The issue description and subsequent details that desm provided are too vague to be certain of what the issue is, but I suspect it's the old subtitle bug that I fixed a while ago. Let's wait until desm updates to 17.5 20180216 or later and reports back. If there are any issues present, we can take it from there, assuming we can get a good bug report with enough detail.

[prl]

I think that an ~40 sec delay in starting subtitles is an issue in itself. If nothing can be done about it, than I guess that's it, but I don't think it's what people would expect.

Is it possible to always decode the Teletext stream and simply switch its display on and off?

[peteru]

In theory, there are a few ways of addressing this, but none of them appear simple enough. All this code is at the enigma2/gstreamer level, so if you are interested in taking a look, you should be able to experiment. Start by looking at enableSubtitles and newSubtitlePage in lib/service/servicedvb.cpp.

[desm]

Hi everyone and thanks for your input.
I finally got a chance to install the updated 17.5 20180216 firmware which does appear to have solved the problem as suggested, I guess only time will tell for certain but it all looks good at this stage.
The 40 second or so delay is disappointing but we can live with that!
Thanks again to every one who offered suggestions.

[Andrew-L]

Hi everyone and thanks for your input.
I finally got a chance to install the updated 17.5 20180216 firmware which does appear to have solved the problem as suggested, I guess only time will tell for certain but it all looks good at this stage.
The 40 second or so delay is disappointing but we can live with that!
Thanks again to every one who offered suggestions.

Firstly I would like to say that the 40 second delay is hardly acceptable. How would customers go with the sound missing for 40 seconds, I suspect not very well.

The subtitles are still not working reliably.

I believe that software Version 17.5 Rev 180202 fixed the subtitles that were getting out of sync as reported by me here http://beyonwiz.com.au/forum/viewtopic. ... 81#p161276

Soon after the release of 180202 I noticed that when playing back a recording, the subtitles were now dropping out for up to 30 seconds at a time. This could be fixed by skipping back about 10 to 20 seconds. Sometimes this would happen six times in a recording but other times once every minute as the worst case.

In desperation on 4 March 2018 I switched to the Beta feed and as luck would have it I had the download of 857 packages that took 20 minutes. I note there is mention in the forum somewhere (can’t find it now) that says this shouldn’t have happened. That download gave me Ver 17.5 Rev 180228.

Then on 6 March 2018 another Beta software update now Ver 17.5 Rev 180305.

Then on 7 March 2018 another Beta software update now Ver 17.5 Rev 180306.

With each version I have tested the subtitles and can report that the subtitles have continued to dropout when replaying recordings with all officially released and Beta software versions.

In order to fix the subtitle issues I recommend that you turn the subtitles on and leave them on so that you are monitoring them all the time, just as you would monitor the sound and picture. You need to then notice when they disappear, and yes you may have to watch 10 to 20 minutes of a program to see it happen and you may have to watch three different shows to get an idea of the extent of the problem. By all means skip the ads in the program, that’s what I do and it may also be part of the problem.

I have spent the last three months skipping back, turning captions on and off (waiting 4 seconds each time, why?), stopping and restarting playback and rebooting the box. Nothing I can do can fix it, it’s up to the software guys to fix it. The ongoing subtitle issues need to be given a higher priority. To a household that needs them they are as vital as the sound or picture. Do you have a test plan for testing subtitles?

I have had the U4 PVR for almost 3 months now. Before I committed to buying the PVR, I had a discussion with Jai and was assured that there were no problems with subtitles on the previous Beyonwiz PVRs and that there should be no difference with the new model. I bought it on that basis but I have had nothing but problems replaying programs with subtitles. Lots of frustration and a lot of time wasted testing and reading this forum. The Beyonwiz U4 as it stands does not do what the customer expects in the recording and playback of subtitles. It’s just not good enough.

[peteru]

Clearly you are frustrated, but who are you addressing with your post?

On these forums, you will find other users. Some of them are volunteers who work on the code in their own time.

I can't speak for others, but the tone of your posts certainly does not motivate me to do anything about the problem. I used my kids time during school holidays to work on a fix that I released more than a month ago. You confirmed the issue as fixed days later. Now, more than a month later, you come back and quite rudely insist that "It’s just not good enough."

There is no evidence to show that you bothered to come back in the last month to report your findings or co-operate on getting the issue fixed. Just a 34 day gap between saying "it's looking very good" and "It’s just not good enough."

