Talking of subtitles on iPlayer … When I download Rownd a Rownd and Pobl y Cwm to watch later (somewhere else) I always watch each episode twice, once without subtitles and then again with subtitles to clarify any bits that I didn’t understand. This works fine on the tv (orange subtitles) but when I try to watch on my tablet the subtitles are in black on a grey background. This means that probably 90% of the time they are completely unreadable. Has anyone else found this or is it just me? Does anyone have a solution?
I don’t normally download TV programmes, but just watch via the browser, but just to try this, I just downloaded a recent episode of RaR and watched some. The subtitles are fine, although look slightly different to when I watch via Clic. They are white, without a background, and quite visible. I think they use multiple colours for different characters on Clic - useful - can’t remember if that’s just Welsh.). Oh hang on…just tried watching part of the same ep. via my browser in iPlayer, and the s/t’s are multiple colours (similar to Clic I think … not sure if identical). So there is definitely a difference (subtitle-wise) between watching via iPlayer in the browser and watching via iPlayer Download, and the former is better (IMO), although the latter is still watchable/usable.
That was all on a W7 PC with latest Chrome. Sorry, no direct relevance to your tablet though.
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As a matter of interest, how are you watching it on your TV? Is it internet enabled, i.e. “smart TV”, or is it cabled to a computer, or some other way? Thanks.
It is a Samsung smart tv and a Samsung note 10.1 tablet. I think I’ll send a message to iPlayer and see what they say. It’s maybe an issue with the device though.
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Diolch Gruntius.
Well, while I am awaiting a reply from S4C and possibly the BBC again, I thought I would have a look through the complete S4C schedule to see how many programmes actually had Welsh subtitles. It’s been a while since I’ve looked through the complete schedule, and I was shocked to be honest with what I found.
There are 9 days displayed on the S4C website amserlen, and the results were as follows:
Mawrth (14ed) - 0
Mercher (15ed) - 5
Iau (16ed) - 5
Gwener (17ed) - 4
Sad (18ed) - 2
Sul (19ed) - 8
Llun (20fed) - 2
Mawrth (21ain) -1
Mer (22ain) - 2
Total for 9 days = 29
I haven’t worked out the percentage, but you can bet it’s pretty low. (Just over 3 programmes per day on average).
(I may have missed the odd one, but the results are in the right ball park).
A very small number of programmes have no subtitles at all, and I think one had Welsh s/t only.
Well, given that the number of people who actually want or need Welsh subtitles is only a minority of a minority, and given that the number of programmes for which they currently exist on S4C is only a small proportion of all the programmes, I can see from a bean-counter / management perspective that there is little case for expending any resources on this to make those that exist on Clic also visible on iPlayer.
Of course my personal point of view is somewhat different. It seems a shame to me that if they were going to go to the trouble of showing S4C programmes on iPlayer, then they should have gone the extra mile and made all existing subtitles available.
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Well, on a positive note, while looking through the schedules, I discovered a programme I didn’t previously know about (which does have subtitles in both kinds):
http://www.s4c.cymru/clic/c_level2.shtml?series_id=496142073
“Llwybr yr Arfordir”
(5 episodes currently available, as of 15 Mis Gorffennaf 2015)
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There may be a “solution” (more of a workaround) to the lack of Welsh subtitles on iPlayer.
However, it needs, not guru techy skills, but some willingness to get hands dusty, if not exactly dirty, willingness to install a couple of things, and being prepared to fiddle faddle around a bit.
I can also only verify it works on a Windows 7 platform, although I suspect it should work on at least some other platforms, including non-Windows, but I can’t help at all with those.
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If you are not put off by the above and are really keen to have Welsh subtitles within an iPlayer-like environment (only for those programmes which already have them on Clic, which as you will see from the previous posting is only a very small proportion of total programming), then you might want to PM or email me.
(Note: This does not involve anything to do with getting round geo-restriction, so please only get in touch if you can already get S4C/BBC tv programmes via the web).