1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,679 It’s November. 2 00:00:01,679 --> 00:00:03,409 You know what that means! 3 00:00:03,409 --> 00:00:06,654 Hello and\hwelcome to No Effort November, 4 00:00:06,654 --> 00:00:11,595 a series of videos for the month of November in which no effort is\hmade. 5 00:00:11,595 --> 00:00:18,458 Are you a prude who can’t bear the thought of your children being exposed to naughty language\hin movies and television, 6 00:00:18,458 --> 00:00:23,547 but you just can’t bear the thought of missing out on watching stuff\has a family? 7 00:00:23,547 --> 00:00:29,881 Are you looking for a technological solution to free you from the guilt of exposing\hyour kids to bad words? 8 00:00:29,881 --> 00:00:32,106 Is it 1998? 9 00:00:32,106 --> 00:00:37,093 Well then have I got the solution for you, the TV Guardian. 10 00:00:37,093 --> 00:00:44,221 This amazing device attaches to any ordinary television set and transforms that foul-mouthed\hboob tube 11 00:00:44,221 --> 00:00:47,231 into a proper G-rated gentleman. 12 00:00:47,231 --> 00:00:48,600 Mostly. 13 00:00:48,600 --> 00:00:49,744 How does it work? 14 00:00:49,744 --> 00:00:52,307 State-of-the-art technology,\hof course! 15 00:00:52,307 --> 00:01:00,077 The TV Guardian filters out foul language from cable or satellite TV AND\hhome video sources like VHS tapes, DVDs, 16 00:01:00,077 --> 00:01:02,429 and let’s not forget Laserdiscs. 17 00:01:02,429 --> 00:01:07,033 Simply\hdisconnect the video source from your TV and connect it to the Guardian. 18 00:01:07,033 --> 00:01:16,034 Then, connect\hthe Guardian to your TV and now you can watch TV as a family without worrying about\han F-bomb absolutely ruining your night. 19 00:01:16,034 --> 00:01:17,245 How does it work? 20 00:01:17,245 --> 00:01:19,606 State-of-the-art technology, of course! 21 00:01:19,606 --> 00:01:20,580 Didn’t I just say that? 22 00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:24,528 Uh, let’s begin with a look at this gadget. 23 00:01:24,528 --> 00:01:29,978 The\hdevice itself is pretty simple, with two complete sets of composite video and audio jacks - 24 00:01:29,978 --> 00:01:37,267 which\hare helpfully labeled Right, Left, and Video, but you’ll have to guess which one is the input\hand which one’s the output. 25 00:01:37,267 --> 00:01:43,732 There’s also a coaxial RF out for old-school TV sets and another RF\hconnection above it which is… 26 00:01:43,732 --> 00:01:45,200 unlabeled. 27 00:01:45,200 --> 00:01:52,239 There’s a DC barrel plug for power input, which they did\h bother to specify as 9v, 100ma DC, 28 00:01:52,239 --> 00:01:55,618 but forgot to finish the diagram for plug polarity. 29 00:01:55,618 --> 00:01:56,794 Helpful! 30 00:01:56,794 --> 00:02:00,291 We\halso find two three-position switches for changing settings. 31 00:02:00,291 --> 00:02:01,892 We’ll get back to those. 32 00:02:01,892 --> 00:02:08,532 Lastly,\hthere is one more switch tucked way behind a hole at the top of this panel which is once again\hunlabeled. 33 00:02:08,532 --> 00:02:10,422 They did a bang-up job here. 34 00:02:10,422 --> 00:02:16,140 That’s the channel 3 or 4 selector for the RF modulator,\h which you’d know if you bothered to read the manual. 35 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:20,100 Now I know that this was likely\ha fairly low-volume product,\h\h 36 00:02:20,100 --> 00:02:22,349 and it’s also 20+ years old, 37 00:02:22,349 --> 00:02:26,753 but the cheapness\hof the construction here cannot be stressed enough. 38 00:02:26,753 --> 00:02:30,491 This looks and feels like an electronics\hproject box, 39 00:02:30,491 --> 00:02:38,704 and frankly if it weren’t for the TV guardian branding I’d think it\h literally was an off-the-shelf electronics project box. 40 00:02:38,704 --> 00:02:41,450 Of course there is a custom circuit board\hin here… 41 00:02:41,450 --> 00:02:44,162 [feigning sadness] oh no, I voided my warranty 42 00:02:44,162 --> 00:02:46,574 but yeah even this is pretty basic. 43 00:02:46,574 --> 00:02:50,100 Just a few\hchips and an off-the-shelf modulator, essentially. 44 00:02:50,100 --> 00:02:56,434 That’s because this is using much of the\hsame componentry you’d find in all sorts of contemporary video equipment. 45 00:02:56,434 --> 00:02:59,244 It’s just got a bit of a trick up its sleeve. 46 00:02:59,244 --> 00:03:04,262 The device uses our old friend closed captioning to watch out for profamity. 