Not exactly the kind of approach that would inspire me to spend my nights working on a feature that I don't use.

[Andrew-L]

Clearly you are frustrated, but who are you addressing with your post?

On these forums, you will find other users. Some of them are volunteers who work on the code in their own time.

I can't speak for others, but the tone of your posts certainly does not motivate me to do anything about the problem. I used my kids time during school holidays to work on a fix that I released more than a month ago. You confirmed the issue as fixed days later. Now, more than a month later, you come back and quite rudely insist that "It’s just not good enough."

There is no evidence to show that you bothered to come back in the last month to report your findings or co-operate on getting the issue fixed. Just a 34 day gap between saying "it's looking very good" and "It’s just not good enough."

Not exactly the kind of approach that would inspire me to spend my nights working on a feature that I don't use.

You are right, I am frustrated with the ongoing subtitle issue.

It is clearly not an ideal situation when Beyonwiz are relying on volunteers to fix the software of a commercial product. If Beyonwiz is relying on volunteers to fix the software maybe it’s about time they paid for the subtitle issue to be fixed.

I thank you and others for the work that is being done voluntarily to fix the software.

Over the past month I had been using the PVR and monitoring the subtitle performance. I was also reading the forum, in particular this thread started by desm. Because of this thread, I figured that someone was working on the subtitle issue and that a new software version would be released shortly, but that never happened. During February I phoned Jai at Beyonwiz to tell him about the ongoing subtitle issues.

I just called Jai this morning and had a discussion with him and I mentioned the previous two posts. I made the point that there are a lot of posts on the forum but as far as I can see the subtitle issue is about the only one that is preventing users from using the PVR to replay recorded programs. I told Jai that surely that means the subtitle fault should be given priority.

[desm]

Over the time I've had my U4 subtitles have been an issue from day one, we've learn't to live with the 40sec delay which is only a minor issue. I've had some issues with subtitles dropping out unexpectedly, all of them with recorded episodes of Vera on the ABC. The first one was with an episode transferred as .ts file from my DP lite and I assumed it had something to do with the file type but then it happened twice more with U4 recordings, both were episodes of Vera. Other than those three occasions this hasn't been an issue. ( I haven't recorded any more episodes of Vera)

Not sure if this comment helps.

The other thing I've noticed that when using the arrow keys to ad skip the sound doesn't mute like it did on the Lite and the P1, is there a setting to stop this?

[Andrew-L]

After the new beta feed released this afternoon I am now running Software Ver 17.5 Rev 20180309.

I have tested three recordings that I know had problems with the replay of subtitles. The results are:

Great British Railway Journeys: recorded on Thu 8 Mar 2018 - No issues with subtitle dropouts on replay

Safe Harbour: recorded on Wed 7 Mar 2018 - No issues with subtitle dropouts on replay

Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell: recorded on Fri 2 Mar 2018 - No issues with subtitle dropouts on replay

This is a huge improvement and I thank the software gods that have made the changes. I will continue to monitor things over the weekend and give Jai further reports early next week.

[peteru]

Yeah, I've spent a considerable amount of time on it. I've got some more fixes almost ready to go, but I need to get some sleep first. I have to be up with the kids in about 3 hours.

Unless they wake up at 6am again! In which case I get a whole 1.5 hours

[Andrew-L]

Since late Saturday night 10 Mar 2018 @ 21:46, I have been running Rev 20180310

I have not noticed any subtitle dropouts in the shows I have played back since Rev 20180309 on Fri Mar 09, 2018 at 21:53. I am about 99.9% sure that peteru has found that bug and fixed it.

With the latest beta release Rev 20180310 the subtitles are now smaller and much lower on the screen. When I say lower I am talking about the subtitles when they are at the bottom of the screen and I am particularly comparing the position to what I see on my Panasonic TV when I switch it over to TV and watch the same show on the TV rather than via the PVR - ** UPDATE see fourth screen shot below.

I found font size is now set at 30 with the latest software update and the font size range is now 20 to 42, previously it was 20 (I think) to 100. I have now set it to its current maximum value of 42. I preferred 50 as it was a bit larger and easier to read. The “Subtitle Menu” has changed slightly. There was previously an item called “Subtitle Position”, this has now been changed to “DVB and Pango subtitle position”. I am not sure what all the options are with the subtitle positions. I tried changing some of the settings including “Use original DVB subtitle position” between Original, Fixed & Relative as well as the “DVB and Pango subtitle position” to 50, 100, 200 and couldn’t see any change to the position of the subtitles. So I am not sure if I understand the use of these settings or if they are now working at the moment while other changes are being made.

