Hello all.
It's taken about three years, if not more, but Paramount Plus in the UK seems to be carrying a more significant number of audio described content.
As I've already used my free trial, I was hesitant to sign up again through the Apple TV app to the Paramount Plus TV channel but, choosing to believe the audio description tag in the app, I went for it and discovered that Dexter, Original Sin, Star Trek - Section 31, Mayor Of Kingstown, and a few others now have audio description. It seems, the older content does not but newer seems to be working which is great.
Now, we just need Sky and Now TV to pull their finger out and we'll have some sort of parity with US customers. I'm still having to use a DNS (ControlD) and jump through hoops to fund a US Max account to access HBO goodness. I shouldn't have to do this, I already pay for Now TV which is the streaming arm of Sky.
But, in all, good news.
Note: This was accessed as an Apple TV channel, not through the stand alone Paramount Plus app, hence posting here and I can't be certain the same content is available with audio description on other platforms such as the stand alone app or apps on other devices.
Comments
Thanks for the heads-up! As…
Thanks for the heads-up!
As an EU citizen, I hope this will cary over here as well. I completely agree - it's really sad that even though the given content is available on, say, Max, the AD is not.
Best
M
The Paramount app
Has anyone managed to get this working using the Paramount app either on the iPhone or fire TV? Paramount's instructions say that it is available but I've never been able to get the instructions to work as I can never get to the button to change the audio description and subtitles Settings. Cited friends have been able to turn it on for me but it doesn't seem to remember that setting. I have Paramount+ as part of my sky cinema subscription as it's free
Getting there, but...
Agreed, they are slowly pulling there finger out, but still not as good as the output from other streaming companies.
My biggest gripe is with the Paramount app on Apple TV.
It's so slow as to be of little use on most occasions, plus a lot of difficult to navigate content with unlabeled headings and buttons.
If they could work on the app and put a bit more thought into the content they do offer description for, I might consider renewing when my sub is up in a month or so.
Is the AD in 5.1?
I got a free subscription to Disney+ so have been watching the Mandalorian. It's good and has AD but I do find it annoying that it only seems to be a stereo track. Or at least all the sound is coming out of the speakers at the front and nothing in the rear. Contrast with Apple TV+ where it is in full surround.
So does Paramount have full surround for AD or do we get the poor man's version here too? I definitely like the sound of Dexter. Does it have the old series? I presume they do not have AD? I think I missed out on the very last season of the original show and would love to go back to it.
It was also good to learn that HBO Max is coming to the UK soon. Think that's about the only reason to have a Sky subscription unless you want to watch sport you cannot see.
I'm not sure. I use homepods…
I'm not sure. I use homepods.
As far as I know, Apple TV plus is the only one that has AD with Atmos, Netflix, and HBO Max have 5.1. Everything else is 2.0.
Saying that, watching the new series of Dexter (my sense of dark humour), did sound spacious, though don't have a means of testing that one until I'm back home with my Sonos system with surrounds.
Sorry, that's not much of an answer.
@Oliver
Thanks for the info. I will give it a go once we have got tired of Disney+.
I don't think my home setup copes with Atmos. I had to turn it off in Apple TV to get the sound to work properly. Anything in 5.1 is nice. I'm really glad to hear that HBO has it. I'm really looking forward to its UK launch. If they don't bring the AD over with the shows I am going to blow a fuse.
As far as I can tell with Apple TV if I watch something in stereo it's going to come out of my speakers all at the front. Whereas if I watch the same show on my (now deceased) Cube or directly on the TV it will put the whole sound through the front and back speakers. I guess it's not a big deal but I don't like the thought of my back speakers having the evening off.
Re HBO MAx
I assume it will simply be a spread of the existing countries. You can get HBO Max pretty much everywhere aside from the UK due to the Sky deal with them.
It might be next year I don't have to steal audio described tracks or use a VPN... Maybe next year I can be a real boy!
Re: Dexter Original Series
Hey guys,
So as far as I know, the original Dexter did not receive any AD attention. I remember watching this series when it first launched, back when my eyes actually did more than look pretty.
Got as far as the season with John Lithgow, and could not go any further as my sight really started failing at that time.
