Babel

[leesalogic]

A couple of months ago I watched Babel. As it was starting, I tried to put the subtitles on, but the first few buttons I pushed to scroll to "on" didn't work so I figured I wasn't supposed to know what the other people were saying, thus making a true Babel experience. I found the movie quite good but I had to look at a couple of spoilers to

Comments

[maroonmd]

I think you should! But now I wish I had seen it without the subtitles...

Usually the DVD comes with a subtitled option, so you don't have to use the DVD player's subtitles. Or am I misunderstanding?

[leesalogic]

when I clicked on the subtitles button on my dvd player's remote, the subtitle menu came up in the upper left and said 'off'. Nothing I pressed would make it go to 'on' or even give me language options so that's why I thought the dvd was intended to NOT have subtitles.

I imagine I should have gone to the dvd menu like jhiddle says below, but I thought it was weird that the subtitles weren't a default "on" thing.

[maroonmd]

They've been doing that a lot lately, making subtitles the option instead of the default. It's better than default dubbing!

[jhdiddle]

some dvds are encoaded such that you cannot change subtitle streams while the main feature is playing, only by activating the subtitles using the menu setup. There are a lot of reasons why they do this but most commonly its because there are automatically active subtitles which correspond with certain language choices or the like (things like narrative subtitles...those which translate written on-screen text but not audio, etc.).

Not sure if you are using the remote to try and activate subtitles DURING the feature or if you've tried using the menu setup buttons, but that might be what the problem is.

good luck!

[leesalogic]

That's probably the case and I should have done that! I think it's weird that the dvd didn't default to english subtitles on. This was through Netflix.

[speradon]

Subtitle defaults (i.e. what language activates when on your player) are not just disc-programming dependant, but can be affected by your player's firmware settings (i.e. the player set-up menu). Depending on what you have selected there, the player could force subtitles on or off depending on how the disc was programmed. If you let me know your player (make/model) I might be able to guide you through the firmware.