watching English shows with/without subtitles?
Non-native English readers: Do you guys watch American (English) TV shows and/or movies with subtitles or without?
I listen to most Podcasts and watch Videocasts without any subtitles and it works pretty fine (maybe because they’re most tech industry oriented), but when it comes to TV drama shows or movies, I still can’t follow 100% of story details without English subtitles, especially when they discuss topics that I don’t really know about, or some naughty languages that I can’t follow. Examples here are Heroes, the Office and Chuck.
Without subtitles I guess I still can follow 70%-80% which would be probably good enough, but I feel a bit anxious about the rest, and that makes me uncomfortable.
So, to watch TV episodes with subtitles, I do just a bit hard route: download shows in Xvid or DivX files (Don’t ask me how :)) and then download .srt subtitle files from sites like WikiSubtitles in the same directory as the video file. My Miro and Remedie combo really work well together to make this easy and automated.
That said, I’ve made all of these “hard route” pretty much automated using my script thingies, so I’d say I’m pretty happy, but if I could give up subtitles and watch the shows raw (without subtitles), it would be even better: a) I can focus on actors faces and languages instead of keepng my eyes on the bottom of the screen and b) I can watch an episode as soon as I want to, instead of waiting for someone to finish their subbing work.
So I think it’s a trade off in the end. What about you?