47 00:03:04,262 --> 00:03:08,016 Since I already made a\hvideo on that topic I won’t go deep into it here. 48 00:03:08,016 --> 00:03:09,949 Plus it is November. 49 00:03:09,949 --> 00:03:12,490 But in the US, starting\hin the 1980’s 50 00:03:12,490 --> 00:03:17,948 television broadcasts and home video formats began regularly incorporating\hclosed captioning 51 00:03:17,948 --> 00:03:24,064 in the form of a hidden data stream across the length of Line 21 in\hthe analog video signal. 52 00:03:24,064 --> 00:03:27,158 Line 21 is near the end of the vertical blanking interval, 53 00:03:27,158 --> 00:03:31,974 which is a string of blank lines that help an analog television draw the image. 54 00:03:31,974 --> 00:03:38,794 While\hyou’re not supposed to be able to see it, in the digital age we’re starting to find parts\hof it pop out occasionally, 55 00:03:38,794 --> 00:03:41,165 like here in Frasier. 56 00:03:41,165 --> 00:03:45,227 These blinky dashes are encoding text and basic\h formatting, 57 00:03:45,227 --> 00:03:50,291 and they get extracted as high-low pulses by a television set, or a separate device, 58 00:03:50,291 --> 00:03:53,832 and decoded to generate text atop the image. 59 00:03:53,832 --> 00:03:58,986 This was a way to add captioning for those who desired\h it without making it part of the broadcast image, 60 00:03:58,986 --> 00:04:01,914 hence the name closed captioning. 61 00:04:01,914 --> 00:04:09,638 Now, an older\hanalog television like this one, mindlessly drawing glowing lines on the face of a cathode\hray tube over and over again, 62 00:04:09,638 --> 00:04:15,433 doesn’t process what it’s doing and this picture tube actually\h draws the lines, blinky dashes and everything. 63 00:04:15,900 --> 00:04:19,512 But they’re getting drawn outside the\hvisible area, 64 00:04:19,512 --> 00:04:21,480 somewhere like here. 65 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:27,424 That’s thanks to overscan: the actual\himage is blown out just a bit beyond the edges of the screen 66 00:04:27,424 --> 00:04:35,083 which was necessary due\hto the vagaries of analog video and since most picture tubes didn’t have perfectly\hrectangular faces. 67 00:04:35,083 --> 00:04:40,380 So you weren’t ever gonna see this datastream unless there was\h something wrong with your television set. 68 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:45,974 But modern displays what with their neat\h grids of pixels and discrete resolutions\h\h 69 00:04:45,974 --> 00:04:50,160 generally don’t stretch the image they\h are told to display beyond their borders.\h\h 70 00:04:50,940 --> 00:04:54,952 Some do for silly reasons which makes using\h them as a computer monitor very annoying 71 00:04:54,952 --> 00:04:58,601 until you find the “just scan” setting buried in the menus but... 72 00:04:59,032 --> 00:05:05,125 for the\hmost part, a modern display or television will show the entirety of whatever you throw at\hit. 73 00:05:05,125 --> 00:05:10,882 And some less-than-careful analog-to-digital transfers have gotten done over the years, 74 00:05:10,882 --> 00:05:14,055 which\hcaptured part of the vertical blanking interval. 75 00:05:14,055 --> 00:05:17,051 That’s what’s happening in this episode of\hFrasier. 76 00:05:17,051 --> 00:05:27,708 Whoever did the transfer didn’t take care to ensure the 480 rows of pixels they’d\hcapture from the 525 lines of video started at, like, line 23 or 24. 77 00:05:27,708 --> 00:05:31,020 Or perhaps they just\hthought overscan was gonna live on forever. 78 00:05:32,340 --> 00:05:35,182 Anyway, back to the TV Guardian. 79 00:05:35,182 --> 00:05:39,607 Baked into\hits programming is a dictionary of offensive words and phrases which, 80 00:05:39,607 --> 00:05:40,659 for science, 81 00:05:40,659 --> 00:05:45,388 I’d love to\hsee but it’s not written anywhere in the manual, aw shucks. 82 00:05:45,388 --> 00:05:51,561 Now, when it’s turned on and active,\h it decodes the captioning data from line 21. 83 00:05:51,561 --> 00:05:55,779 If it finds a match with one of those\h objectionable things in its dictionary, 84 00:05:55,779 --> 00:05:58,916 the guardian jumps into action and… 85 00:05:58,916 --> 00:06:02,230 mutes the audio to\hprotect the innocent. 86 00:06:02,230 --> 00:06:03,329 That… 87 00:06:03,329 --> 00:06:04,821 that’s what it does. 88 00:06:04,821 --> 00:06:08,344 Now, I may sound like I’m making fun of this\hlittle gadget. 