archive.today • Why is everyone watching tv with the subtitles on? - The Atlantic
Specifically, it has everything to do with LKFS, which stands for "Loudness, K-weighted, relative to full scale" and which, for the sake of simplicity, is a unit for measuring loudness. Traditionally it's been anchored to the dialogue. For years, going back to the golden age of broadcast television and into the pay-cable era, audio engineers had to deliver sound levels within an industry-standard LKFS, or their work would get kicked back to them.
That all changed when streaming companies seized control of the industry, a period of time that rather neatly matches Game of Thrones' run on HBO. According to Blank, Game of Thrones sounded fantastic for years, and she's got the Emmys to prove it. Then, in 2018, just prior to the show's final season, AT&T bought HBO's parent company and overlaid its own uniform loudness spec, which was flatter and simpler to scale across a large library of content. But it was also, crucially, un-anchored to the dialogue.
subtitles are good whether or not the audio sucks shit :anarchista-chad:
I have watched shows without subtitles before. I'm not a native English speaker, but I do prefer subtitles
its just insurance for if you crunch on food or talk when a line is happening, really.
or [masterlevel] predict & deliver the line at the same time but everyone can see if you were correct
There are just some english accents that im not used to- subs help with that. Similar with words that I havent heard before or that I dont encounter often.
Uncritical support for dealing with learning the worst language on the planet