Comment by machomaster

This is a gross simplification. It can be part of the explanation, but not the whole one, not even the most important.

It mostly boils down to filmmaker choices:

1. Conscious and purposeful. Like choosing "immersion" instead of "clarity". Yeah, nothing speaks "immersion" than being forced to put subtitles on...

2. Not purposeful. Don't atttibute to malice what can be explained by incompetency... Bad downmixing (from Atmos to lesser formats like 2.0). Even if they do that, they are not using the technology ordinary consumers have. I mean, the most glaring example is the way the text/titles/credits size on screen have been shrinking to the point of having difficulties reading them. Heck, often I have difficulties with text size on by FullHD TV, just because the editing was done on some kind of fancy 4k+ display standing 1m from the editor. Imagine how garbage it looks on 720 or ordinary 480!

For the recent example check the size (and the font used) of the movie title in the Alien Isolation movie and compare it to the movies made in the 80-90s. It's ridiculous!

There are many good youtube videos that explain the problem in more details.

https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8

https://youtu.be/wHYkEfIEhO4