About a month ago I was about to cancel my Netflix subscription because I was feeling that I needed to make some serious budget cuts in light of making less money than usual last month and the fact that I went months without renting a movie. My decision was delayed when Netflix started offering their streaming movies for free. There was one caveat- there was no closed captioning on any streaming movies. This was a disapointment to say the least. Half the reason that I rent movies is that I know I’m getting a fuller more comprehensive movie watching experience when I can get every word from the script via captioning into my other working sense- vision.
So of course, I write this blog where I discuss these sorts of issues and I went to investigate the situation. First of all, Netflix has a pretty good blog and Neil Hunt, the chief product officer at Netflix, gave a fluent rundown on the technical background of their encoding. In that post, Neil mentions that as far as subtitles, closed captioning, and alternative soundtracks go… “these features are desired for future releases. Delivering closed-captions via the Silverlight player is probably closest, but it won’t be 2008 either.” Not much information to gleam from that- except that its possibly high on their priority list.
The more I think about closed captioning the more I realize that its important to me and it enriches my experience when it comes to the art of movie making. I’m sure other folks out there, who have a hearing impairment, speak english as second language, or just enjoy subtitles for whatever reasons, feel the same way as I do. Its in our best interest to let the people in high places that are in charge of these sorts of things know that.
Sometimes I wonder if the hearing impaired community itself will have to step up to the plate – particularly the technically inclined ones- and make our own solutions with the technology thats available…more on that later.
Contact Netflix and let them know what YOU think:
call 866-7160-0414
or write customerservice@netflix.com
See a discussion on Netflix blog about closed captioning for Roku device
Another good discussion here on a “timetable for captioning on Roku device”
A brief post on the site Hacking Netflix and an ensuing discussion of CC
Heres a link to a deaf customer that wrote Netflix about these issues
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17. January 2009 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the phone number..I called them again!
-J.J. (the guy who wrote the blog about Netflix not being CC’d)
23. February 2009 at 11:52 am
check out hulu.com it’s free and has captions on just about all of their tv streams and their movie catalog is growing with captions as well. spread the word.. oh and it’s free. drop netflix it’s not even worth it if you depend on subtitles.
cheers.
- Deaf guy Dylan
23. February 2009 at 12:29 pm
Hi Dylan,
Yeah I like hulu.com and I use sometimes. But- I noticed that a lot of the shows and movies that I like to watch aren’t closed captioned or subtitled (although to their credit- the number of captioned films and shows is rapidly increasing). For example, I like Saturday Night Live Clips (never captioned) and The Office (sometimes captioned). Hulu is fine and its a well done interface but they only represent a fraction of whats out there (its NBC as I assume you are aware of)…so I’m sticking with Netflix.
I do have an Apple TV now – which up till recently, was able to stream Hulu.com titles to my TV through Boxee. I find it dissapointing that Hulu.com went ahead and put and end to Boxee support. http://lifehacker.com/5156151/hulu-blocks-boxee-tvcom-kicks-early-adopters-in-the-face
In my humble opinion, Online Captioning has a ways to go. Its not ubiquitous and it needs to be represented by solid standards.
Thanks for checking out my site Dylan- I would love to see more conversation around this topic.
David
6. March 2009 at 6:31 am
I hope Netflix continues to work on that kind of support with its Streaming feature – I love the idea of watching movies on the computer or on my TiVo with captioning streaming via online from the internet (Netflix).
I’m going to call them and voice my support for captioning.
Thanks for the well written article!
-Paul
30. May 2009 at 1:07 am
FYI:
Here is a post regarding CEO Hasting’s comments on adding captioning to online video:
http://willworkforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/05/netflixs-annual-shareholder-meeting.html
9. June 2009 at 8:55 pm
thanks so much for this post! I’m severely hard of hearing and depend on closed captions to enjoy movies etc. My boyfriend and I use Netflix and order a lot of videos by mail, but, being hearing, he also gets to watch them online. I was feeling so frustrated about the captioning situation, so it’s great to not feel alone…but even better, through this post I discovered hulu.com. Yay! Can’t wait to watch the Jon Stewart show for the first time in over a year!
thanks again,
Fern
16. April 2010 at 12:48 pm
fyi, Netflix is now rolling out captions
http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitles.html
12. June 2010 at 7:52 am
There is now a petition to tell Netflix to put captions on ALL streaming content. Please sign it and spread the word!
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/deaflix/petition.html
1. July 2010 at 6:06 pm
Thanks for this. I have signed it. I'm also really enthused to see that H.R. 3101 passed. Check it out: http://www.coataccess.org/node/9668