An open letter to the entertainment industry
To the entertainment industry,
For the past year, I have slowly become a minimalist which meant chucking out a lot of stuff that I did not need and it reached a point where I gave away my films, TV collections and the DVD player away. Keeping a physical copy does not make sense where I can grab it a copy online and watch it via Apple TV. It makes perfect sense that we can grab anything at any time.
This sneak little black device has changed the way we enjoy TV. Easier to access, beautiful presentation and it does not get in your way.
But one thing is holding myself back from buying or hiring content on iTunes or LoveFilm online.
And that is subtitles (or known as closed captioned in the US).
My wife and I are hearing impaired and having this option present is important to us. I had a good look through the iTunes UK store and only find that 208 films are subtitled. For TV? Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
Lovefilm? Absolutely nothing.
The choices of films that are subtitled on iTunes are sparse with big blockbusters films such as Tron: Legacy, The Social Network and Black Swan.
What if we want to see The Godfather? The King’s Speech? Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 1?
What if we want to watch classic TV shows like Life on Mars? The Mighty Boosh? Big Train?
We can’t. We are left out here. If you want to experience how we feel. Watch a film or TV show and turn the sound off. Watch it from start to finish.
How do you feel?
Frustrated?
That is our frustration and we cannot wave it aside because we want to be part of the experience that everyone is having.
Subtitles are there to help us to understand and be part of the film community.
Subtitles are there for the international audience to understand.
Subtitles are educational.
It is time to step up, get more subtitles implemented into those films and tv shows and who knows?
You could end up being the leading standard in this industry to provide this for the international audience online.
Thank you for reading.
Craig
Updates - 20th September 2011
Decided to rent a film, Hanna, on the new Apple TV as it was subtitled/captioned. The result? The service is very easy to use and the subtitles are bang on perfect. Let’s hope there will be more subtitled/captions films coming soon.
Updates - 18th May 2011
Lovefilm has replied!
Dear Craig,
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the availability of subtitles with our watch online service.
I would firstly like to offer my apologies for any inconvenience or disappointment caused.
I can confirm that we do we plan to make our service more accessible to customers who are hearing impaired. At this stage, it is prohibitively costly, and likely to be breach of license agreements, for us to unilaterally develop and implement open or closed captioning for our on demand titles but we will continue to raise this with our licensors. It is worth noting that nearly our entire VOD catalogue is duplicated by our DVD catalogue and most DVDs have some form of English language subtitling and, in some cases, full captioning.
I am sorry that at this time I have no further information relating to this although any changes that shall be made shall be communicated via our website. If you have any other questions or queries then please contact us again.
My thoughts:
- If Lovefilm knew that it would be costly, it would have been a good idea to implement it in the first place to avoid further cost?
- License agreements? I don’t understand. Is this preventing further development to display subtitles to us, the audience? Whatever the matter is, it should have been long resolved years ago.
- Subtitles/Captioning is still a dark issue for everyone. The kind that is at the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.
I have been writing and rewriting this paragraph for the past 15 minutes because I want to increase the awareness for the need for subtitles/captioning. If you want to talk the business side of it, you will be making money out of this by providing this additional service and set the standard for the industry.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at Netflix at how they have developed this for the iOS app (iPhone/iPad). As it is only 30% of their library, it is a great start for them.
Apple, I believe it is your turn to talk about iTunes. I’m interested to hear from you. Let me know your thoughts via my contact page.