Ask HN: Should movie theaters show closed captions you need glasses to hide?
2amichail77/18/2025, 2:24:21 PM
Maybe these could be low-tech glasses similar to those used for 3d movies?
Comments (7)
JohnFen · 6h ago
If people are going to be forced to wear special glasses, wouldn't it be better to show captions in a way that you need special glasses to see, rather than to hide? If I had to wear special glasses to see movies, I'd be much less likely to go see movies.
jasonthorsness · 5h ago
Ha yeah, I think the OP idea is influenced by the solution of using polarization.
But maybe you could do something funky with parallax instead and have subtitle-seating and non-subtitle-seating, then nobody needs the glasses!
amichail · 5h ago
What about the people who have to plug their ears because the sound volume is too high?
JohnFen · 5h ago
What about them? That seems like a different topic. I assume they're less likely to go see movies as well, though.
amichail · 4h ago
Movie theaters would be able to lower the sound volume if they show closed captions.
JohnFen · 4h ago
The volume of movie theaters is not because they think people can't hear adequately if it were lower. It's for psychological/experiential reasons. The volume would not be different if there were closed captioning.
joezydeco · 6h ago
Given the trend of everyone putting text on every social media video and people leaving captions on streaming services all the time, perhaps it will just be a standard in another decade or two.
But maybe you could do something funky with parallax instead and have subtitle-seating and non-subtitle-seating, then nobody needs the glasses!
https://raleighmag.com/2023/09/subtitles-craze/
Netflix is already adapting to this trend.
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/introducing-a-new-way-to-e...