Having arrived a little early at the pub last night, while I was waiting for my drinking buddy, Pete, to arrive I found my eye drawn to the TV in the corner which was on but with no sound. The channel showing was a news channel with an auto-captioning system.

I love watching auto-captioning because it doesn't always work properly.
So, in the item about the Strauss-Kahn rape allegations the phrase "in view of the people's objection" was shown on screen as "in view of the purple of ejection" while in the item about Birmingham Council's defeat in the matter of disability benefit cuts a woman with cerebral palsy was described as having "a real bore palsy".

There were probably lots of others but at that point Pete arrived and conversation took over.

There's a large-screen TV in the reception area at work which is permanently tuned to the BBC's rolling news channel, with captioning on and the sound off.

Almost every time I pass by my eye is caught by the TV, and there is usually some mistake in the captioning every few minutes, although I can't think of an example at the moment.

Often, when a new item is started, the pictures show one story, the captions are finishing another, and the "Breaking News" ticker is referring to yet another. Being a bear of very little brain, I find it difficult to take in what's going on sometimes. How deaf people manage I've no idea.

In a similar vein, what always gets me is when a restaurant or bar has a TV up, but no sound. I suppose if it's a ballgame, people can at least see what's happening. However, sometimes it's a sit com or other show. What's the point?

I agree with you. Although I have sat in pubs where a film was showing without the sound, and the customers were so familiar with it that they could follow the whole thing regardless!