One Remote to Rule Them All

Tyler and I have noticed this problem for the last couple of years. Hollywood has forgotten how to make movies. See, they make these great movies and then they make the sound track so loud that you can't actually hear any dialogue. This is very frustrating, especially if you watch movies in hopes of following the story line and enjoying the one-liners and witty repertoire.

So we have settled into a system at our house. We watch movies with remote in hand. That way we can turn it up loud when we want to hear the people speaking, but turn it back down when it switches back to solely music so we don't shatter windows and wake every child in the house. As it is, the TV usually vibrates and the house shakes as we try to pick up small conversations amid epic concertos. Seriously, so annoying.

We have done this for years and then one day we were griping to someone* and they said, "Oh, we have the same problem. Your TV is set up for surround sound, and without it, the soundtrack often drowns out dialogue." WHAT?!? It's our TV? I guess that does make a little more sense...maybe.

And yet, we still didn't do anything about it. We continued to watch movies holding on to the remote and grumbling under our breath (except while people talked, because then you didn't make any noise in hopes of hearing what they said).

Last night was the final straw. We were watching Lord of the Rings and it was like a volume tango.

Music: down, down, down, down.

Speaking: up, up, (quickly, what did he say?) up, up.

Rewind: Listen intently.

More music: down, down, down, down etc.

You get the picture. Even with the volume turned up enough that June was complaining that she was never going to get to sleep, it was still difficult to hear all the dialogue.

Tyler grumbled some more and I mentioned the information we had received about the surround sound TV issue. I even said that maybe there was some way to turn it off. Thirty minutes later, Tyler was finally annoyed enough that he paused the movie, examined the remote again (since he was still holding it) and went to the menu option. There it was; ***surround sound with the option to turn it OFF!!*** Hallelujah. I think about the years of movies we have sat through holding the remote. How dumb are we?

It was such a marked change after we turned the surround sound off that we contemplated watching the first half of Lord of the Rings again so we could hear it, but come on, that movie is three hours long, so we skipped it. But believe you me, we are going to enjoy watching movies from now and we will only use the remote to pause for chocolate breaks.

*I don't even remember who told us about the TV, but I owe them big time.