It's an election year! Dub or subtitles? Voice your choice!

Netflix likes to brag that their customers are more sophisticated in their movie tastes than the average video user -- more interested in foreign, indie, and classic films than the typical BB customer.

Is Netflix underestimating our taste by putting up dubbed versions of foreign films for Instant Watch?

Take this nonscientific poll!

Click here to access the survey

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by pihkal020 on July 28, 2008 at 11:23am: Generally speaking, I vastly prefer subtitles.

However, for some of the trashier Euro-cult stuff I tend to watch, English dubbing can add a nice surreal ridiculousness to the viewing if its done ineptly enough. ;)

Permalink Reply by spiderpig on July 28, 2008 at 1:32pm: Definitely, in terms of camp you can't beat dubbing. Watch Night of the Living Dorks on IW. It's a German teen sex comedy. I don't know if I actually knew German and watched the German version I would think it was funny, but the dubbed version on IW is hilarious just because of some of the phrases they chose to use.

Permalink Reply by Aces on July 28, 2008 at 11:25am: Subtitles! No dubbing please.

Permalink Reply by Spindaddydad on July 28, 2008 at 11:27am: Subtitles, no question.

Permalink Reply by Arcane Pretext on July 28, 2008 at 11:49am: Dubbing is a disgusting practice.

Permalink Reply by Dollardraw on July 28, 2008 at 3:44pm: Try watching a dubbed movie with the English subtitles on - a lot of times the spoken English and written English are completely different and can be quite funny.

Otherwise, I prefer the subtitles. I'm watching the acting anyway. Dubbing reminds me of the horribly dubbed Japanese Godzilla vs. whatever on the afternoon super movie during monster week.

Permalink Reply by spiderpig on July 28, 2008 at 5:39pm: Try watching a dubbed movie with the English subtitles on

Good one, Dollardraw! I gotta admit I actually have done that. :D Funny!

Permalink Reply by thatboy on July 30, 2008 at 9:21am: An excellent example of example of this is Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.

Permalink Reply by wowwee123 on July 28, 2008 at 4:55pm: Voted - #5 - I can tolerate a dub if it's done well.

Permalink Reply by spiderpig on July 28, 2008 at 5:45pm: Yeah, subtitles, definitely. I usually watch everything with captions anyway so it's all the same to me. :)

Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on July 28, 2008 at 7:54pm: few responses so far, but this bump may bring in a few more voters.

Permalink Reply by The Real Uncle Bob on July 28, 2008 at 8:05pm: The bias in favor of subtitles is so strong, it seems very likely that Netflix management already knows our preference. I suspect they just find it easier to encode the English soundtrack than to add captions during encoding.

But I am familiar with the technology -- there's not that much effort involved in adding hard-coded captions (selectable captions are a little trickier).

It is worth the effort!!!!