Appletv subtitles are blindingly bright

Plex Players Streaming Devices
1

Server Version#: 1.31.3.6868
Player Version#: latest App Store
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Is there a fix for this? The appletv app doesn’t seem to have options to colour - and the white are ridiculously bright when playing back hdr.

Any thoughts?

2

I had the same problem, but was only experiencing this with HDR content with unstyled SRT subtitles.
I had to go into the Apple TV accessibility options and turned the subtitle opacity down to I think 50%.

Other content with ASS subtitles didn’t have this problem.

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3

Doesn’t it then make SDR subtitles harder to read ?
I too am living with burned out retinas from HDR content here.

EDIT: Changing anything in accessibility has absolutely no effect on the Plex player… so no go there.

Plex player SHOULD lower brightness of white text in subtitles when playing HDR content, that would literally fix it.

Also, compared to other platforms, on Apple TV there is not even option to customize subtitles color directly in Plex.

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4

Thanks a lot! I’ll Give it a shot.

5

Yes, it does also make SDR subtitles dimmer, but I have just been living with that. The alternative would be to sidestep this problem and convert the SRT subtitles to ASS and apply some styling so that the default subtitle formatting isn’t used.

As for it “having absolutely no effect on the Plex player”, I don’t know what to say. I saw it recommended somewhere else and I made the changes on my Apple TV and it does have an effect.

6

Are you using old player ? Because old player is apple one so it makes sense it makes a difference

Can you provide steps you did to perform the changes ? I would test it too.

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I’m not using the old player, that did cross my mind too. I’m not sure why Plex doesn’t have this option for subtitle dimming- it would be nice to add.

8

I’m not using the old player, but I don’t think it actually matters in terms of how the Apple TV styles subtitles.

Here’s how I adjusted the settings for myself. Please keep in mind changing these settings on the Apple TV will only affect the default subtitle styling that is used for things like SRT files, ASS/SSA and PGS subtitles will not be changed, but in my experience they do not have the core problem that is being discussed (default Apple TV subtitles being too bright for HDR content)

  1. Go to the Apple TV Accessibility settings (Settings → Accessibility)
  2. Go to Subtitles and Captioning (under the Hearing subsection)
  3. Go to Style and Edit Styles to create a new style
  4. Adjust the styling to however you think looks best. For me the key was to set Text Opacity to Semi-Transparent.

Also as mentioned earlier this does make non-HDR subs dimmer but I have just got used to it.

9

Thanks, this really helped

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