The subtitle remnants are greatly reduced but occasionally still visible. They are now less frequent, less of them on the screen at a time and much thinner when they appear. They are difficult to capture but I managed to get them. I particularly noticed them at the top of the screen – see attached. In the first screen shot you can see a very thin black line under the letter “t” of the last word on the lower line. You can still see it in that position on the next screen shot. They are now much less noticeable. I know that larger font sizes or thicker black borders around the letters used to make it worse. Now that the maximum font size is only 42, I suspect this is reducing the remnants.

The third screen shot is an issue I noticed when changed over to watch a bit of a soccer game. When broadcasting sport the subtitles are sometimes at the top of the screen so that they don’t obscure the kicking of the ball etc. In the case I captured two rows of subtitles were slightly overlapping. This happened repeatedly on this show but I haven’t seen it since. It was being broadcast on SBS.

I am loving that I can now turn the subtitles on and off as fast as I can press the button without having to wait the 4 seconds each time.

Double click on the images to see in detail.

[peteru]

I split the posts related to desm's backup cockup to a different thread. Let's concentrate on subtitles in here...

[peteru]

I have not noticed any subtitle dropouts in the shows I have played back since Rev 20180309 on Fri Mar 09, 2018 at 21:53. I am about 99.9% sure that peteru has found that bug and fixed it.

Good. Let's just say that the Australian broadcasters are a bunch of useless <expletive deleted> and can't comply with the standards even if their lives depended on it. The missing subtitles were due to subtitles being sent too far ahead of where they need to be displayed. I've increased the margin by another 50% and it is now three times as big as what it theoretically needs to be.

With the latest beta release Rev 20180310 the subtitles are now smaller and much lower on the screen. When I say lower I am talking about the subtitles when they are at the bottom of the screen and I am particularly comparing the position to what I see on my Panasonic TV when I switch it over to TV and watch the same show on the TV rather than via the PVR - ** UPDATE see fourth screen shot below.

It may help you to understand what's going on if you know a little bit about how teletext subtitles work...

Teletext is limited to 24 rows of text on the screen. Back in the analogue days, when teletext was invented, these 24 rows were squished down into overscan safe area. In practice that gave you about 24 rows of 20 pixels each for a total teletext resolution of 480 lines. Fast forward a few decades into the digital age where we do not use overscan and the GUI graphics are rendered at 720 lines. That now gives us the luxury of having 30 pixels per row, while still maintaining 24 rows of teletext. So, a standard teletex font can never be any taller than 30 pixels, otherwise it would exceed the row dimension. Teletext subtitles are a bit special because they use double height rows and double height fonts. That means that the font must fit in a 60 pixel tall space and that subtitles can only appear on even teletext lines. Unfortunately, modern outline font dimensions are a bit complex, so that a font that is nominally sized at 42 may render a particular text string in a bounding box that could be 52 pixels tall. When you add 5 pixels at the top and bottom for the outline, you could end up with enough pixels to exceed the 60 pixel rows space.

Now, going back to your observation. The teletext positioning uses the entire OSD area to give you 24 teletext rows so that each row can be as big as possible. If you want the teletext area to cover a smaller portion of the screen, you can use the OSD overscan setting to shrink the entire OSD area.

I found font size is now set at 30 with the latest software update and the font size range is now 20 to 42, previously it was 20 (I think) to 100.

The default settings are designed to ensure that teletext subtitles appear at the broadcaster specified locations on the screen and fit within their allocated rows. If you start increasing the outline size or the font size, you start drifting towards dimensions that exceed their allocated areas. The old font settings permitted the user to create a configuration with font sizes that could have never worked with standard teletext positioning. The new selection still allows you to push things over the edge if you select a large font and a thick border, but the failure mode is subtle and infrequent.

I have now set it to its current maximum value of 42. I preferred 50 as it was a bit larger and easier to read.

See above. If you are going to go with 42, you should reduce the size of the outline. 50 can not work with original teletex positioning.

