this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
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It really is amazing to me how subtitles have become the norm. Everyone I know uses them. And it’s all cause the audio is just trash. No matter the audio setup. Expensive atmos surround sound, entry level sound bar, Sonos whatever, tv speakers. They all sound like shit and everyone uses subtitles.
I think it's also worth acknowledging that subtitles have gotten a lot better. The old school white on black subtitles that I grew up with in the 90s and 00s were very in the way and often added as an afterthought without much care. You had to be hard of hearing or deaf to put up with them. Hell, my hearing father got annoyed with the rest of us for using them. Honestly I'm annoyed they never made a separate screen to put under the TV that would just display the line 21 captions. Hell, I'd love a subtitle standard that would allow me to move them to a dedicated screen under my monitor today, but that's a lot less realistic.
These days they're often unobtrusive and don't feel like they're taking away from what's going on. Though I do wish more content creators were like Technology Connections and made a point to keep important visuals out of the caption zone.
An led panel dedicated for just subtitles is a brilliant idea
I actually feel the opposite. I know the old ones you were talking about and those do suck, but on streaming apps the subtitles are often in the way of things in the show. Even worse, I've seen subtitles go over the top of baked in subtitles in the show, sometimes obscuring text with worse text. The most extreme example being a character speaking another language in the show, the show has baked in subtitles for it, and the streaming app subtitles cover it up and say "speaking Chinese"... Yes I've really seen that happen more than once. 🤦♂️
Oh all those things you're talking about are absolutely still problems, but I feel like they've been problems for as long as we've had subtitles. And that's why I want the second screen subtitles that could go below what I'm watching.
Good subtitling is amazing, and it was better in the closed caption days, but it was super rare and there's no reason modern subtitles can't do it. It could get out of the way, differentiate speakers, even do tone.
Fell down a bit of a rabbit hole there actually, it looks like YouTube doesn't allow positioning even in formats that have it except WebVTT (Bad google). And the most common format .srt doesn't allow formatting at all. Positioning is a vital accessibility feature, and the rest of formatting is just nice to have. Color differentiating speakers etc can be awesome and really just subtitles can add to content beyond just being an accessibility feature.
Relevant technology connections
And yeah, use .vtt captions where possible I guess, especially if you're the one making them. It looks really good at only adding complexity where you choose it.
100% agree on positioning. I think a big issue with that is also that most captions are generated now as far as I can tell, and sometime don't even get the words or spelling right. Positioning being added in a world where they won't even have a human check it seems unlikely 😑
Yeah I agree. But also, generate, correct, position where needed. Yes it adds to editing time, but it also drastically adds to video quality.
AFAIK in movie theatres they have a closed captions system that's basically like an individual teleprompter device for anybody who needs the captions.