Channels & viewing

[tubeygw]

Since March 2023 I've observed that new titles - or new seasons of existing titles - on BritBox have bad, almost unreadable captions.  Prior to that time BritBox appeared to be showing captions as ordered in my Roku 3's captions settings.  Those settings are Always On and medium-sized yellow graphics on a black background.  Those settings still work on Acorn and PBS (Netflix has their own settings).  They worked on BritBox too, but not any more.  Has anyone else noted this?

I've got a running correspondence with BritBox TechSupport on the issue, but so far no solution.  I even sent them videos of examples cited.

[Kellumvik2024]

I too am frustrated! The words are a ghost. Only on Britbox. 

[Galaxy_Paul · Accepted solution]

Here's the trick that worked for me.

I just discovered that you have change the Roku's settings for closed captioning to what you want — DON’T leave them on the “Default” option.  If you do that, then the changes show up in BritBox!

In other words, even if the default is black and 100% opacity (i.e., text against a black background), you still need to select black instead of “Default” and 100% opacity instead of ”Default”.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does!  Try it on your set up and see if that doesn't work.

What's inexcusable is that BritBox doesn't explain this on its website!  All it discusses is turning captions on and off — but not how to adjust their display (text size, text color, background box color, level of opacity, etc.)

I’m posting this here in the hopes that it can help others as I found no directions for doing this in my several searches at the BB site and around the net.

[tubeygw]

It works!  Thanks for the advice.  I'll pass it along to a friend who's been having the same problem with BritBox.

[Galaxy_Paul]

So glad it worked -- and that I could help!

BritBox really needs to up its game and directions.  But at least we have decent closed captions back...

[LafMoor]

Thank you so much! Inputting preferences in Roku settings instead of leaving them on "default" worked for me as well.

[Birdbrain74]

This did NOT work for me (black instead of default, etc.).

Anyone else have a suggestion?

[RokuElmer-H · Accepted solution]

Thank you for letting us know, @Birdbrain74!

We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. Appreciate the troubleshooting steps you've done so far!

Please be informed that on Roku devices, channels that use closed captioning settings have three customizable style elements: text, background, and window. To customize these settings, please follow the steps below:

1. Press Home on your Roku remote
2. Scroll and select Settings
3. To open the Style menu, select Accessibility and then Caption style. If Accessibility is not listed, select Captions.
4. Adjust each style element. A preview appears with an example of the changes.
   
   • Text – style (font) / edge effect/size/color/opacity
   • Background – color/opacity
   • Window – color/opacity

To access more caption options and detailed instructions, You can visit our support article Customizing Closed Captions

All the best,
Elmer

[Galaxy_Paul]

Intriguing that it didn't work for you!

Which Roku model do you have?

Which OS is it?

I'd give it another try.  Sometimes, it turns out that some step was missed.

The other thing to try is to reboot (restart) the Roku and go through it again!

Good luck with it!

[Jax102]

This solution solved my problem.  Britbox (using a Roku) was defaulting to 100% text color and 100% background color but it wasn't working automatically every day.  It worked 90+% of the time but I was watching a show on Britbox today that was done in Scotland and all of the actors had very thick accents; and, I couldn't read the closed captions due to the black background not working correctly.  Very frustrating.  I did a search and found this topic via DuckDuckGo.  Problem solved; thank you!