My theory about the more widespread use of subtitles when watching modern film and TV productions is that it is in large part due to screenwriters trying to wri

My theory about the more widespread use of subtitles when watching modern film and TV productions is that it is in large part due to screenwriters trying to write (and directors to direct) more realistic dialogue. Just by itself, everything else equal, realistic speech is necessarily harder to grok than “played out” theatrical. In real life people who can hear generally benefit from drastically higher fidelity and wider dynamic range of sound, as well as many more cues and context compared to a linear film (plus the ability to ask someone to repeat). This clashes with screenwriters having to[0] put crucial information in the dialogue, the rule of only saying something once, and other writing and production practices (which also exist for a reason). Realistic dialogue that is easy to grok requires cooperation from many sides. That said, technical aspects matter, recording practices, mastering for loudness with little dynamic range (so that compressed voice blends with foley and the rest), and indeed encoding can definitely affect the ease of understanding human speech. Speaking of encoding… I couldn’t find it on the site, is Streamliner a one-time purchase? [0] Well, not every film has to (Upstream Color comes to mind, as an example of a film with relatively little plot-advancing dialogue), but it seems that the majority of productions rely on dialogue and it isn’t going away.