I do when watching British shows, as I miss some of the stuff being said. This includes some slang that would have gone right over my head if I didn’t see it printed out in front of me. Then it’s fun to pause the play and Google up words like “His Nibs” and “Lie-Low” to see what in the world they’re talking about.
I also use it when my husband’s trying to sleep. The master bedroom is directly above the TV room and sound really travels right up through the floor.
This is me. My wife, however, likes it. We sometimes use it when we’re watching together, and she usually has it on if she’s watching without me.
I vastly prefer to have CC on (except during sports).
humblebrag: I read unusually fast (top 1% according to this) and having CC on gives me the opportunity to focus more on the other things going on in the scene (lighting, composition, actor’s expressions etc)
/humblebrag
I find paying attention to the titles causes me to lose focus on what is happening onscreen.
That said, I do use it if there is so much noise that I can’t hear the set (vacuum, construction next door, etc.)
My answer’s not there.
Sometimes, depending on the accents and diction of the characters… And rarely for the whole show (Sense8 was an exception…the Somali characters, especially, i had trouble following)…usually I’ll rewind and turn them on if I can’t understand a line…or understand it, and can’t believe I just heard what I thought I heard.
Technically ‘never when watching with other people’ applies, but doesn’t really count, because I don’t ever really watch TV with other people.
I love them and I have no hearing problems. Sometimes people mumble, or accents are thick, or say something in slang I don’t understand, or other assholes in the house are being loud, or an airplane is flying over, or a truck rolls by outside.
If I had my druthers, I’d have it on all the time. I do not find it distracting in the least. I’ve been reading most of my life so it doesn’t take away from the picture. I will turn it off if not alone as some others dislike it.
I hate when it’s not available on a DVD and I have turned off a film after 5 minutes if I find the dialog difficult. There are some low-budget DVDs that don’t have it but I consider it a sign of cheapness if they don’t include English subtitles (Breaking Bad, I’m looking at you).
It’s very rare. The only time I use closed captioning is when the character has a heavy accent that I may not otherwise grasp what they’re saying, or the dialogue is particularly fast paced (and it’s likely I missed something, but even then I’m more likely to replay it), or if there’s quite a bit of background noise (explosives, music, crowds, etc.) which may make it more difficult to understand dialogue. Otherwise, it drives me a bit nuts.
Not always, but way more often than I need to.
My brother has some slight hearing difficulties, so I got into the habit of turning it on when he comes over to watch something with me, and I got into the habit and now leave it on most of the time.
Like Channing Idaho Banks, I especially appreciate it when watch British shows because I sometimes have difficulty with the accent.
There have been times where I’ve turned it off because it obscures something important on the screen.
Some Roku channels don’t have it and there’ve been a few British shows on them that I found difficult to watch without it.
I started turning on the captions about five years ago, while watching Dr. Who, because I kept rewinding to try to make out what they were saying, which was annoying and seemed to happen several times per episode. Putting the captions on made it so much easier to follow what was going on that I started to use it for the non-British shows as well when there was a lot of fast talking (e.g., Newsroom). Nowadays I just leave it on all the time, except for talk shows and for live shows where there is a lag between the dialogue and the captions (e.g., SNL), which I find distracting.
I thought I was the only one though. No one else I know seems to do this.
I do, but I’m hard of hearing, and need a hearing aid. Even with the aid, the captioning helps me a lot.
I’m not shilling for the product but I got these wireless headphones when I was in the hospital so I wouldn’t disturb other patients with my TV viewing.
I also use it at home because on the weekends I like to stay up late to watch movies or TV shows I’ve recorded and I like my TV loud but my roommate is a light sleeper and after him bitching a couple of times I just started using the headphones later at night.
So you can mute the TV so no one else hears it and you can have it as loud as you’d like. My only complaint about them is there is about a half second or so delay. So the mouths of the people are a tiny bit out of sync with what you hear. But honestly after a bit I stopped noticing it.
The only time I turn on the CC is when watching British shows and the Britishians get all accenty and hard to understand. Especially with Peter Capaldi on Doctor Who.
I prefer to use closed captions. Sometimes they’re really bad, like on some youtube shows so will turn them off but for Hulu and Netflix I always keep them on. I think it must help me follow along. I don’t really have a hearing problem. A processing problem maybe. My daughter has a diagnosed auditory processing disorder so maybe I’m just used to captions for her.
I find them distracting, but my partner is both hard of hearing and not a native English speaker, so he loves captions.
Hell, no. Partly what Leaffan said about it being distracting, and partly that it messes up the timing (particularly with things like comedy) if I know what people are going to say before they say it.
With my cable service in my area, Cox, the CC always seems a few words behind what the actors are saying. So you can really only pay attention to the actors or the CC. Like another poster up thread I really only turn it on when I don’t understand what someone is saying because of a thick accent. So I’ll rewind and then turn on CC to see what they’re saying and then I turn it back off again.
Captions are generally off, but I have to turn them on once a week or so and sometimes forget to turn them off for a day or two. Reasons to turn them on include actors with heavy accents, actors who mumble, and badly mixed movies with excessively LOUD background music and sound effects. Bad mixing never seems to be an issue with TV shows, only movies.
One cable system we had had a great feature- when you hit the mute button on the remote the closed captions automatically came on. That was an awesome feature.
Same here. Also for anything with Matthew McConaughey.