iPod does not have captioning capabilties as confirmed by an article and in this Washington Post interview and many blog comments / postings. There is also a good article on the topic, but I can’t share the article with you because it’s copy-protected AND you have to register to view the article. Hence, my rant about registration-required sites.
Back to the topic. This CBS News article is a little confusing about the issue. It says:
“Search engines and podcast directories generally index audio and video by analyzing text that appears near the file or using humans to create summaries. Some also pull closed-captioning transcripts from video programming, but user-generated content generally carries no closed captioning.
“Chandratillake said Blinkx attempts to fill the gap by using speech-recognition software to transcript feeds when closed captioning is unavailable. It already indexes feeds, mostly video, from companies with which it has deals, including CNN, the British Broadcasting Corp. and Movielink LLC.”
Speech recognition software has a long way to go before it can fill this need.
Here’s another discussion on the topic at tuaw.com. Apple is not violating the FCC law on captioning. The law states that television sets 13 inches and larger are required to have captioning built-in. I’ve yet to find a small TV or DVD player that has captions and just have to hope the DVD already has subtitles or forget it.
I have an iPod as I use it to practice listening with the implant. Otherwise, I would’ve never bought it as it doesn’t display lyrics or captions and neither do most (covering myself) other media players. Feel free to leave feedback for Apple.