Strange Netflix captioning problem
March 9, 2015 8:38 AM   Subscribe

I'm seeing closed captioning when I don't think I should.

We use Netflix via Roku, and recently we've started having a very odd problem that I don't really even know how to Google-fu. We have closed captioning set to "off" at the Roku level, and on our TV; when we start a movie or TV show we don't ever alter the Netflix settings, which are audio: English and captioning: Off.

In the last month or so, however, we've noticed some peculiar behavior - captioning does not appear for most of what we watch, but any time there's a caption on the screen as part of the show (like when there's a scene with a news broadcast and the news broadcast has a caption, or when in a documentary they show an interstitial card or identifying caption), those captions are closed-captioned - basically, whenever the production throws a caption on the screen, our Roku has started closed-captioning over the top of that.

As I said, this only started happening about a month ago - as far as I can tell, nothing has changed on our end. Our setup has been constant for a couple years now, and I didn't see any Roku system updates (which doesn't mean they didn't happen, just that I haven't noticed) that may have broken our caption thing.

Any suggestions on where to even start troubleshooting something like this would be most appreciated.
posted by pdb to Technology (8 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I've noticed it recently too, except in my case the captions are in Spanish. Unfortunately I don't have a solution or work-around (we just switched to watching Netflix on our Wii U instead of our Roku, which doesn't have the problem), but I just wanted to let you know that you're not the only one. Fingers crossed Netflix pushes a fix soon.
posted by Itaxpica at 8:44 AM on March 9, 2015


I'm getting them too. Some cursory Googling led to it probably being a Roku bug. It's apparently pretty common, but only for Roku users. I think we're just stuck waiting for an update.
posted by General Malaise at 8:50 AM on March 9, 2015


Best answer: Hi! We had the same problem last summer. What worked to fix it was to uninstall the Netflix channel and then reinstall it.
posted by statsgirl at 8:51 AM on March 9, 2015


Happened to me last night too on Roku, in Spanish. Only for a few shows, and at random times.
posted by alligatorman at 9:01 AM on March 9, 2015


I've just learned to ignore it.
posted by COD at 9:05 AM on March 9, 2015


Been happening to me as well. Will have to try statsgirl's workaround.
posted by Lucinda at 9:08 AM on March 9, 2015


My Netflix does this when I watch via the Wii, so I don't think it's just a Roku problem.
posted by something something at 10:25 AM on March 9, 2015


Chiming in that I'm seeing it too on the Roku but don't have a fix.
posted by octothorpe at 1:04 PM on March 9, 2015


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