89 00:06:08,344 --> 00:06:15,583 And I must admit that this particular form of parental control seems a bit… odd to my ears, 90 00:06:15,583 --> 00:06:18,360 but the way it’s done is actually pretty clever. 91 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:23,176 Here, let’s all settle down as a wholesome\h family and watch 92 00:06:23,176 --> 00:06:25,664 Goodfellas together with the Guardian turned on. 93 00:06:27,033 --> 00:06:31,350 Profanity is definitely\hthe only objectionable part of that movie, right? 94 00:06:31,806 --> 00:06:33,802 [ambient road noise] 95 00:06:34,740 --> 00:06:39,914 So far it looks like a typical movie-going\hexperience, but watch what happens here. 96 00:06:40,751 --> 00:06:43,763 [clunky thud, ambient noise] 97 00:06:43,763 --> 00:06:46,851 [audio cuts out] 98 00:06:46,851 --> 00:06:48,303 [Jimmy - 99 00:06:48,303 --> 00:06:49,574 What's up? 100 00:06:49,574 --> 00:06:50,994 Did I hear something? 101 00:06:50,994 --> 00:06:52,200 What the F - ] [audio cuts again] 102 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:54,267 Not only was the audio muted, 103 00:06:54,267 --> 00:07:01,364 but when that\hhappened the closed captioning was placed on-screen so it can be read and stand in for the\hmissing dialogue. 104 00:07:01,364 --> 00:07:08,003 And that captioning was altered to remove the offensive word, in this case\h"fudge." 105 00:07:08,003 --> 00:07:12,375 But it didn’t simply remove the word, it also took out the the. 106 00:07:12,375 --> 00:07:14,808 “What the fudge\his that” became, simply, 107 00:07:16,260 --> 00:07:20,654 This sort of word swap or rephrasing\his done whenever necessary. 108 00:07:20,654 --> 00:07:24,850 And it’s sometimes pretty good at keeping the\h context intact. 109 00:07:24,850 --> 00:07:27,031 Like, for instance in this scene. 110 00:07:27,031 --> 00:07:30,097 [ How could I go back to school after that and pledge allegiance to the flag and - ] 111 00:07:30,097 --> 00:07:33,361 [audio cut] 112 00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:34,856 [sound returns] 113 00:07:34,856 --> 00:07:40,342 Good government “bull excrement” was replaced\h with good government "baloney." 114 00:07:40,342 --> 00:07:44,248 [ For us, to live any other way was nuts. T - ] 115 00:07:44,248 --> 00:07:52,320 Here, the line “to us, those goody good people who work 'shirty'\hjobs” got turned into “who work crud jobs”. 116 00:07:53,160 --> 00:07:56,760 Cruddy would have been a better fit but still, not bad. 117 00:07:56,760 --> 00:08:03,607 As much as this is clever, it’s really doing\hthis because of a limitation stemming from\hhow the captions work. 118 00:08:03,607 --> 00:08:10,936 Captioning data is sent in\hspurts which encode all the text to be displayed on screen - and where to place it. 119 00:08:10,936 --> 00:08:14,136 Entire sentences\hare often displayed at once, 120 00:08:14,136 --> 00:08:18,826 in fact a call and response between two characters is sometimes on\hscreen. 121 00:08:18,826 --> 00:08:22,876 The text will stay there until the next spurt of data is received 122 00:08:22,876 --> 00:08:27,556 which either contains\hmore text and formatting or says to clear it. 123 00:08:27,556 --> 00:08:32,263 So, if a chunk of captioning data contains a bad\hword or phrase, 124 00:08:32,263 --> 00:08:37,297 the TV Guardian knows it will be spoken at some point the text is displayed, 125 00:08:37,297 --> 00:08:39,463 but it doesn’t know exactly when. 126 00:08:39,463 --> 00:08:45,586 So the only thing it can do is mute the audio for the entire\h time that caption block appears on the screen. 127 00:08:45,586 --> 00:08:48,408 [Partner. Is that what you've been trying to tell me, you want me to be part - ] 128 00:08:48,408 --> 00:08:52,211 [audio cut] 129 00:08:52,211 --> 00:08:54,702 [It's not even fair, no?] 130 00:08:55,800 --> 00:09:01,056 As removing an entire sentence or more could\h very easily cause you to lose the plot,\h\h 131 00:09:01,056 --> 00:09:06,343 it has little choice but to display the\h text with the objectionable parts altered. 132 00:09:06,343 --> 00:09:08,544 Now that is an optional feature. 