I had this issue recently watching Rings of Power, so much so that I have to keep the remote nearby to change every few minutes. Dialogue volume is so low you have to turn it up, then action scenes happen and the house is shaking.
I have also been doing this for years already. I only watch with subtitles -- no subtitles, no movie -- but I still like the dialogue to be audible without explosions bothering my neighbours.
One of the reasons why I bought an Apple TV was the ability to pair it with my airpods. Makes is super convenient to hear everything if you live in an apartment, also some shows take advantage of the spatial audio which is neat if you don't have a proper sound setup.
I still turn on subtitles tho. On that front I've been noticing some subtitles will not match the english dialogue at all. This is noticeable on the Netflix shows Cyberpunk Edgerunners and Aggretsuko. I'm guessing these shows had their scripts written in non-english languages and that was what the translation teams worked with.
I don't remember the exact lines but I do remember them different enough where you can tell the translations were "strict" whereas the dialogue was more "natural" sounding if that makes sense.
> some subtitles will not match the english dialogue at all
I have the same issues when watching shows and movies translated into German. Trying to improve my level of the language, but with both the dubbed soundtrack and the subs turned on almost every line of dialogue differs between the two. I assume it's because the subtitles generally reflect the original script very closely but the dubbed version requires more rewriting to match the sounds to the lips.
I have this in Spanish and it's frustrating. I assumed that at some point it was subtitled by one group and then later maybe dubbed by another company. I know in places like Italy, most foreign things are dubbed, and in other places in latin america most things are subtitled at least and dubbed second which leads me to this theory. But really I have no clue. A quick google search turned up the first result talking about your idea of matching the lips better and also this "Translators/subtitlers are often given scripts which don’t match exactly what was shot. The subtitling team often has no contact with the sound team, so they may have two different translations. "
German is a bit of a special case. I'm not German, just a learner of the language, but I've noticed they often change the perfekt tense into präteritum. I assume this is because it tends to be shorter than the more commonly spoken perfect tense and is, of course, understandable for Germans, but not so great for language learners.
I mostly watch native German content if I can, not dubbed. There might be additional oddities that you run into with the dubbing for the reasons you mention.
There are also separate devices that take an audio feed from the TV/monitor and feed it to (multiple) bluetooth earbuds. Very nice for viewing after the rest of the family has gone to bed.
Good to know! I love this feature a lot and only thought apple did it. Does it also work for game consoles too? Like playing switch on the tv but feeling audio to your earphones?
It's weird to me to hear people talk about this as a feature because I've always just had a computer hooked up to my TV and I can use whatever audio output I want, headphones, Bluetooth, you name it
It does for ps5, but only if you use Airpods Max (with a lightning to 3.5mm cable) or any other headphones that support a 3.5mm jack. It is actually rather convenient, because you plug into into the front middle bottom of the gamepad, so the cable doesn't get in the way of anything. No bluetooth, unfortunately, unless you are using a 3.5mm bluetooth adapter.
