Does anybody not with a hearing problem use CC while watching TV, ala me and my wife?
She discovered it a few years ago when she took up her exercise bike and learned she didn’t like to listen to the TV shout at her all the time. She immediately fell in love with using it and introduced it to me right off. I thought it would really detract from the images, but it doesn’t, not really - at least, not during the avg. TV show.
Now we’re hooked (she more than I), especially with the baby in the next room - we can turn the sound down and still not miss a word*. She uses it more than I, though, as I find it to be a major pain in the butt during sporting events.
*Well, most of the time. Some of the CC’d stuff is not very well done (major contractions that get the gist of what was said, but not actually what was said). Also a number of ads do not have CC, which I find odd - why not add it?
I use CC occasionally - more often with recordings, if the sound is kinda bad, or I’m trying to figure out a line, or a character’s name or something. Sometimes it’s distracting, though, because I get concentrating on reading the dialogue, and don’t pay attention to what’s happening in the scene.
I’ve used the subtitles on a DVD when watching a movie made in (I think) Ireland. The accent was so thick I seriously couldn’t understand it.
I’ve also done it while watching West Wing because sometimes the dialogue is too quick and too quiet to pick it up. By reading the WW threads here, sounds like several people do that. So you’re certainly not alone in using this feature!
I also use it to pick up dialogue I miss – my TiVo remote has a “jump back 7 seconds” button. I use it on Buffy a lot; the combination of excellent dialogue and poor sound editing make it a must.
I do sometimes also mute the TV and read the captions (which on my system come on automatically when the sound is off) when I’m on the phone. Don’t tell my friends!
I do have a hearing loss, but my hearing aids correct it. Besides, if I were to be miraculously “cured” right this very moment I think I would keep using captions.
I love them because they tell me everything that’s said, period. There’s no guessing there. I just read it off the screen. I turn the CC on for everything (including videos, DVDs, and games that have it) except live events and award ceremonies because the scrolling type of captions they use there are extremely annoying and always lag behind.
I also find it helps me recall the spelling of character and place names a lot better and I get jokes on sitcoms much more often.
Since almost all of the TV I watch is on tape, I don’t keep the CC running, I just go back and turn it on whenever I miss a word or phrase.
To answer the OP’s question, most ads don’t really need CC. They usually display the name of the product and often the logo and/or slogan prominently onscreen, and that’s all the information that the ad really needs to convey. Ads are generally designed to convey their message (“Buy this!”) either visually or by audio, so you don’t need to have both to understand them.
I’m another hearing-enabled viewer who often uses CC. It comes in handy when you talk on the phone. Also, many musical observations are made apparent that I would have missed out on otherwise, like:
–The time on “The Andy Griffith Show” when that band comes into town and recruits the guitarist. When they initially drove into town, the driver hit the car horn prompting this caption:
car horn playing “My Dog Has Fleas”
I never would have caught that, being a bit young, and that’s how I learned of its existence.
–The time on The Brady Bunch when Jan tried out to be a cheerleader, and they played The Washington Post march. I saw the caption identify it like above, realized that I heard that piece before, and, interested in more music of this nature, immediately went looking for more stuff by Sousa.
I recommend CC for moments such as these to catch inside or obscure jokes or allusions.
I love captioning. I don’t use it too much when I watch regular television shows (mostly because I rarely watch anything but the news and scrolling captions are annoying), but it’s practically a must for movies.
The rest of my family hates it, but at least I don’t have to crank up the volume to hear everything.
I turn it on all the time. It’s the very best feature of DVD, in my opinion. Although I don’t have any hearing loss (and I just had it tested after a particularly nasty inner ear infection), I’ve noticed that many of the sound effects in movies seem too loud compared to the dialogue – I feel like I literally can’t hear the actors speaking, because the music, or explosions, or whatever, is too loud. Since it’s not my hearing, it’s probably something to do with my concentration abilities, I don’t know. But the subtitling feature is wonderful!
I have noticed, not so much with TV shows, but with films, that I do tend to focus on reading, and miss some of the cinematography. That’s a film snobby thing to say, but I have become more aware of it. For something particularly good, I’ll try to give it one viewing with subtitles, and one without, to spend more time appreciating the visual elements.
Me and my wife leave it on all the time. It’s helps her improve her English (her native language is Spanish). When we watch Univision, about half of those programs have Spanish captions, helping me with my Spanish.
I think we discussed this before, but I can’t find it. I often watch television in the middle of the night, with the volume very low, so I’ve gotten in the habit of watching with captioning. It’s also handy for not missing dialogue when your roommate comes in the room and asks loudly right over the middle of Elrond’s monologue, “Why do you have the captioning on?!” :rolleyes: I had a moment with a cute captioning joke like Joe K. In Cats & Dogs, as the kamikaze ninja cats are gliding away, they make catlike noises. The caption reads: [Meowing in Japanese].
I got in the habit of watching CC when I was living in a college dorm. I figured out the best place to keep my TV was in one of the un-used closets, but that also meant 1/2" of plywood between my TV and my neighbor’s room.
Now it comes in handy because it’s too cold to sleep with my door closed (and/or the dog needs to be able to roam away from my bedroom) so I keep it open and don’t wake up folks in the neighboring room.
I really hate when shows don’t have CC - especially PBS shows That’s like…illegal of them!!!
The only time i purposely turn off CC is when I watch “Blind Date” (can you tell I don’t have cable?) because there’s so much text overlay on the screen. It all gets covered up by CC.
I like watching CNN’S Closed Captioning get reduced to gobbledygook. “Yes, Wolf, aas I sard berfr4 idgyui denth ofre thark.”
You know what’s even better than CC for non-disabled audience members? The feature, I’m not sure what it’s called, for blind people. It has a narrator describing character’s actions in between dialogue, and it’s hi-larious.
We always leave the CC on. I think that we started because we watch a lot of anime, and the translations run like captioning. Now, whenever I don’t see captioning on the bottom, I’m much less likely to watch whatever it is. I pay a lot more attention to the show, and I have no problem reading the captions and watching the action at the same time.
We did have to turn off the captioning everytime we watched The Tick cartoon, though. It would spoil all of the wonderful lines to read them before they were said.
Not for tv, but if a DVD has subtitles I turn them on. My hearing is more or less normal, but allergies frequently “stuff up” my ears as well as my nose so I find it nice not to have to turn the tv up loudly in order to catch all the dialogue.
We leave the CC on all the time. I can hardly stand to watch a movie without it now. We started using it because our toddler always wanted to play with an especially noisy toy when our favorite TV show came on.
CC can be funny when it tries to describe sound effects: [thwack!]
The X-Files episodes sometimes end with a Scully monologue. Often the CC monologue will be completely different from the audible one.
The only problem with CC it is that it covers up part of our cable on-screen programming guide.
Descriptive Audio Service. SAP on your audio dial ().
Helping the blind and the deaf is a lot of fun, it seems. I’d be interesting in working in either CC or DVS, I think. I always use captioning for some reason. I’m so used to it, I caption things in my head when there is no CC!
I turn the sound off & captions on when the kids that I’m babysitting haven’t behaved. Thus, they have to read the tv–that way they are paying full attention to it & I can do other stuff
That’s like…illegal of them!!!
).