133 00:09:08,544 --> 00:09:15,544 One of the two\hoption switches we haven’t talked about yet is labeled "caption," and you can choose between\hOn, Cuss, and Off. 134 00:09:15,544 --> 00:09:21,562 So far we’ve seen it in the cuss setting, but if you like, you can move\h the switch to “off” — 135 00:09:21,562 --> 00:09:30,224 using a tiny screwdriver or something because they’re recessed in a\hway which I can’t decide if was deliberate\hfor parental control reasons or just bad design 136 00:09:30,224 --> 00:09:35,388 — and that will simply have it mute the audio and leave you wondering what was said. 137 00:09:35,388 --> 00:09:38,095 I don’t\hknow why you’d want that but you can do it! 138 00:09:38,095 --> 00:09:43,848 You can also have it leave captions on continuously,\h leaving nice and friendly phrases unaltered but, 139 00:09:43,848 --> 00:09:47,210 whenever someone uses a mouth which makes\h you wonder if they kiss their mother with it, 140 00:09:47,210 --> 00:09:51,900 it’ll cut the audio out and make whatever\h alterations to the written dialogue it sees fit. 141 00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:55,500 You can also choose how strict\hyou want the filtering to be.\h\h 142 00:09:56,040 --> 00:10:01,980 If phrases like “My god” bother you, you’ll\hwant the extra strict enforcement turned on. 143 00:10:01,980 --> 00:10:04,578 But if you’re just a little bit more lenient, 144 00:10:04,578 --> 00:10:09,323 you can choose the mild setting which lets such religious-adjacent phrases through, 145 00:10:09,323 --> 00:10:13,110 in addition to\hless-objectionable potty-mouth words. 146 00:10:13,110 --> 00:10:16,098 Now these are printed in the manual. 147 00:10:16,098 --> 00:10:25,259 I won’t read them\hall off but it includes such bangers as balls, wuss, up yours, forms of screw, and even 148 00:10:25,259 --> 00:10:27,360 "H E Double Hockey Sticks." 149 00:10:28,080 --> 00:10:34,439 And if you only care that your children don’t\hhear these words but you yourself are in for\ha good profanity-laden evening, 150 00:10:34,439 --> 00:10:36,990 you can\halso turn off the filtering altogether. 151 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:41,997 Now, it’s probably obvious but this method has\ha few key weaknesses. 152 00:10:41,997 --> 00:10:47,366 We’ve already discussed how it has to mute entire sentences or more but,\hto reiterate, 153 00:10:47,366 --> 00:10:50,571 it has to mute entire sentences or more. 154 00:10:50,571 --> 00:10:57,943 And its decisions on how to fill in what it\h censors are good most of the time but can also be… 155 00:10:57,943 --> 00:11:01,400 really weird or even just bad. 156 00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:04,453 Here’s a list of\hall the examples that I’ve found. 157 00:11:04,453 --> 00:11:10,292 I’ll try to keep this family friendly, folks but you might not agree\h with all my decisions here so just be warned. 158 00:11:10,292 --> 00:11:14,476 We already established that "excrement" turns\hinto crud, 159 00:11:14,476 --> 00:11:18,928 but if it’s phrased as “oh, shirt” then it becomes “oh, man.” 160 00:11:18,928 --> 00:11:20,307 Pretty good. 161 00:11:20,307 --> 00:11:27,035 The\hphrase that rhymes with "missed off" gets changed to teed off (or just teed). 162 00:11:27,035 --> 00:11:29,073 Prick becomes jerk. 163 00:11:29,073 --> 00:11:32,271 Bastard also turns into jerk. 164 00:11:32,271 --> 00:11:36,323 Uh… "rocksucker" was also turned into jerk. 165 00:11:36,323 --> 00:11:38,399 Really there’s a lotta jerks. 166 00:11:38,399 --> 00:11:42,624 But slut, ah well that turned into flirt. 167 00:11:42,624 --> 00:11:46,328 It’s fine with moron. That’s cool with the guardian. 168 00:11:46,328 --> 00:11:51,794 The n word simply becomes ellipses which… yeah that’s probably for the best. 169 00:11:51,794 --> 00:11:56,139 A word now commonly\hconsidered a slur became simply “gay” 170 00:11:56,139 --> 00:11:59,678 so the caption “he’s treating me like a gay” popped up\hhere. 171 00:11:59,678 --> 00:12:00,886 Interesting. 172 00:12:00,886 --> 00:12:08,287 And then on the strict setting, balls gets turned into tail, which is funny\hbecause that word can also just mean… balls 173 00:12:08,287 --> 00:12:10,819 or be a name as happened here. 174 00:12:10,819 --> 00:12:14,762 Oh, and the exclamation "My\hGod" becomes Man, which… 175 00:12:14,762 --> 00:12:15,960 I guess that’s fine. 176 00:12:16,680 --> 00:12:19,344 But then there’s the F-bomb. 177 00:12:19,344 --> 00:12:26,041 As any sailor\hmouth knows that particular word can mean many things and results to censor it will\hvary. 