Quote:
Originally Posted by poohbear_nc
It's not just me! I had to turn off the first Inspector Lewis episode! The music was SO loud I couldn't hear any dialogue!
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No. It's not just you. The Lewis experience, particularly this past season, has been very bad. I even tried it various "ways;" through Amazon (via Roku); via Acorn (via Roku), and the problem persists. Ditto Broadchurch. I think some of it is a matter of taste, or lack thereof; I had no issues whatsoever with Whitechapel and I still don't have issues with the old insomnia standby, Midsomer Murders (yes...I know it's practically a parody of itself, but after a night of being assaulted by increasingly ridiculous television/movies/whatever, if you want something in the cozy category, it's an alternative, particularly if you've run through other soft stuff, like Doc Martin or Pie in the Sky or the Landscaping Chicks, like Rosemary & Thyme). I can hear Ultimate Force pretty well. Inspector Frost, fine. Old Dalgleish's, (the Roy Marsden ones) not to save our lives. I had problems with Wire in the Blood, via Netflix, from time-to-time..as if it were being broadcast in old Stereo, all via the center speaker, rather than in at least Surround or Dolby. Was mostly able to hear Silk, on Masterpiece, and ditto this last/new Foyle's War, although again--suddenly, Foyle seems to have gone background-music crazier than it was before (verified by watching the first season of Foyle's War on my Acorn-Roku last few days--much, much better sound clarity.)
On US TV..hmph. I don't watch much that is current but I can mostly hear Longmire (pissing me off for other reasons), Justified, Hell on Wheels; The Killing occasionally has issues, both with background music and the "whispery" factor (damn you, Christian Bale and the stupid director that thought that raspy, incoherent dialogue was cool!)...The one-two episodes I tried of Dark Winter Sun (name? The Detroit show) were not dreadful, in terms of being able to hear the dialogue. We have a better-than middle-road sound system, and although we do have issues with bounce/echo (stone floors, high ceilings in the great room), it's not simply that, as we can hear other shows just fine.
I don't know if it's age (cough, cough) or just a "trend" that's gone insane, but,
I do wish it would stop. If I wanted to read my movies/TV via closed-captioning, I'd just read the damn books.
ETA: I should add that while we've had very few problems with most "premium channel" Shows via HBO/Starz/etc., like Boardwalk Empire, Ray Donovan, and the like, we have had issues with Strike Back (soft porn with guns!), again, big sound and music over voices. This is a SA-produced show, so I don't know if their sound codex is the same as the EU, and thus the conversion produces the same problems, and I know that there are HZ differences between the US and the EU that contributes to this. However, a little care during the conversion process before sending them this way would alleviate a LOT of this.
I also admit that the increasing use, in both US and British shows, at least, of actors with the diction of my neighbor's dog--the one that had a stroke and now barks and whines only out of one side of its mouth--is contributing to the problem. Saying I long for the days of "BBC English" sounds snobby, and that's not my intent, but we don't have these problems with the older actors that trained at RADA or for the stage--they have diction and can project. Even with the lovely Idris Elba on Luther--sometimes I have to play back what he's said several times to figure it out, due to the speech patterns of the character he's playing. Like I said...maybe I'm just going deef in my old age, but it's not consistent across all shows, so...hard to know. Frustrating as hell, though!
Hitch