Oh, boy... I just tried it in the Krypton beta 6 version of Kodi running under OS X. Depending on the channel, pressing the T key does one of three things: apparently does nothing, or toggles between "Subtitles Disabled" and "Subtitles Unknown" but shows no subtitles, or toggles between "Subtitles Disabled" and "Subtitles Unknown" but does show subtitles after "Subtitles Unknown" is displayed. I also have a Linux box that still runs Isengard and it gets subtitles on almost all channels. And it gets weirder. On some local network affiliates, subtitles in local commercials appear on both systems, but closed captions in network shows only appear in Isengard.
In further testing I think I have discovered a bit of a pattern. When Pressing T does nothing, it's probably because the currently-playing program or commercial does not contain ATSC subtitles. I have figured out that this can change from minute to minute, since some local commercials and some syndicated shows don't seem to contain subtitles (the latter probably in violation of US federal law). When pressing T does not work in Krypton but does in Isengard, it appears there are multiple subtitle tracks (the Next option appears in the subtitles menu) but Kodi does not find the active subtitle track, and clicking Next also does nothing. If there is only ONE subtitle track in the aired content (the Next option does not appear) then it seems the subtitles always display in Krypton when T is pressed.
So my GUESS would be that the problem is that Krypton isn't discovering the active ATSC subtitle track when there is more than one, whereas Isengard was able to find the active one. I never used Jarvis so can't say whether it worked there. Looks like I'm going to have to skip Krypton on my HTPC too, because sometimes I do need the subtitles, particularly when a show has poor audio or the actors have thick accents.
betaelmer, I'm guessing that you only record network shows, and they all have multiple subtitle tracks. Try recording a LOCAL news show and try enabling subtitles while playing that back; I suspect you will find that you see subtitles there because the local news will typically have only one subtitles track.
Kodi's implementation of ATSC closed captions has always seemed to have issues, including displaying apostrophes in words like isn't or doesn't as double quotes (isn"t or doesn"t) or (on some channels) occasionally dropping the last letter at the end of a subtitle. Also italicized text or underlined text is only displayed as normal text in Kodi Isengard, I don't know if that was addressed in later versions or not. The ATSC closed caption standard is actually pretty complicated (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEA-708) and I don't blame the Kodi developers for not following it precisely, but it's unfortunate that it seems to work less well in Krypton than it did in Isengard when there are multiple subtitle tracks.
I would suggest you do some testing to see if you can confirm that subtitles DO appear when there is only one subtitle stream, but that they usually don't appear when there are multiple streams (and that the Switch option does not find them), and then file a
bug report. I'd do it ASAP because with Krypton in beta 6 it probably won't be too much longer until it's released, and once it's released the Kodi developers will not fix any bugs (other than the most serious ones) until the next version, if past experience holds. Many of them so not reside in the USA or Canada, so fixing ATSC subtitles probably isn't a high priority for them.