178 00:12:26,041 --> 00:12:27,807 Here’s a decent example. 179 00:12:27,807 --> 00:12:31,420 "Maybe it’s me, I’m a little forked up." turns into 180 00:12:31,420 --> 00:12:34,168 "Maybe it’s me,\hI’m a little 'messed' up." 181 00:12:34,168 --> 00:12:36,421 Great work! That worked fine. 182 00:12:36,421 --> 00:12:42,217 And it did a pretty good job earlier when it\hremoved the the in "what the fudge is that?" 183 00:12:42,217 --> 00:12:45,858 But, uh, if it’s ever phrased as a verb, 184 00:12:45,858 --> 00:12:49,300 the guardian\hlikes to change it to "wow." 185 00:12:49,300 --> 00:12:53,128 Like, you'll wow everything up. Or, go wow yourself. 186 00:12:53,128 --> 00:12:55,998 I mean, OK. 187 00:12:55,998 --> 00:13:02,921 Uh, if it see’s “fork’n” the word just gets removed and an errant apostrophe is left behind. 188 00:13:02,921 --> 00:13:11,023 And it\happears to change some instances to “go away” which makes sense for “fork off” I guess but, 189 00:13:11,023 --> 00:13:14,886 "go\hgo away your mother" doesn’t really mean anything intelligible. 190 00:13:14,886 --> 00:13:17,110 That’s a total fail. 191 00:13:17,110 --> 00:13:21,780 Oh and, F...\htrucker is another word that becomes jerk. 192 00:13:22,380 --> 00:13:25,380 But even if it made perfect\hdecisions all the time,\h\h 193 00:13:25,380 --> 00:13:30,957 it first relies on closed captioning to be A)\hthere in the first place 194 00:13:30,957 --> 00:13:34,297 B) accurate and not itself censored and 195 00:13:34,297 --> 00:13:38,592 C) properly timed and\hin sync with the speech. 196 00:13:38,592 --> 00:13:42,971 By the time this thing was released most everything had closed\hcaptions in it, 197 00:13:42,971 --> 00:13:47,189 but with the rise of the DVD, some studios went rogue. 198 00:13:47,189 --> 00:13:50,640 And in fact, the\hmanual calls out Universal for doing this. 199 00:13:51,240 --> 00:13:55,991 See, DVD players are capable of injecting their\hown line 21 captioning data 200 00:13:55,991 --> 00:14:00,168 so analog TVs hooked up to them can decode it on their own. 201 00:14:00,168 --> 00:14:02,478 Here’s an example with The\hBirdcage, 202 00:14:02,478 --> 00:14:08,059 another film which I’m sure in the eyes of a TV Guardian buyer would be completely\hunobjectionable 203 00:14:08,059 --> 00:14:10,504 if only it didn’t have cuss words. 204 00:14:11,580 --> 00:14:16,624 But of course, DVD players could also display\hclosed captions themselves. 205 00:14:16,624 --> 00:14:21,872 And far more capably, offering captions in multiple languages,\h commentary tracks, 206 00:14:21,872 --> 00:14:26,054 and in any style, font, or color the publisher desired. 207 00:14:26,054 --> 00:14:36,000 Universal, it seems,\hdeemed the newfound capabilities of DVD enough to negate the need for old-fashioned line 21 caption\hsupport in their releases, 208 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:38,287 at least circa 2000. 209 00:14:38,287 --> 00:14:44,460 So for Universal's DVDs the Guardian has no idea\hwhat’s being said, and it’s f-bombs galore. 210 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:49,980 Another issue comes from captions\hwhich don’t exactly match the dialog.\h\h 211 00:14:49,980 --> 00:14:54,164 This is actually quite common, usually when\hdialog is fast-paced. 212 00:14:54,164 --> 00:14:57,073 [ It was there that I knew that I belonged. 213 00:14:57,073 --> 00:15:01,523 To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies. 214 00:15:01,523 --> 00:15:03,083 They weren't like anybody else. 215 00:15:03,083 --> 00:15:04,836 I mean, they did whatever they wanted. 216 00:15:04,836 --> 00:15:08,771 They double parked in front of a hydrant and nobody ever gave them a ticket. 217 00:15:08,771 --> 00:15:12,598 In the summer, when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.] 218 00:15:12,953 --> 00:15:20,382 For instance, in Goodfellas, the Guardian correctly catches that terrible\hversion of “ticked” when Henry’s narration says 219 00:15:20,382 --> 00:15:22,681 “my father was always ticked off,” 220 00:15:22,681 --> 00:15:30,950 but just\hafter this Henry repeats “he was ticked” at the beginning of three separate phrases in something\hof a run-on sentence. 221 00:15:30,950 --> 00:15:37,950 The captioning is structured more loosely, though, with the offending word\honly placed in the beginning of that sentence. 