I feel like the problem is the TV. I used to have this issue constantly but ever since I started watching things with headphones on it never happened

I blame Dolby 5.1... switch to Dolby 2.1.... people encoding online video should do this before ripping video or us and audio leveler on the resulting files and save everyone else the hassle.

I swear there was a phase where shakey-cam had just become the in-thing.
I remember watching a TV series or a movie or something where shooting had clearly wrapped before shakey-cam was popularised. And it looked like they had just added it in post. It was unnatural movement (so, not like someone was holding the camera), and there was too much of it. I had to skip a lot of the shakey-cam scenes

And some home cinema receivers do offer this option. Often labeled something like "night listening mode".

I've found upgrading my front center speaker has greatly improved dialogue. I had my speakers from a home cinema kit and the center front was a puny crappy speaker.

Me when I feed the false memories of strangers and myself online

I swear I've made that exact same complaint about a show or movie! I like when I can see whats going on when I'm watching something

It's the TV. No one should expect TV speakers to be worth anything. Even getting one of the cheapest sound bars or even computer speakers will make a noticable difference

There are a few interesting reasons for this.

The solution is obviously to learn german. Then you can watch with our excellent and easily intelligible dubs.

Or just get a 5.1 setup. Speakers are cheaper than ever.

Edit: Well. They were. Before an orange man decided to destroy the economy.

I prefer for actors to mumble then their character is supposed to mumble, and just use subtitles. Maybe it's because I've gotten too used to subtitles from all the anime I watch but I always enable it for anything on YouTube or any other video content I consume.

Agree on the lightning part though, at least for action scenes, bad lighting is often used to cover for bad CGI. For narration scenes of the place is actually dark, I don't really mind for me to basically only see silhouettes, it's appropriate.

For me Star Trek is one of the worst offenders of this.

Nobody should expect a product to function reasonably out of the box. That would be insane, right?

Spacing a tired-ass joke over several shittily drawn panels does not magically make it funny again

Which series? All of them? Serious question.

But you better enjoy our voice actors, we have about 3!

It is why I enable "Loudness Equalization" on every audio device in Windows.

It makes soft sounds louder and loud sounds softer.

Can't stand it otherwise either.

Been there the hard way. I got Tubular Bells II, and listened to it via headphones (I had no speakers).

There is one passage where the music ends, and a child speaks. It was hard to understand, so I turned the volume to 11, and heard the end of the sentence like "and nothing was ever heard of him again but the sound of tu-bu-lar bells." The next sound was the BANG of the tubular bells, making my eardrums meet somewhere in the middle. somewhere...

Watching a Christopher Nolan movie I see.

192kHZ/24bit audio vs 44.1kHZ/16bit

My guess is the newest movie trilogy. Maybe the newest shows? Picard and/or that Netflix one? Discovery?