Even on my nice 2.1 setup on my PC, I always put captions on.

It's because re-reading a word I didn't understand is much faster and easier than re-hearing (in my head) a word I didn't understand.

It's even happened with my spouse, in the same room, speaking the same dialect of American English as me, with the same accent. I mis-hear one word, and it bleeds into the next word, and I need to think for a few seconds or ask them to repeat before the sentence makes any sense to me.

Perhaps us, and the TV actors, just don't enunciate like we used to?