222 00:15:37,950 --> 00:15:42,701 So the audio is unmuted and the last one is…\hmissed. 223 00:15:42,701 --> 00:15:47,615 [ ... was in a wheelchair, he was pissed that there were seven of us living in such a tiny house] 224 00:15:47,615 --> 00:15:49,934 Won’t somebody think of the children? 225 00:15:49,934 --> 00:15:54,460 Then of course, what if whoever wrote the captions\h was a prude who censored them? 226 00:15:54,460 --> 00:15:58,646 Instead of actually writing out H E Double Hockey Sticks they could\hhave written 227 00:15:58,646 --> 00:16:00,862 "H asterisk asterisk asteroid." 228 00:16:02,029 --> 00:16:10,256 Now, doing that is very bad captioning practice -\hafter all, if adults are choosing to see\ha movie with profanity and rely on captions, 229 00:16:10,256 --> 00:16:14,707 they’re not seeing the movie they chose to see if the captions are censored. 230 00:16:14,707 --> 00:16:17,523 So in the grand\hscheme that should be rare. 231 00:16:17,777 --> 00:16:23,940 But oh the sweet irony of a prudish transcription causing\h profanity to slip through the TV Guardian. 232 00:16:24,480 --> 00:16:26,983 Lastly, there’s caption timing. 233 00:16:26,983 --> 00:16:31,588 Live events rely\hon stenographers furiously stenographering what’s spoken 234 00:16:31,588 --> 00:16:34,862 and that leads to a substantial delay in\hthe captions. 235 00:16:34,862 --> 00:16:38,760 So better hope those sportscasters aren’t potty mouths. 236 00:16:38,760 --> 00:16:42,308 Scripted content is generally\hbetter, but it’s not perfect. 237 00:16:42,308 --> 00:16:46,498 The Guardian let quite a few things slip through in Goodfellas. 238 00:16:46,498 --> 00:16:49,843 To\hbe fair, they don’t claim perfection on the box. 239 00:16:49,843 --> 00:16:54,103 Another somewhat odd choice was an inability\hto censor any RF source. 240 00:16:54,103 --> 00:16:58,127 There is a coaxial input but this is just a pass-through, 241 00:16:58,127 --> 00:17:05,543 and as a\hmatter-of-fact this shipped with a red cover over the top connection and there’s a note in the\hmanual that basically says “don’t use this.” 242 00:17:05,940 --> 00:17:10,332 Yes, it has a built-in RF modulator for\houtputting to older TVs, 243 00:17:10,332 --> 00:17:14,758 but the censoring function only works on the composite input. 244 00:17:14,758 --> 00:17:19,822 So if you want this to work with live TV, you’ll either need to have satellite or\hcable, 245 00:17:19,822 --> 00:17:27,219 or you’ll need to use your VCRs TV tuner for over-the-air broadcasts from now on\hand hope your kids don’t figure that part out.\h\h 246 00:17:27,660 --> 00:17:32,340 I imagine this was mainly a cost-cutting\hmeasure but it still seems silly. 247 00:17:32,340 --> 00:17:35,213 Oh, and since there’s only one input… 248 00:17:35,213 --> 00:17:42,406 well\hthat gets fun when you have a cable box, a VCR, and a DVD player and you'd like them all\hto be Guardianed. 249 00:17:42,406 --> 00:17:48,181 Better hope your VCR is fancy enough to have two inputs, and then you can run\heverything through it. 250 00:17:48,181 --> 00:17:52,100 But if you’re not so lucky, you’ll need some sort of video switcher. 251 00:17:52,100 --> 00:17:54,488 The\hmanual even says as much. 252 00:17:54,488 --> 00:17:58,885 The limitations we just went over are all technical ones, though. 253 00:17:58,885 --> 00:18:02,618 There’s also a pretty glaring conceptual hurdle. 254 00:18:02,618 --> 00:18:06,287 I chose Goodfellas and The Birdcage to demonstrate\hthis 255 00:18:06,287 --> 00:18:15,293 because I have a feeling the sort of person who bought the TV Guardian might object to some\hof the visuals and themes in those films. 256 00:18:15,293 --> 00:18:16,527 Just a hunch. 257 00:18:17,060 --> 00:18:22,186 The TV Guardian can’t do anything about\hthe content or what’s on the screen; 258 00:18:22,186 --> 00:18:27,852 it can only ever be a pretty-good but not perfect profanity\h filter. 259 00:18:27,852 --> 00:18:31,725 So I’m somewhat perplexed by the perceived value here. 260 00:18:31,725 --> 00:18:36,480 You’re still gonna need to screen for\h whatever you might not want your kids… seeing! 261 00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:43,405 I suppose there’s a lot of content out there\hwhich is otherwise pretty tame but which has a few\hsailor mouth moments. 