The “Subtitle Menu” has changed slightly. There was previously an item called “Subtitle Position”, this has now been changed to “DVB and Pango subtitle position”. I am not sure what all the options are with the subtitle positions. I tried changing some of the settings including “Use original DVB subtitle position” between Original, Fixed & Relative as well as the “DVB and Pango subtitle position” to 50, 100, 200 and couldn’t see any change to the position of the subtitles. So I am not sure if I understand the use of these settings or if they are now working at the moment while other changes are being made.

There is nothing mysterious about this. If you enable original position for teletext subtitles, then the option to specify a position for teletext subtitles disappears from the UI. If you disable the original position option, then an option for positioning teletext subtitles appears. You can then specify the offset from the bottom of the screen for the subtitles. Be aware that if you disable original position for the subtitles then they will be displayed in chronological order. This can cause issues with some subtitling services where the lines of conversation appear to be reversed because they are being sent as second line, followed by first line, but each has the correct on screen position specified. Once you start ignoring the original positioning, the lines end up being shown as second, first.

The DVB and Pango subtitles use a different system for positioning subtitles and that is why they have a separate configuration that is not constrained by the setting of the teletext subtitle original position.

The subtitle remnants are greatly reduced but occasionally still visible.

Let me guess. You are not actually using the GUI to make adjustments, are you? My guess is that you are using OpenWebif to make changes on the fly. As you change the various settings, the OSD is not cleared by exiting the setup screen and you end up with artifacts on the screen. Try using a 40 point font with 4 pixel outline, original positions and use the GUI to make the changes. I expect that you won't see any issues. Also, be aware that OpenWebif has limitations not present in the GUI. For example, OpenWebif does not correctly implement dynamic GUI configuration and costraints, so it is not possible to correctly configure settings such as the teletext positioning constraints as described above. OpenWebif is third party software, so any bug reports for it should be directed to their bug tracker.

In the case I captured two rows of subtitles were slightly overlapping. This happened repeatedly on this show but I haven’t seen it since. It was being broadcast on SBS.

That's SBS for you. Not sticking to the standards and putting subtitles on both odd and even lines. They are meant to leave one blank line between so that you don't get overlap. The best mitigation for this issue is to leave the subtitle settings at their default values. This will result in crammed but legible text.

[Andrew-L]

I have not noticed any subtitle dropouts in the shows I have played back since Rev 20180309 on Fri Mar 09, 2018 at 21:53. I am about 99.9% sure that peteru has found that bug and fixed it.

Good. Let's just say that the Australian broadcasters are a bunch of useless <expletive deleted> and can't comply with the standards even if their lives depended on it. The missing subtitles were due to subtitles being sent too far ahead of where they need to be displayed. I've increased the margin by another 50% and it is now three times as big as what it theoretically needs to be.

I appreciate your hard work in figuring that bug out. I could only guess why they were dropping out.

With the latest beta release Rev 20180310 the subtitles are now smaller and much lower on the screen. When I say lower I am talking about the subtitles when they are at the bottom of the screen and I am particularly comparing the position to what I see on my Panasonic TV when I switch it over to TV and watch the same show on the TV rather than via the PVR - ** UPDATE see fourth screen shot below.

It may help you to understand what's going on if you know a little bit about how teletext subtitles work...

Teletext is limited to 24 rows of text on the screen. Back in the analogue days, when teletext was invented, these 24 rows were squished down into overscan safe area. In practice that gave you about 24 rows of 20 pixels each for a total teletext resolution of 480 lines. Fast forward a few decades into the digital age where we do not use overscan and the GUI graphics are rendered at 720 lines. That now gives us the luxury of having 30 pixels per row, while still maintaining 24 rows of teletext. So, a standard teletex font can never be any taller than 30 pixels, otherwise it would exceed the row dimension. Teletext subtitles are a bit special because they use double height rows and double height fonts. That means that the font must fit in a 60 pixel tall space and that subtitles can only appear on even teletext lines. Unfortunately, modern outline font dimensions are a bit complex, so that a font that is nominally sized at 42 may render a particular text string in a bounding box that could be 52 pixels tall. When you add 5 pixels at the top and bottom for the outline, you could end up with enough pixels to exceed the 60 pixel rows space.

Now, going back to your observation. The teletext positioning uses the entire OSD area to give you 24 teletext rows so that each row can be as big as possible. If you want the teletext area to cover a smaller portion of the screen, you can use the OSD overscan setting to shrink the entire OSD area.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I have a better understanding of how they work now.

