Why Is Everyone Watching TV with the Subtitles On? | Hacker News Reader

Why Is Everyone Watching TV with the Subtitles On?

theatlantic.com

I sound like an old man, but it’s pretty much impossible to understand what people are saying. The current trend of mumbled dialogue is probably great for atmosphere - but I can’t hear what they are saying.

Could you name some shows you like that you believe represent a current trend of mumbled dialogue?

I am 40 yrs old and English is my second language. I cant give you some specific examples but when I watch old hollywood movies (50-60s), I mostly understand dialogues. Dialogues from modern movies are a bit harder to understand and I cant watch any movie without subtitle.

Maybe sound compression ? I need to bump audio to 80 % to underestand anything on Netflix.

I think apart from increased desire to be perceived as realistic today, in old times there was a stronger need to articulate speech clearly, because of constraints in recording and playing audio.

Then conversely, today it seems that filmmmakers often assume their series or movies are consumed on headphones or loud TVs

A film not a show, but Tenet is notorious for this.

I stopped going to the cinema because no subs.

The paradox of going to a theater and keeping a pocket computer in the visual field to exploit real-time transcription applications.

(Which with current state of technology would not work: the automated decryption of mumbling is not yet superhuman.)

I've noticed especially for movies that they really mix for center channel of at least 5.1 audio and if that's not properly down mixed for stereo speakers you get the situation where everything else is crazy loud and dialogue is whisper quiet so I'm turning the volume up and down on movies that my old receiver doesn't play nice with. that and there is some awful audio compressor streaming studios use that makes voices sound "tin can" like but I am told I'm one of the few bothered by it.

Exactly. I find myself constantly switching to non 5.1 audio when watching something on Netflix. I wish they made a setting to make it the default.

I will not avoid watching a show just because it does not have captions/subtitles, but I will enable captions/subtitles if they are available.

(However, last time I have seen a movie, it did have subtitles, but there was also an entire orchestra in front of the picture and the subtitles were difficult to see because the musician's head blocked the view. If I was sitting higher up then I could probably see it better.)

i am an audiologist.. it is great that you routinely use subtitles (if you do) i hear your complaint a lot, along with foreign accents on screens, the pace of dialogue and the 'background track' drowning out dialogue.. while all these may well be the case, if you're pushing middle age, and particularly if you need to watch media much louder than a friend or partner, do consider a hearing assessment. there is really no point putting it off, truly

I see people complain about needing subtitles all the time. I don't have the best hearing but I can regularly listen to video media (TV, Movies, Internet Content(think YouTube / Twitch), Streaming) at very low volumes and hear everything fine. I can only attest to anecdotal evidence but it sure seems to me that folks are just getting older and can't hear and think the problem is with the content but not themselves.

I recognize TVs aren't 1:1 on volume scales. When I am at my house, I can listen to the television at 5 - 15. If I have anyone else over it has to go to at least 40. When I go to someone else's house (both older and younger than myself) but am watching the television by myself I'll turn it down to 10 or so, depending on how far away I am. Everyone else gets concerned like I can't hear it. When I am watching the same content on the same screen with the same speakers, they regularly need it back toward 40 at a minimum.

I have to imagine that while audio mixing may not be as clear as it was before it does not rise to the need to increase the volume as much as folks tend to nor the need to use subtitles.

Personally, and maybe this is from watching anime a lot, as soon as there are subtitles, I read the subtitles and the actual content on the video is lost because now there are words on the screen that my brain needs to read rather than consume the actual content. It turns content into poorly written novels.

This. This is particularly an issue with English-language media. Making out what the actors are saying is effortful and often impossible when they're just mumbling with some bizzare accent.

I also really don't want to miss dialogue every time I'm eating a potato chip or a car drives down the road.

I'm 45 (i.e not a Millennial) and I've turned subtitles on when possible for many ywars because I dislike having to go back and rewatch repeatedly when dialogue is ambiguous.

It's not hard to pay attention to both aspects of a film. Does the author of the article insist on watching dubbed versions of foreign-language films instead of subtitles?

I've noticed that it's much easier for me to understand what's happening on a small TV. As television sets have grown I've found it more difficult to understand dialogue. Perhaps it's because as the TVs grew the output became "boomier", and I just don't like that and it bothers me to turn the volume up too much. Contrast this with older, smaller TVs, the sound had less bass, and was easier for me to turn up without becoming uncomfortable.

I've also noticed a problem understanding speech when watching a big flat-screen TV that is using its built-in speakers. I don't have any problem when watching the same content on my old CRT sets with their better audio range.

I watch them with a 2 second delay on subtitles so I don't read the text before the audio plays.

But if something isn't clear, I can then glance at the subtitles.

I never knew you could set a delay! Is this widely supported?

SRT is a text file with a awk-able format that you can just write a script to update all the timestamps of. There's also a bunch of online services that do it. VLC has it built-in (track synchronisation - you can set delays on video audio and subtitle tracks individually).

A great thing in VLC are "h" and "k" (I think) shortcuts, which shift the subtitles 100ms forward and backward.

Yes, changing the delay of subtitles is extremely widely supported and has been for many years.

At least, that's in the common Open Source video players such as vlc, mpv, mplayer, etc.

The Soundstage of TV and cinema 20+years ago was better. Today's Soundstage doesn't favour voice, instead we are aurally assaulted by staged, sfx, background noises to lend some semblance of reality. It's god awful. I've stopped torturing my aural processor and reparsing mumbled phrases to make sense of the dialog. I've unplugged the bass, I don't want to be shaken off the sofa. AND best of all it's subtitles all the way. Easy ro read, comprehend and no more " WTF did she just say?"

Because dialogue volume is low. Also, the topics of the dialogue and accents are varied, which means that stumble upon words/phrases that I need to backtrack to really hear.