262 00:18:43,405 --> 00:18:47,686 But it’s really only\hthat middle-ground that this can do anything for. 263 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:54,660 And if I may be so bold, if you’re that worried about your kids hearing the occasional bad word,\h\h 264 00:18:55,318 --> 00:18:56,944 well you better not let them leave the house. 265 00:18:58,339 --> 00:19:05,040 That was a joke, just wanna be clear, but yeah - there’s a lot of profanity outside\hof television, hate to break it to you. 266 00:19:05,640 --> 00:19:09,420 Still, though, as much as I think\h this is silly and not at all for me,\h 267 00:19:09,902 --> 00:19:13,346 I will tip my hat to it for being pretty clever. 268 00:19:13,346 --> 00:19:16,616 And,\hif you think there’s some merit in this idea, 269 00:19:16,616 --> 00:19:19,924 or maybe you know someone in your life who would\h have loved one of these, 270 00:19:19,924 --> 00:19:21,775 well I have good news! 271 00:19:22,140 --> 00:19:27,900 This company still exists, and they make HDMI\h versions now so you can guard your Netflix. 272 00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:31,073 Except, not actually. 273 00:19:31,909 --> 00:19:34,680 Yeah, they’re\h still relying on line 21 captions. 274 00:19:35,400 --> 00:19:39,963 Probably because HDMI doesn’t actually carry\hcaptioning data. 275 00:19:39,963 --> 00:19:47,280 The website makes it pretty clear that whatever you’re plugging into the new versions of this stills\hneeds to have a composite video output for it to work,\h\h 276 00:19:47,940 --> 00:19:50,775 so the HDMI video feed is… 277 00:19:50,775 --> 00:19:54,406 I guess just\ha passthrough that it draws captions on top of? 278 00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:59,040 I dunno, I’d investigate further\hbut this is No Effort November. 279 00:19:59,580 --> 00:20:02,197 Before I go, I want to do two more things. 280 00:20:02,197 --> 00:20:07,213 First, I want to thank my long-time patron Colin for sending this thing to me. 281 00:20:07,213 --> 00:20:13,604 It’s very much\hnot either of our jams, but it certainly is an intriguing use of closed captioning. 282 00:20:13,604 --> 00:20:15,259 And second… 283 00:20:15,259 --> 00:20:20,751 well I think it’s time I finally rip the band aid off about a certain video topic I promised. 284 00:20:20,751 --> 00:20:26,694 In my video on closed captioning, I said I’d be making a video on Teletext. 285 00:20:26,694 --> 00:20:29,070 And I said I'd do that “Soon” 286 00:20:30,313 --> 00:20:32,744 That was\halmost four years ago. 287 00:20:33,074 --> 00:20:33,990 So what happened? 288 00:20:34,620 --> 00:20:39,195 Well, I don’t think I’m the right person to\htell that story. 289 00:20:39,195 --> 00:20:45,046 I’ve never used it, and as such I really have no enthusiasm or nostalgia for\hit. 290 00:20:45,604 --> 00:20:49,521 For those that don’t know, which is mainly people outside of Europe, 291 00:20:49,521 --> 00:20:59,911 teletext was an earlier\hand way, way, waaaaay more capable use of the vertical blanking interval for sending data along\hwith television transmissions. 292 00:20:59,911 --> 00:21:05,291 And I cannot stress the way way wayyyyyy more capable part enough. 293 00:21:05,291 --> 00:21:07,246 It wasn’t just captions. 294 00:21:07,246 --> 00:21:16,440 It was full-on news, weather, sports information, trivia games, and\heven computer programs all sent alongside ordinary television. 295 00:21:16,980 --> 00:21:22,174 For whatever reason, probably the lack\h of a nationalized television broadcaster,\h\h 296 00:21:22,174 --> 00:21:24,581 that never got any traction here. 297 00:21:24,581 --> 00:21:29,436 Americans just don’t know what teletext is or was. 298 00:21:29,436 --> 00:21:33,300 We never had it aside\hfrom small-scale tests here and there. 299 00:21:34,140 --> 00:21:41,708 Those who live where teletext is common might\hbe surprised that our closed captions work just\hfine on VHS cassettes - 300 00:21:41,708 --> 00:21:45,117 see our standard was\hdesigned with that in mind. 301 00:21:45,117 --> 00:21:51,900 Teletext on the other hand is very high-bandwidth, and television\hsets couldn’t decode it from a consumer videotape. 302 00:21:52,560 --> 00:21:59,790 However, some really cool people have developed\h software techniques to recover the teletext\hinformation from home recordings, 303 00:21:59,790 --> 00:22:02,940 and archives\hare being built and expanded as we speak. 