[Electronics-talk] using SAP feature with Time Warner Cable foraudio description

Fri Feb 6 20:28:03 UTC 2015

Brent,

I've been going back and forth with them regarding this as well.

No.  It is not as easy with the box as hitting a toggle button.  They've 
really made it a royal pain in the ass!  You have to press the Settings 
button on the remote, then there are about 4 or 5 menus deep that you have 
to scroll through to get there.

And, what makes it worse is, you can't really memorize these menus, as for 
one, yes, all of them do! wrap around, and B, the problem that you're going 
to have is, when you go into each of them, they're going to land you on the 
last item you had focus on.  So, if that isn't the first option in the menu, 
then, well, tough!  So you'll never really have good orientation as to where 
you are sitting.

Frankly, I think that TW needs to really get themselves together regarding 
this.  Comcast now has accessible boxes, and others are becoming easier to 
make this happen.  So, what is the deal with TW not really wanting to comply 
with the new accessibility law?  I don't know, but it's driving me insane, 
I'll sure as h e double hocky stick tell you that!

As for it working just by hittung the toggle button on your TV, that isn't 
going to work most likely.  Mainly because the SAP audio comes over a 
digital channel.  If you are using a splitter, then that tells me you're 
going via coax cable, not via HDMI.  Yes, the signal itself may be coming to 
you digitally, but the coax cord is then going to be downmixing it back to 
annalog before it hits your TV screen.  Therefore, the final signal you 
hear/see would be annalog, therefore losing all the extra digital material, 
such as SAP.  Trust me with this, I used to do some outsourcing work for a 
cable company, would rather not reveal which one, but anyway, therefore, 
I've kind a been trained to a point on how this stuff works.

What you'd need, actually, is one of those converter boxes.  This way, you'd 
go into the box from your wall/splitter via coax, then, instead of taking a 
second cord and running coax out of the box to coax in on the TV, what you'd 
do instead is, you'd go out of the wall/splitter to coax in on the box. 
Then you'd go HDMI out of the box, to one of your HDMI in ports on the TV. 
If you don't have HDMI on your TV, then really honestly, you need to 
upgrade.  it's just that plain and simple.  All TV's now adays for the most 
part come standard with at least! 1 HDMI high deff poert.  You might could 
get away with the black, green, and blue component composit plugs, but don't 
count on that giving you SAP.  I've honestly never had the need to try that. 
Really, your best bet would be go into the TV via HDMI with a box.  This 
still doesn't help you much as far as enabling SAP, but at least then, you'd 
be a bit closer to getting there, and this way, I can assure you that your 
hardware would do the job.  Then, you'd not wanna use the button on your TV, 
as you're not running your cable directly into the TV.  You're actually 
running the box! directly into the TV, and your cable! is going to the box. 
Does that make sense?

So, actually to then enable SAP, you'd do it on the box, not the toggle 
button on the TV.  I'm not saying the TV's button wouldn't work, it might, 
but I tend to lean more toward highly doubting it, because somehow you gotta 
tell the box which audio channel to pipe through.  That would be up to the 
box in this dazy chain, not up to the TV itself.

If you have a more complex setup like a home theater receiver, or a 
DVD/Bluray player, or maybe a VCR, or the like, then give me a call, and 
I'll try to help you correctly get things dazy chained.  That's part of the 
free tech support that my job offers.

You can call me directly at:

980-328-8909 Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM Eastern time.

Chris.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brent Harding via Electronics-talk" <electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
To: "Discussion of accessible electronics and appliances" 
<electronics-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2015 3:05 PM
Subject: [Electronics-talk] using SAP feature with Time Warner Cable 
foraudio description

> Hi there! I would like to be able to listen to some of the shows that 
> exist on TV with audio description. I have Time Warner Cable, and right 
> now, I just have the cable line hooked up to a splitter that goes to my TV 
> and modem. My TV does support digital, and has the MTS button on it that 
> would toggle SAP on and off. However, I have never gotten any audio 
> description on any of the channels. I know that through my parents' 
> DirecTV, I have heard descriptions on ABC and Fox for the same local 
> stations I get on cable, and on TNT and USA. I wasn't there when shows 
> might've existed on the other 3 required cable channels, but I'd imagine 
> they would work there. If I decide to pay the extra to get a box, will 
> that likely unlock the SAP audio with TWC? If so, do they have a remote 
> that makes it easy to toggle on and off? I did email their customer 
> service listed on the accessibility page where they mention this feature, 
> and they told me it is supposed to normally work with or without a box, 
> but mine doesn't seem to be. I've gotten conflicting answers on whether a 
> box might be available that has an easy button to toggle it, the email 
> people saying they didn't have access to one where they were, and only the 
> local office might know. They couldn't give me a number to contact the 
> local office though. When I first called to get Internet hooked up, as we 
> have free basic here, the lady told me some box they had in that 
> department did have a SAP button. How can I get to the bottom of this 
> without spending lots of money on cabs and/or install fees to find out it 
> might not work anyways?
> Thanks
> Brent
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