topic Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming in Android TV

KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

reiche1 — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 12:17:45 GMT

When watching TV (as in DTV - DVB-T) subtitlesunfortunately seems to affect the brightness of local dimming. I have currently set local dimming to low, but display of subtitles still affects the contrast of a large area around the subtitles. This is not very clever!

Perhaps a smaller size or less bright color of subtitles could help to lower the impact of subtitles? But I can't find any other settings of subtitles other than on/off and language, is this really what is possible?

I would like to select colour or brightness, font-size and position of text. Also details of the subtitles bar would be handy to be able to change.

I'm currently running Android 6.0.1 3865.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 13:27:36 GMT

Hi there

Unfortunately you cannot change the characteristics of subtitles. Even though the following thread is 4 years old, it is still the same for today.

https://community.sony.co.uk/t5/other-tvs/enlarge-subtitles-on-bravia-kdlex650/td-p/644592

Cheers

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

reiche1 — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 14:16:09 GMT

Hmmm... I'm dissapointed. Maybe all TV engineers come from regions where dubbing is preferred to subtitles...

At least Netflix cares about it.

Is there anywhere to parse on the request for Sony? Or is it not worth the effort...

My Sony PS3 got some "subtitle style" option on the "triangle" menu. But the with the current blu-ray there is none. So I'm watching a letterboxed movie with subtitles (both single and double line) are positioned inside the "moviebox" with a large black box below. Not clever at all 😞

/Reiche

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Aug 2017 20:08:05 GMT

Hi there

Unforunately there is no point passing this onto Sony, as they cannot do anything about it. Subtitles from 'Freeview' transmissions (i.e. DVB-T/2) come from the broadcaster. The broadcaster must also comply with the agreed industry standards.

Streaming Apps like Netflix are different and hence can implement subtitles their own way.

Cheers

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Jecht_Sin — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 10:44:39 GMT

Quinnicus wrote:

Unfortunately you cannot change the characteristics of subtitles.

@reiche1 Have you tried to go to Settings/Accessibility and then.. Subtitles? At least in Android 7.0 that works with the YouTube (and others) subtitles at least. It has all kind of options.

I strongly hope, since that's for the Android system subtitles, it will work for the DTV as well (I don't use the aerial, so I can't check).

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 13:25:14 GMT

@Jecht_Sin wrote:

Have you tried to go to Settings/Accessibility and then.. Subtitles? At least in Android 7.0 that works with the YouTube (and others) subtitles at least. It has all kind of options.

I just tested this - doesnt work for broadcast TV due to the reason I listed above. Worth a shot though.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

reiche1 — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 19:06:53 GMT

So it has a subtitle setting 🙂 I hadn't found that option. But as Quinnicus stated, it doesn't work for DTV.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

reiche1 — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 19:27:41 GMT

Back to the original answer from Quinnicus...

I did assume that subtitles were broadcast as text, but even if it is bitmap it would be possible to either make it more or less opaque. And even resize it, in my case I think that 75% size would be more adequate.

Currently I have starting to set blackness level to low, and even with local dimming set to high (used to be low or medium), it does seem to positive effect on the problem. But I haven't had a really dark seen with subtitles yet.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Jecht_Sin — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 10:15:00 GMT

Yeah, thinking better about it, if they are the "old" Teletext subs there is little one can do. Although if those are the subs I remember them coming with a black background when I was in UK (ages ago). In my tests with other subs that alone removed any glowing effect. Is it like that or now things are different? I mean, just curious. And I can't test it much, only few shows have subs in Italy (but when they do it still says they are on page 777 of Teletext - Televideo in Italian). Are the UK subs coming from the same source?

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

MiCal1967 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 13:51:23 GMT

You mean that also in Italy most movies are dubbed? I would never enjoy a dubbed movie.

I have the same issue with subtitles but only when manually adding them in kodi for example. In my country subs are embedded with video transmition.

Kodi has some options for font color and others

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Jecht_Sin — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:21:21 GMT

MiCal1967 wrote:
You mean that also in Italy most movies are dubbed?

Oh, you can easily say that practically all movies and TV shows are dubbed in Italy! Very few people would go to see them otherwise. But I must honestly say that the quaity of of the dubbing is usually excellent (well, for sure for the blockbusters), they have techniques to "virtually" lip sync as much as possible. It's just that the surrounding audio.. sometime sounds different. The original is usually better.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

reiche1 — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:25:45 GMT

@Jecht_Sin wrote:
Yeah, thinking better about it, if they are the "old" Teletext subs there is little one can do. Although if those are the subs I remember them coming with a black background when I was in UK (ages ago). In my tests with other subs that alone removed any glowing effect. Is it like that or now things are different? I mean, just curious. And I can't test it much, only few shows have subs in Italy (but when they do it still says they are on page 777 of Teletext - Televideo in Italian). Are the UK subs coming from the same source?

Actually this is Denmark 🙂 The subs here is white on a dark background. A few of them are of the Teletext type, I haven't tried those. So I guess it's bitmaps as from looking up some articles on DVB-T.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

Jecht_Sin — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 09:40:26 GMT

reiche1 wrote:
Actually this is Denmark 🙂 The subs here is white on a dark background. A few of them are of the Teletext type, I haven't tried those. So I guess it's bitmaps as from looking up some articles on DVB-T.

Oh, sorry. That thing about dubbing didn't make much sense indeed!

Still the dark background kills any glowing effect in my TV (a different one, an XD80 without local dimming). I know because the subs were driving me crazy as well, so I went to change the subtitle settings in all apps via web.

I'd love to know what's this thing about glowing on these 4K TVs with big displays. I was watching an YouTube video on my small 22" Bravia in the kitchen and the the black horizontal bars were nearly as black as the frame. Checked it on my XD80 they are.. Dark Gray and bright. And sure there isn't any glowing when changing volume on dark scenes.

Oh, even the audio felt better in the small one. But that's for another topic.

Re: KD -XD9305 - Subtitles and local dimming

staskuz — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 22:15:50 GMT

You can change subtitles as you wish through Settings / System Preferences / Accessibility / Subtitle

However, unfortunately Netflix doesn't use these settings yet.