Today while visiting my Mom I saw, well heard, the strangest thing while watching a Christmas movie
on the Hallmark channel.

The TV had closed captioning on, but instead of seeing audio descriptions displayed like "[sighs]",
I heard a background narrator speaking in a lower voice actually describing the action going on
by saying "she sighs", or "he puts his hands in his pockets and looks down"...So strange!

It’s called DVS, descriptive video service. There’s actually some DVDs that have it, I remember listening to part of one for Basic Instinct. It’s for visually impaired people to enjoy movies.

Yeah, I once borrowed the Godfather from the library, and it opened with someone describing the motion of the opening logo. Once I figured out what was happening, I decided that was a bad way to experience The Godfather for the first time and turned it off.

I'll hate to hear the play-by-play when the action gets hot and heavy on screen

If I recall, Basic Instinct starts like that but the voice has to keep an even tone so as not to editorialize what’s happening in the movie.

That has made a major comeback in recent years, being on most Blu-rays and even on streaming movies now- I think all new movies on Disney, HBO and Netflix have them. Some of them describe everything neutrally, I remember on the “We Are Your Friends” DVD a woman does the track on that and says in a pleasant and humorous tone “a young man trims his pubes.” There’s a few porn clips online with audio description also, one site has them in a special section. You can’t switch to the regular track on those.

I'm very weird. I never use subtitles on regular tv content, but I always use subtitles when streaming movies/series. Doesn't matter if the movie is in French or English or any other language, I use subtitles. I't like I panic when they are not there.

I watched part of Glass Onion on Saturday, and my niece insisted on turning on closed captions. I was like why, we are not going to make any noise and just enjoy the movie, but she said that sometimes it sounds like an actor is mumbling and other sounds might be hard to make out so she insisted on the closed captions. When I finished up the film the next morning I did not turn on the subtitles because my apartment complex can get pretty quiet so unless there is an issue with the audio on a show/movie I can hear everything just fine. Of course, sometimes there is an issue with the audio track and subtitles even on an English language film are a blessing in disguise.

You blasting the audio when streaming? The speakers on my computer are nothing compared
to my TV speakers. If you're in a noisy environment, I can see why you have the subtitles on...

PRO TIP: If you're watching something that you're only like half-interested in,
turn up the playback speed and turn on the subtitles. You can thank me later

I've been using subtitles for awhile now, especially on blu-rays where the dialog sounds muffled a lot of the time. Also, when the music/sound effects are louder than the dialog. Some of that might be my hearing loss (a LOT of concerts in my younger days), but I blame some of it on poor mixing, because the dialog on most older DVDs still sound clear to me.

When I'm presented with plain subtitles and/or SDH, I always choose plain because I don't need to know that the wind is blowing or the door is closing.

New VOX video about TV and movie audio and why subtitles are becoming more popular to use:

Interesting how technology is making things worse for the average listener/viewer. It seems like the people doing the work are aware of this but they are pushed to lower dialog, brickwall cds and make TV movie so dark they are unwatchable. I bought a soundbar so I could could put on enhanced dialog mode but then the whole mix sounds off. Subtitles it is.

That video has been posted here (in the Pet Peeves thread) and other movie sites.

It all boils down to sound engineers who just aren't capable of creating properly balanced sound mixes where *voices* are favored over anything combined with "actors" who just do not know how to properly speak (mumble and/or "whisper talk" - both incredibly stupid methods for an actor to properly communicate) and occasionally directors/producers who think the dialog doesn't really matter (not surprising considering the trend towards loud action movies). Proper enunciation was once something to strive for, in private *and* public lives, and especially on stage, in movies, and on radio. Proper speaking skills and good audio mixing are lost arts.