My wife is deaf so the increased popularity for English subtitles has been a real boon for her expanded TV choices.
Current audio quality and mixing, but from my personal experience, I needed subtitles even back in the 90s, but my parents were (and still are) weird about it, like it’s shameful somehow. Not because I was dead or hard of hearing, turns out I just have a hard time processing things if there isn’t another stimulus.
Bonus: https://youtu.be/KvOkQXvpAF0
I should hope you’re not dead.
I have trouble making stuff out with modern mixes, but I also get super distracted if subs/captions are on. It’s lose-lose.
It’s because TV speakers are crap and audio mixing is worse. You can’t hear shit. I’ve got good headphones and I’ll watch something on my computer and it’s perfectly understandable. Then I’ll watch the same exact thing on my TV and it’s a garbled mess with the dialog drowned out by ambient noise, explosions, and the music score. No amount of playing with the audio mix seems to fix it. So yeah, subtitles it is.
mumble mumble mumble
INCEPTION NOISE





