What the small logos on a DVD or VHS box mean

Turn a tape or disc over and the bottom of the back cover is a row of small logos. Most of them describe the sound, the subtitles or the copy protection, and each one tells you something you can record. This page is a reference to use with the box in your hand: what each mark means, and which field of a release in the home video catalog it belongs in.

Age rating symbols have their own guide.

Subtitles and captions

CC. The letters CC in a little TV-shaped box mean closed captions. On an American tape or DVD the captions are hidden in the video signal and the television decodes them; American sets over 13 inches have had the decoder built in since 1993. Captions include sounds as well as speech.

SDH. Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing. These are an ordinary subtitle track on the disc, chosen from the menu, with speaker names and sound cues added. Blu-ray doesn't carry the old hidden captions, so American Blu-rays use SDH instead.

The speech balloon. The National Captioning Institute's mark, a speech bubble with a tail. It means the same as CC: closed captions in the signal. It turns up on many UK tapes, and there it came with a catch. British televisions had no caption decoder, so seeing the captions needed a separate box most people never owned.

How to record them: list subtitle languages in Subtitles, which is free text. The old Filmogs convention, still used on many entries:

• "English (Closed Captions)" when the box only shows CC.
• "English SDH", or "English for the hearing impaired", for an SDH track.
• "English (Requires NCI Decoder)" for a UK tape with the speech balloon.
• "None" when the release has no subtitles.

Sound

Each sound track is one line in Audio, written type, then channels, then language: "Dolby Digital 5.1 (English)", "DTS 5.1 (English)", "Dolby Digital 2.0 (French)". The badges you will meet:

Dolby Stereo and Dolby Surround. On VHS and LaserDisc, a stereo track with surround information folded into it. A Dolby Surround or Pro Logic decoder pulls it back out; without one it plays as ordinary stereo.

Dolby Digital. Also called AC-3. Up to 5.1 channels, compressed. It reached cinemas with Batman Returns in 1992 and homes on LaserDisc in 1995, and it is on almost every DVD.

Dolby Digital EX. Dolby Digital with a rear centre channel folded into the two surrounds, giving 6.1.

Dolby Digital Plus. A newer, more efficient Dolby Digital, used on HD DVD and some Blu-rays.

Dolby TrueHD. Lossless sound on Blu-ray and HD DVD, up to 7.1.

Dolby Atmos. Sound with height channels, carried on Blu-ray inside a TrueHD track. A player or amplifier without Atmos plays the TrueHD part.

DTS. Called DTS Digital Surround on most boxes. 5.1 channels at a higher bit rate than Dolby Digital. Optional on DVD, so its badge is worth recording.

DTS-ES. DTS with a rear centre channel, 6.1.

DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and DTS-HD Master Audio. The Blu-ray versions. High Resolution is compressed; Master Audio is lossless.

DTS:X. DTS's answer to Atmos, with height channels, carried inside a Master Audio track.

PCM or LPCM. Uncompressed sound, common on Blu-ray and on music releases.

Hi-Fi. On VHS, "Hi-Fi" or "Hi-Fi Stereo" means the sound is also recorded by the video heads, in much better quality than the thin linear track along the edge of the tape. A tape marked Hi-Fi still plays on an older VCR, which reads the linear track instead.

If the box says only "Stereo" or "Mono", write that.

Copy protection

Macrovision. A system that disturbs the video signal so a copy made on a second VCR rolls, flickers or fades. Tapes and DVDs that use it often say so in the small print. There is no field for it, so write "Macrovision copy protection" in the notes. The anti-piracy and "not for rental" warning screens that play before the film can go there too.

Packaging marks

VPRC. The Video Packaging Review Committee, a UK industry scheme that checks sleeve artwork. Its small symbol usually sits near the copyright line on the back. Entries record it in the notes as "VPRC (Video Packaging Review Committee) approved", and the UK Death Sentence DVD shows the wording.

"Not for rental" and "Rental copy". These matter more than they look, because a rental edition is a separate release. See what makes a separate release.

Picture

16:9, Anamorphic or "Enhanced for widescreen TVs". The picture is stored at full widescreen resolution rather than letterboxed inside a 4:3 frame. Put the ratio in Aspect Ratio and the wording in brackets if you like, as in "2.35:1 (16:9 Anamorphic)".

THX. On LaserDisc and DVD, the THX logo means the transfer went through Lucasfilm's THX mastering programme. It goes in the format description or the notes.

PAL and NTSC. Usually printed near the region symbol. They go in **Color Encoding System**, shown on the entry as Video Standard; the region codes guide explains why they matter.

Record what the box says

A logo tells you what the release claims. If you played the disc and found something different, such as a DTS badge with no DTS track, record what is really there and note the mismatch. The next person holding the same box will want to know.