Patent ID: 7349429

Claim:
A method for detecting a format of closed caption data contained in a broadcast signal automatically and displaying the closed caption data, the method comprising: (a) receiving information including the closed caption data extracted from the broadcast signal; (b) detecting information on the format of the closed caption data from the received information including the closed caption data and determining the format of the closed caption data; and (c) decoding the closed caption data according to the determined format of the closed caption data and displaying the closed caption data to a user, wherein the format of the closed caption data in (b) or (c) includes one of a format defined by an EIA-608 closed caption standard or a format defined by an EIA-708 closed caption standard, and wherein when the format of the closed caption data detected in (b) is determined as the format defined by the EIA-608 closed caption standard and closed caption data having the format defined by the EIA-708 closed caption standard is received while the closed caption data received in (a) according to the EIA-608 closed caption standard in (c) is displayed to the user, the closed caption data is automatically decoded according to the EIA-708 closed caption standard and displayed to the user.