How is this new series? I hear it has, or will have, Christian slater in it? He is an old fave actor of mine. :)
HBO Max. The only one that works
Hey guys, so I just started using HBO Max not too long ago. The main reason for that is because I live outside the U.S.—I’m from the Caribbean region—and honestly, the payment plans lately have gotten crazy . I didn’t even realize how much Netflix had changed until recently. It’s been a while since I used it, but now I found out I can’t even pay through the Apple Store anymore, and my prepaid Visa doesn’t work for paying the subscription. I don’t have a credit or debit card I can put on file either, so… what am I even supposed to do now? I was wondering if maybe PayPal or Apple Pay could act as a sort of middleman, but I have no clue. I also can’t use a VPN to get access to the American Netflix account. My real issue isn’t even the content itself (or the lack of it based on region)—it’s the payment barriers . Like, I’m paying less in my region, sure, but I’m also getting way less content for it. That doesn’t make sense. yes, I know it's due to licensing restrictions. I want to pay for the service, but this is ridiculous.
Anyway, on to HBO Max—the only reason I’m even able to use it is because I can pay through the App Store. It seems to be the only one that actually works for me. I noticed they offer a higher tier bundle that includes Disney+ and Hulu (if I’m not mistaken). If I go ahead and choose that option, do I need to create separate accounts for Disney+ and Hulu? Or will I be able to access everything directly through the HBO Max app? If anyone has experience with this or knows how it works, I’d really appreciate the help. Thanks!
Re Dexter AD and paramount
There is audio description on the original seasons of Dexter on Paramount... In the US. It isn't on the UK version... Of course.
Regarding HBO and Disney Bundle, I think you link your Disney and HBO accounts. I don't think it's all through one app, or not that I’m aware of, anyway.
regarding hbo max
For the longest time, Australia was in a similar predicament when it came to HBO Max content — it was tied up with the pay TV provider Foxtel.
Foxtel has its own streaming service, funnily enough, called *Binge*.
HBO content was available on Binge for years, but that changed once the licensing contract came to an end.
Now, Binge is in a rough spot. The HBO catalogue is gradually disappearing as various licenses expire.
What they're left with now is mostly their own original content — which isn’t a whole lot. *Wentworth* is one standout that comes to mind. They also carry some content from Peacock.
Peacock, however, doesn’t currently have any plans to launch in Australia. So if you’re in the UK, you might be facing a similar situation.
Yeah, peacock, things like…
Yeah, peacock, things like resident Alien, is on Sky, wich is frustrating because, though I know David and the accessibility team do work hard behind the scenes to get things better on the platform, there seems to be a lot of stickiness. The sky stream box is one of the worst platforms in terms of accessibility, and sky go, the app for apple TV and IOS is limited, no audio description to live streams let alone catchup and you can't use BBC at all through it.
There were rumblings about audio description on catchup on sky, but it's too little to late I think. The quality of audio description on live streams on the sky hardware isn't great either... Plus you have adverts... It's an utter rip off for us blind folk... And yet, we have very little choice.
Bring on competition who build experiences on multiple platforms. Sky should really skip to an app based platform. Their core offering is vanishing, the only thing left is their convenience.
Re: Dexter
Thanks for confirming - that is incredibly annoying.
I'm aware of certain ways to get AD content unofficially, but I tend to watch this sort of thing with my sighted wife so I'm guessing that would make things more complicated. If I remember I will see if I can find an easy way to complain to paramount about this.
It is so frustrating when the content has been made but is just not made available for no particular reason.
I used to complain on…
I used to complain on Twitter/X but tended to get a canned reply each time. Saying that, there is more AD, so maybe being obnoxious works... Not that I need much encouragement.
You still have more audio…
You still have more audio description content than we do here in Australia.
Binge, which is owned by Foxtel, doesn’t offer it—nor do our commercial TV channels. Only the government-run stations provide AD here.
Unless the American streaming services decide to include it globally, we won’t get it.
Only one Australian streaming service, Stan, offers AD—and that’s just for their original content.
This is why I’m slowly weaning myself off TV shows. If I can’t enjoy something at the same time as sighted viewers, I’d rather skip it altogether.
You guys even have *Home and Away* and *Neighbours* with AD, which says a lot.
(Not that *Neighbours* will be around much longer—still don’t know why Amazon even picked it up.)
I stopped watching *Neighbours* back in the ’90s, when it was actually decent.
Using Paramount +, and thoughts on audio description
Now, I was actually gonna ask something—I wanted to know if it’s better to sign up for streaming services through the Apple TV app or through each app directly. So here’s what happened. At first, I signed up for Paramount+ using the Apple TV app, but even with a VPN, it still wouldn’t let me use the service. I didn’t realize at the time that I could actually pay for Paramount+ directly through the App Store. So a little while ago, I tried subscribing again—but this time through the Paramount+ app directly, and guess what? It worked. Even with the VPN, I was finally able to access the content. When I tried it through Apple TV, it told me the service wasn’t available in my country, so I gave up. But now that I’ve gone through the Paramount+ app and paid via the App Store, it’s working fine. Honestly, Paramount+ is a much better fit for me. HBO Max is cool, but it just doesn’t have most of the stuff I actually want to watch. I spent $10 on HBO Max and haven’t even touched it. Meanwhile, Paramount+ has way more of the kind of content I’m into, so it’s a better value overall.