304 00:22:03,660 --> 00:22:08,733 That’s really interesting to me, but without a\hpersonal… 305 00:22:08,733 --> 00:22:13,200 connection to it, I just won’t give the story justice. 306 00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:15,931 I’ll leave that for someone else to\htackle. 307 00:22:15,931 --> 00:22:21,493 I’ve put links to some info about Teletext and to the archive, if you're curious, down in the description. 308 00:22:21,493 --> 00:22:24,191 But yeah, a teletext video… 309 00:22:24,540 --> 00:22:26,784 isn’t gonna happen on this channel. 310 00:22:26,784 --> 00:22:30,014 I bet there are\hsome pretty cool videos on YouTube right now, though - 311 00:22:30,014 --> 00:22:31,772 ohhh goodness. 312 00:22:31,772 --> 00:22:33,691 No. Nooo… 313 00:22:34,224 --> 00:22:37,408 Why are these popping up?\hThey have nothing to do… 314 00:22:38,270 --> 00:22:43,708 OK, well if any of you out there have been holding off to make a video, waiting for me to\hdo something, 315 00:22:43,708 --> 00:22:47,318 you go right ahead - I’ll even be on the lookout for ‘em. 316 00:22:47,318 --> 00:22:51,090 And this one’s pretty good if you\hwant to learn a bit about it right now. 317 00:22:52,155 --> 00:22:53,316 Ok bye. 318 00:22:54,204 --> 00:22:56,847 ♫ profanely smooth jazz ♫ 319 00:22:58,039 --> 00:23:01,140 Are you looking for a technological\hsolution to your fear of 320 00:23:02,460 --> 00:23:03,307 nope. 321 00:23:03,307 --> 00:23:08,223 Are you a prude who can't bear the thought\h of your children being exposed to [runs out of air] 322 00:23:08,223 --> 00:23:10,159 oh god I didn't take a breath at the right time 323 00:23:10,159 --> 00:23:13,038 Of course\hthere is a custom circuit breaker... circuit board. 324 00:23:13,038 --> 00:23:14,936 It's not a circuit breaker! 325 00:23:14,936 --> 00:23:19,140 Captioning data\his sent in spurts which encode all the text tood 326 00:23:20,940 --> 00:23:22,020 ugh! 327 00:23:22,020 --> 00:23:27,187 Captioning data is sent in spurts which\hencode all the text to be displayed on - 328 00:23:27,187 --> 00:23:28,077 [laughs] 329 00:23:28,077 --> 00:23:29,444 That's a mouthful! 330 00:23:29,444 --> 00:23:31,847 Which encode all the text to\hbe displayed! 331 00:23:31,847 --> 00:23:34,596 ...which encode all the text to be displayed on 332 00:23:34,596 --> 00:23:36,985 I made it! But I didn't think\hI did! 333 00:23:36,985 --> 00:23:39,387 ...which encode all the text to bees 334 00:23:39,387 --> 00:23:40,501 My god! 335 00:23:40,501 --> 00:23:43,764 All the text to be. Text to be. 336 00:23:43,764 --> 00:23:46,218 That's... all the text to be 337 00:23:46,218 --> 00:23:47,447 Haha, wow! 338 00:23:47,777 --> 00:23:49,443 As much as... 339 00:23:49,443 --> 00:23:51,383 [holding in laughter] 340 00:23:51,383 --> 00:23:52,724 Oh god. 341 00:23:52,724 --> 00:23:54,833 This is like Dietz Nuts all over\hagain. 342 00:23:55,746 --> 00:23:58,119 It's not even supposed to be funny! 343 00:23:58,119 --> 00:24:03,221 It first relies on closed captioning\hto A) be there in the first place, B) 344 00:24:03,830 --> 00:24:07,363 [questioning, contemplative silence] 345 00:24:07,743 --> 00:24:09,590 Oh, yeah that's correct. 346 00:24:10,402 --> 00:24:10,902 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 347 00:24:10,902 --> 00:24:11,402 ______________ _______ __ ____ ____ 348 00:24:11,402 --> 00:24:11,902 ______________ __ __ 349 00:24:11,902 --> 00:24:13,822 SO, WHAT'D YA THINK? 350 00:24:13,822 --> 00:24:14,322 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 351 00:24:14,322 --> 00:24:14,822 ______________ __ __ 352 00:24:14,822 --> 00:24:15,322 ______________ __ __ ________ __ 353 00:24:15,322 --> 00:24:17,575 PRETTY COOL VIDEO, HUH? 354 00:24:17,575 --> 00:24:18,075 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 355 00:24:18,075 --> 00:24:18,575 ______________ __ __ 356 00:24:18,575 --> 00:24:19,075 ______________ __ __ ________ __ 357 00:24:19,075 --> 00:24:19,575 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 358 00:24:19,575 --> 00:24:20,075 ______________ __ __ 359 00:24:20,075 --> 00:24:20,575 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 360 00:24:20,575 --> 00:24:23,716 THIS GAG VIOLATES THE SPIRIT OF NO EFFORT NOVEMBER 361 00:24:23,716 --> 00:24:24,216 ______________ __ __ ____ __ __ 362 00:24:24,216 --> 00:24:24,716 ______________ __ _____ __ __ 363 00:24:24,716 --> 00:24:25,216 ______________ __ __ 364 00:24:25,216 --> 00:24:28,716 FOR SHAME