Why can't captions look pretty?

I use captions for TV and home movies. That being said, I was truly shocked the first time I watched a DVD on my Mac--the captions were utterly beautiful. Nice, anti-aliased font, partially transparent font background, and all of this is customizable!

Technology is sufficiently advanced at this point that there is really no reason not to expect pretty captions, but why isn't it the norm? Is it greedy to expect pretty captions when they are so obviously possible? Surely a company today pitching a 255-color computer would be laughed out of the market, so why is my state-of-the-art, big screen HDTV showing me such crude captions? Think of how much time and effort are put into making things aesthetically pleasing these days--why not captions?

Comments

RLM said…
Really? What the MAC screen size you have? If that is the MAC Cinematic Screen. I would be not really surprised at all.

I never bother to download any movies on the PC. Many thanks for sharing this one with all of us.

Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog
July 19, 2007 at 6:21 PM
moi said…
First, it's Mac, not MAC, RLM. *smile*

Second, I have to agree with you, Aaron. I was amazed at how gorgeous the captions look on my Mac, from my sage and ruby iMacs, to my PowerBook G4, and now my MacBook Pro. They just get better with each upgrade of DVD Player.

You've got a point - why can't newer TVs have nice anti-aliased captions. My new Toshiba DVD/TV player combo isn't too bad and is certainly an improvement, but it's still not as sexy as the DVD Player version in OS 10.4.9. Thanks for bringing it up!
July 20, 2007 at 1:11 AM
Aaron said…
rlm: I have the mac mini hooked to a 24" dell lcd widescreen. I don't bother with movie downloads either--I just use my mac to watch DVDs once in a while.
July 23, 2007 at 11:12 AM
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