All the time, 99% of the media I consume is in English and my English is not good enough to catch everything the characters say when speaking too fast or if there is loud music or other noise.
My son laughs at his parents for this, the disrespectful no-longer-so-little scamp (he learned English by pure internet immersion (never took a formal class), to the point that his spelling is far better in English than in Spanish and he doesn’t need subtitles at all).
Not if I can help it.
It significantly changes the experience, knowing what characters will say a split second before they actually say it. It’s particularly deleterious with comedy that depends on timing.
Plus, subtitles can reveal mild spoilers. I can’t think of any real live examples right now, but something like (footsteps approaching) can shine a spotlight on something that I might otherwise dismiss as background noise.
But I do sympathize with those of you who have trouble hearing. Subtitles are preferable to not being able to understand what people are saying.
Anything from a streaming service has the subtitles on. Anything live does not. We got in the habit of having them on because we watch a lot of British shows, and many of the accents can be incomprehensible to an American (Scouse, anyone?). And yeah, my hearing ain’t what it used to be. Too much time in construction without wearing ear protection, probably.
This is my take for about 70% of the reason why I always have subtitles on when available, despite being just shy of 50 with average hearing. The other 30% is that most of the time I’m watching TV with the wife while eating dinner - and hearing dialog well while eating is much more challenging. So an extra personal, but almost certainly not unique, consideration.
Pretty much never. The captions usually aren’t right anyway.
To @silenus and other poster’s points, I grant that “live” TV CC and subtitles is often inaccurate and delayed to the point of uselessness, but subtitles in other formats are generally far more accurate, depending on the effort the source put into such.
Perhaps you are a millennial?
(Scouse is the only subspecies of English I have personally encountered which I could not comprehend.)
Like folks have said upthread - 100% of the time. I am older, and have good hearing, but the sound mixing is horrible. The constant need to play music on TV shows or movies disrupts the dialog, and the captions keep me from having to re-wind to hear what they say.
The sound quality of modern movie dialog is awful. I think I read that Atlantic article already – multiple explanations but the one that rings likely-true for me is that they were engineered with high-quality digital surround sound theatre equipment in mind and it just doesn’t work on a home television very well. Neither does the damn video portion – dark scenes are pitch-black most of the time! “What’s happening?” “Something is going ‘thud’ and I heard an ‘ouch’, I think she threw something…”
ETA after reading the article: no, the one I read was not the Atlantic article, it was a different article.
Nope, late GenX. But I have no problem with most English dialects and accents.
Always on.
When I walk in the door, the hearing aids come out because I hate them.
When it’s time to flop in front of the TV for an hour or two its with subtitles on.
The only English-language program I ever tried the subtitles on was Doctor Who, specifically the 12th and especially the 13th, because they had some roles/actors whom I just could not understand, partly from accent and partly from either talking too fast or talking across each other. Subtitles helped, but I still didn’t enjoy it, so basically I gave it up. I haven’t tried it again with the new Doctor.
I’m very hard of hearing, so I keep the titles on all the time. I can’t tell what’s being said otherwise.
Don’t those of you who are hard of hearing have hearing aids?
All the time. Hard of hearing, and I watch a lot of British media. Most UK accents I have no problem with, but every now and then I’ll run into a Lucy Beaumont or Kevin Bridges or Saoirse Monica Jackson, and my ears will have to own themselves defeated.
Same here- pretty much always. My hearing isnt bad for my age, but still…
I started when they had accents, then realized i could read the subtitle no problem. If you dont come from around there a Glaswegian accent (for example, also Scouse) is pretty much gibberish.
That was me watching Ted Lasso. I couldn’t hear a couple of the characters that had thick British accents, but my wife was annoyed by the subtitles, so I got creative. I’d fire up AppleTV on my phone and keep it on my lap. I had my phone muted and timed about ten seconds behind the TV, so if I couldn’t hear something, I’d glance down and voilà! (or Blimey!)
After my audiologist said I should have CC on, my wife’s been more accepting of captions. But I wish every channel would support customizing the size (I think it’s Amazon Prime that does that).
I turn them off for sports, not just because they obscure the action, but also because there’s so little that the announcers say that anyone needs to hear.
Turn 'em on.
Hey, I get it, I’m an aesthetic person, and it hurts to have clunky type on the screen. But someone who can’t catch everything is suffering a lot more.
Hmmm, how about: “Hey, hon… you clean up from dinner, and I’ll go set up the Closed Captioning…”
My wife and I always have them on, with the possible exception of foreign films that are already subtitled. I don’t always need them, but I don’t find them distracting so why not?
I didn’t mention it in my post, but yes I do. Doesn’t always help though. There can be background noise, or the dialog could just be difficult to understand. Sometimes I bump my hearing aid volume a notch or two, and that helps.