Abstract: An apparatus for capturing and decoding the closed caption data from a television signal and displaying the closed caption data, along with the video picture, in a windowing environment on the monitor of a personal computer system. The closed caption decoder device stores the line of video data containing the closed caption text in an object in the frame buffer of the PC. The host CPU reads the raw video data from the frame buffer and stores it in system memory. The host CPU parses the line of video data to separate the two ASCII characters representing closed caption data from the color burst information and synchronizing clock information. After the closed caption data has been retrieved and parity-checked, the closed caption data may be displayed in a window of user-determined size and location on the monitor of the PC, independent of the size and location of the video image window corresponding to the closed caption text.