Subtitles have been on by default in my house for about four years now, and I've stopped feeling self-conscious about it. I don't technically need them, but I got tired of the ritual of turning the volume up for the whispered plot point, then down again before the score kicks in and rattles the patio doors.
According to AP-NORC polling from 2025, a third of American adults always or often watch with captions on, and 55% of caption users say the reason is simply wanting to catch every word. On Aug. 6, Dolby Vision 2 landed on the first shipping TVs, and most of the coverage has been about picture. The fix for the thing people actually complain about is the other half of that announcement, and it has been falling apart all year.
Dolby's next-generation audio arrived before the picture did
AC-4 has already run a World Cup, and hardly anyone noticed
Most of the attention on Dolby's next-generation stack has gone to Dolby Vision 2, which is understandable, because picture upgrades demo well in the shop in a way audio upgrades don't. But when NBCUniversal announced at CES 2026 that Peacock would become the first streamer to adopt Dolby's full technology suite, the more consequential half of that commitment was the audio codec sitting at the end of the list.
AC-4 isn't new, mind you. ETSI standardized it in 2014, and it has been the audio system of ATSC 3.0 broadcasting for years. What it…