I found font size is now set at 30 with the latest software update and the font size range is now 20 to 42, previously it was 20 (I think) to 100.

The default settings are designed to ensure that teletext subtitles appear at the broadcaster specified locations on the screen and fit within their allocated rows. If you start increasing the outline size or the font size, you start drifting towards dimensions that exceed their allocated areas. The old font settings permitted the user to create a configuration with font sizes that could have never worked with standard teletext positioning. The new selection still allows you to push things over the edge if you select a large font and a thick border, but the failure mode is subtle and infrequent.

Got it.

I have now set it to its current maximum value of 42. I preferred 50 as it was a bit larger and easier to read.

See above. If you are going to go with 42, you should reduce the size of the outline. 50 can not work with original teletex positioning.

Got it.

The “Subtitle Menu” has changed slightly. There was previously an item called “Subtitle Position”, this has now been changed to “DVB and Pango subtitle position”. I am not sure what all the options are with the subtitle positions. I tried changing some of the settings including “Use original DVB subtitle position” between Original, Fixed & Relative as well as the “DVB and Pango subtitle position” to 50, 100, 200 and couldn’t see any change to the position of the subtitles. So I am not sure if I understand the use of these settings or if they are now working at the moment while other changes are being made.

There is nothing mysterious about this. If you enable original position for teletext subtitles, then the option to specify a position for teletext subtitles disappears from the UI. If you disable the original position option, then an option for positioning teletext subtitles appears. You can then specify the offset from the bottom of the screen for the subtitles. Be aware that if you disable original position for the subtitles then they will be displayed in chronological order. This can cause issues with some subtitling services where the lines of conversation appear to be reversed because they are being sent as second line, followed by first line, but each has the correct on screen position specified. Once you start ignoring the original positioning, the lines end up being shown as second, first.

The DVB and Pango subtitles use a different system for positioning subtitles and that is why they have a separate configuration that is not constrained by the setting of the teletext subtitle original position.

Got it.

The subtitle remnants are greatly reduced but occasionally still visible.

Let me guess. You are not actually using the GUI to make adjustments, are you? My guess is that you are using OpenWebif to make changes on the fly. As you change the various settings, the OSD is not cleared by exiting the setup screen and you end up with artifacts on the screen. Try using a 40 point font with 4 pixel outline, original positions and use the GUI to make the changes. I expect that you won't see any issues. Also, be aware that OpenWebif has limitations not present in the GUI. For example, OpenWebif does not correctly implement dynamic GUI configuration and costraints, so it is not possible to correctly configure settings such as the teletext positioning constraints as described above. OpenWebif is third party software, so any bug reports for it should be directed to their bug tracker.

I was initially using the GUI but then when I started taking screen shots I was using OpenWebif and was then using it to make software changes. I didn't realise there was an issue with OpenWebif but it is now noted.

In the case I captured two rows of subtitles were slightly overlapping. This happened repeatedly on this show but I haven’t seen it since. It was being broadcast on SBS.

That's SBS for you. Not sticking to the standards and putting subtitles on both odd and even lines. They are meant to leave one blank line between so that you don't get overlap. The best mitigation for this issue is to leave the subtitle settings at their default values. This will result in crammed but legible text.

That would explain it.
Once again thank you for the time and effort you have put into this. Since owning my first Teac set top box in 2004 and then 2 different Topfield PVRs we have experienced unexplained subtitle dropouts that required either reboots or enabling and disabling subtitles. It makes this household very happy that you have fixed the drop out issue and the previous issue where the subtitles would race ahead. Now that the subtitles are working well, we will be able to recommend the U4 to our many deaf friends.

[peteru]

Once again thank you for the time and effort you have put into this. Since owning my first Teac set top box in 2004 and then 2 different Topfield PVRs we have experienced unexplained subtitle dropouts that required either reboots or enabling and disabling subtitles. It makes this household very happy that you have fixed the drop out issue and the previous issue where the subtitles would race ahead. Now that the subtitles are working well, we will be able to recommend the U4 to our many deaf friends.

That's the advantage of open source. If there is a problem, you are not at the mercy of the manufacturer to fix it. One day. If they feel like it. Maybe, but probably not, because it's costly. Or because they can't fix it, since their supplier did not give them the source code.

With open source, all it takes is one person willing to take a look at the problem and fix it. And as you have witnessed, fixes can appear as quickly as overnight. Beyonwiz is the only open source PVR available in the Australian market.