Even though I’ve been totally blind since birth, I’ve never really gotten audio description. Not sure why exactly. Maybe because I didn’t grow up in a country where it was available or normalized, and by the time I encountered it, it didn’t feel essential. It’s not something I absolutely need to enjoy a show. Honestly, most times I don’t even bother checking if a movie or TV series has audio description. I was enjoying content long before AD became a thing, and I never once felt like I was missing out. So why would I start convincing myself now that I am? Why suddenly panic about context or visuals I’ve never relied on in the first place? It has its fair share of issues, because if I'm watching with someone, they don't always want to hear the description playing in the background. The problem is, not as many people are as tolerant as they should be, saying things like, "Oh, it's so annoying having that person talking over the action, and I can't concentrate or focus. What's the point?" I'm blind; I have to live with my blindness, and if I want or need audio description to enjoy the programming, it's seen as annoying, or a lot of people don't want to deal with that. I'm like, "Well, be thankful you don't have to deal with it. I don't want to have to listen to audio description over the movie, but I don't necessarily have much of a choice, now do I?" It’s hard to make a well-written descriptive track anyway—one that doesn’t spoil the content or break the flow of the show. I’d rather not have it at all than have it done badly. But if it were more widely available, I know the younger generation might enjoy it more than I ever could, especially if it became part of the content from the beginning—not tacked on as an afterthought. Plus, some persons want more description. Others want less.
There was an app out there on the App Store at one point where you could send in a link to a video, and then a human being would describe it, and it would be posted on the app for others to enjoy. But I get it, all the work of people requesting and having to wait for a video to be audio described makes no sense. If there was a more real-time component, even if it had to be done by AI, where I could plug in a link to what I want to be described and then wait until the audio descriptive track is done and then listen to it afterwards, then fine. But right now, what I want to listen to often doesn't have any audio description, and I don't think anybody's going to go back and add it.
It's also frustrating when I go in and type "audio described shows," and you find a series where only one season or five episodes have audio description, and others don't. One episode has it, the next one doesn't. It's confusing to keep up with, so why bother? A lot of what I see with audio descriptions is normally kids and family content, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I also wonder if some people are, I don't know, maybe not comfortable with narrating certain content when it comes to audio description for us. If there was a service out there, and I imagine this would be pretty expensive, for us to essentially be able to create our own described tracks once we have access to the movie – to be able to add it to an app or website and have the content described – that would be different. But again, I would imagine this would be pretty expensive to do unless it's subsidized. Yes, it would probably take a while to process and create the audio description. So, it wouldn't exactly be real time without a bit of waiting, but that would be fine. Either way, it's not a big deal to me. I'm more into books all the same.
Yes, unlike Disney, where…
Yes, unlike Disney, where there is overlap and where you can use the same account across territories, Paramount seems to be a specific platform for each country, hence the variation in audio-described content.
Oliver
Thanks for the info on AD for the original Dexter. I never knew that show was audio described. Maybe one day I will go back and catch up on the seasons I missed as I was transitioning from sided person to a blind person.
Questions
I don’t think this is possible, but I figured I’d ask anyway—just in case. I’ve got two quick questions. First, is there a way to speed up playback on the Paramount+ app when using an iPhone? For whatever reason, I have to listen to almost everything at 2x speed—except music, oddly enough. When I listen at normal speed, everything feels way too slow, and that kind of throws me off. So I was wondering if there’s a setting I might’ve missed? Second, every time I start watching a show, my phone automatically switches to landscape mode—even though I have orientation lock turned on and my device is set to portrait. I understand that’s probably because full-screen playback kicks in, but since I’m blind, I don’t need the video in full screen. I need to hear the audio. So is there a way to stop the screen from rotating when playback starts, or is that how it’s set up? Neither of these are major problems, only small preferences that would make my experience smoother. If there’s any way to adjust these, I’d appreciate it!
short answer, I'm not sure…
short answer, I'm not sure. I don't think there is a speed control. Regarding landscape, if there is a secondary lock to portrait it will be in the settings of the paramount app itself. I use it as a apple TV subscription as I have the stand alone tied in to a US account for those times where AD is lacking (can get very expensive), so mine is working within the TV as in Apple TV app. Sorry I can't be more help.