That's how it starts, then a show doesn't feel right without subs

o_O TIL thanks.

^Hey, let me tell you this secret. Ellen is gonna^

KABOOM

I believe some TVs report that they have surround sound to streaming services despite really only having Stereo. On some services like Prime and (I think) Netflix you can manually choose the audio track. Give it a shot. It's not perfect, but it helps a good bit.

I watched 28 Weeks Later last week, on my 5.1 system, and the mixing was absolutely atrocious. I was constantly adjusting the volume up to hear dialogue, only for a loud as fuck jump scare to blast out my ear drums.

Completely ruined any enjoyment I would have gotten from it.

You can usually set both speed and offset of subtitles. Set both to default, time the first line correctly with offset, go one hour in, time this line correctly with speed. Takes some fiddling, but beats having to stop the movie every 5 minutes.

Oh I hate that' Almost worse than no subs'

YESSS. Cells at Work on Netflix had this problem and I couldn't get past it. Why can't they just have two sets of subtitles and dynamically pick? Or even just like them both. Some content already has "Subtitles" and "Closed Captioning" separately. (Subtitles only has dialogue, closed captioning has sounds as well.)

I wonder if someone could make an ADA or CVAA complaint on that basis? Technically the dub isn't matching the captions, and as a result, someone who is hard of hearing isn't getting the same experience. Someone who is completely deaf won't have a bad experience, but someone who has a disability where they can't hear very well, or have problems comprehending spoken words might have a problem.

This happened when I decided to practice language by using the audio/subtitle options on Netflix. I ended up getting annoyed by the Spanish subtitles and spoken Spanish being different, and I couldn't do both simultaneously.

Btw, some of the puns on Spanish-language Bojack Horseman are even better than the originals. The translation team must have been masters to be that on-point, consistently, throughout a show that practically breathes puns. (Well, puns and tragedy.)

VLC has an option...

If you click "Tools" then "Track Synchronization" it allows you to delay or... speed up? Whatever the opposite of delay is... the audio by fractions of a second. A godsend. So many things would have been unwatchable otherwise.

Seems like it also has a similar option for syncing up subtitles but I haven't used that.

I haven't worked in the field, but oh boy do I ever notice it. Is it the player? The display? The receiver? I don't know, and I will fuck with it until it's tolerable... and then something drifts and I'm clawing at the walls again. Yes, something in my setup sucks, but the gear is all from ~2017 and I'm broke. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My Xbox is connected to the 1080p/low latency HDMI port on my display, with the audio going over optical directly to my receiver, stereo only, foregoing 4K and surround sound for the express purpose of playing Rock Band with as little latency as possible. The two types of guitar and the drum set have slightly different optimal calibration settings in the game. The whole reason I bought a 360 over a PS3 back in the day was that the guitars were still wired, and trying to calibrate while playing on my friend's PS3 was next to impossible and spawned a lot of arguments.

Today, that same friend contentedly watches content 1/4-1/2 second out of sync. And his wife prefers watching everything with subtitles. So I have to actively ignore both distractions and pretend everything's fine to be a good friend. 🫠

Yeah, same. For me, it’s better to simply not understand some words than have the distraction of subtitles on the whole time. Or when needed, just jump back a few seconds to hear it again.