I don't care much if other people use captions or not, but I like to use them. They are useful whether or not you can hear it (I usually can hear it, but there are reasons why it might be difficult for anyone to hear, e.g. other people in the room are arguing loudly). They are not a substitute for having audio settings; I use both audio and captions.

I watch TV with captions on for several reasons:

- Sometimes it is difficult to understand what they are saying, e.g. someone else not on the TV is talking (or other noises outside), or they speak with a strong accent, or I simply missed something, or the audio is unclear or the volume is low (or muted).

- To know the spelling of something which is unknown (e.g. a character's name).

- To know the name of some music. Not all shows have this, but sometimes they do describe this.

- To pay attention better.

- There are others, too.

Sometimes the descriptions are rather worthless, e.g. "male announcer reads text on screen". (This might sometimes be relevant to a plot in a TV show, but I have only seen it in the notices between shows, where such a thing is completely worthless, whether or not you can hear it.) And, sometimes the captions are just badly written (with misspellings, missing words, wrong words, etc), even if it is not worthless; if something is unknown they should try to figure out what they said before writing it. Sometimes the caption writer might have to review the scripts, talk to the people on the show, and/or watch the entire show, before writing any captions, in order to do so correctly, but they rarely do all of that stuff.

On the TV I set up to use opaque outlined fixpitch text but with a translucent background. (I find this easier to read than an opaque or transparent background.) However, on DVD subtitles you cannot change the font, and no DVD player I have is able to change the colour or opacity of DVD subtitles even though their working should make this possible. Fortunately, some DVDs have captions and so this is not a problem.

Some shows have open captions. I dislike this, because then I cannot change the font. I think closed captions are better, even if it is a strong accent or if the speech is in a different language from the text.

A feature I would like on the TV (but which I have not seen) is a "caption scrollback" feature, so that you can view a menu of captions which have previously been played (including hidden captions, which they ought to sometimes do e.g. for clues on Jeopardy!).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36647258

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213136

The Algolia search tool here at HN is quite helpful for checking earlier submissions.

He would be horrified to find out that people are watching movies and tv at 1.25 or 1.5x speeds these days!

It's not just slow paced or talky YouTube videos that get sped up.

Turning the subtitles on is useful when you have to turn the volume down at night. Believe it or not it helps you hear what's being said.

I also use it with the foreign language I am trying to learn. Both audio and subtitles set to the target language is useful. Though as someone has already mentioned, the two don't always match which is both frustrating and educational. You get to hear a synonym or a different way of saying the same thing. It helps fill in the blanks sometimes.

I haven’t seen anybody else mention this but I turn on subtitles, and watch foreign shows because it forces me to turn off my break and focus. If I look at my phone or start reading the internet, I lose where I am in the story. So it’s an escape and the subtitles keep me there without thinking about it.

The audio quality of what we watch is all over the place. YouTube shot on a phone, and a 4 million dollar per-installment miniseries go back-to-back.

We use subtitles because adjusting the audio all the time is crazy. We’ve even disconnected the sub and sound bar because the low audio quality on YouTube causes all kinds of booms and stuff that’s kinda shocking.

Nobody ever talks about the insanely bad quality of audio in amateur productions, but that’s why we always have the subtitles on.

Also, we have a much more multigenerational presence than ever before and the older folks really like being able to see what they can’t always hear.

Sometimes the audio tracks of videos aren't so great (ones that are old or not well-equalized, or in critical quiet passages). But subtitles are an aggravating distraction. Instead I juice up what's missing (YMMV) with this (mobile or desktop) toolbar pop-up browser extension:

https://mybrowseraddon.com/audio-equalizer.html

which can be quickly turned on-off, quickly adjusted, and saves named presets. For me it's been the audio equivalent of uBlock.

Because I don't understand you sloppy mumbling in English.

Who is "everyone"? I don't know anyone who does this unless they're not a native speaker.

EDIT: Might it be because TV speakers are worse than ever? I have a pair of Elac Debut 2.0 F6.2 and an SVS SB16-Ultra so I might be a bit biased. ;>

I'm not English native speaker, I will miss sometimes important stuff.

For my native Polish movies, the sound mixing might as well not exist, it's that bad.

For me it depends on the OS because I don’t mind Apple TV ones but the Samsung OS has subtitles that move around and I can’t stand it.

I don't have a Samsung OS (other than a phone) but it is possible to specify where on a screen a subtitle appears. I've noticed it happening with some shows where they have them high up so they don't block the credits but then go back down later.

The sound mix of tvseries and movies are horrendous, and not optimized for voice at all.

my speakers have never been good enough for crisp vocals with normalized background music and sounds

I just assumed I didn’t pay enough, so subtitles always

Subtitles are a great way to keep me engaged with TV content. When there’s none, my eyes are usually on TV station logos and other annoying distractions which make it hard to concentrate on what I’m actually watching (so I usually get bored and give up) - at the same time they allow me to keep the volume at an acceptable level. The only problem with subtitles is that some TV stations don’t do them properly. They should take some clues from the BBC or Danish TV, who have perfected subtitling, in regarding to font choice, size of black bars and timing the subs to the dialogue.

Btw, streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ suck at subtitling in languages other than English, because they don’t match the audio but are a different translation. If you want to learn Spanish by watching Spanish dubs with subs on those services, you’re screwed. (If you need correct Spanish subs, you need to watch the ad-infested Spanish Disney channel instead)

Is this an ADHD thing? When subtitles are present, they're all I can focus on. I visit folks regularly who need them (they probably just need hearing aids) and whatever we watch is a shitty book because my eyes focus on the words changing rather than the content. We'll get done and I'll be able to tell them what the people said but not anything that happened that wasn't spoken. They (ADHD) can tell me everything.

Because kids are crying

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