seeing is believing
HBO Max has excellent options for closed-captions on Android TV
Closed captions are great for those who need them to enjoy what's on the television. Captions you can adjust to meet your needs are even better.
by Phil Nickinson
It's easy to talk about accessibility. Actually following through is where it counts. And to that end, there's a surprising feature tucked inside the HBO Max app on Android TV.
Head on to the top and enter into your profile section, and you'll see a section called "Closed Captioning." Scroll on over to it and you're greeted with a bunch of options for changing how captions look. And we're not just talking about size here. We're talking fonts. We're talking colors. We're talking backgrounds and opacity. We're talking about style. So if you want drop shadows on your captions, you can have them. If you want full opacity, it's yours. If you want the window to be green and the text red, have at it. If you want to read things in a script font instead of something more socially acceptable, the world's your oyster.
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And you'll get an example of your choices flashed up on the screen, too, so you don't have to exit out and start up a show just to see if what you've changed will work the way you need it to.
Why all the options for something so simple? Because a lot of people rely on the captions to actually see what's being said — and white text on a black background isn't always the best option. Or maybe you just want to do something a little different. No matter. You do you.
The point is this is the sort of thing that should be baked in to every streaming service. Kudos to HBO Max for having it out of the gate on Android TV.
Now let's talk about getting things patched up with Roku and Amazon, shall we?
Easy and accessible
HBO Max
Have your captions your way
HBO Max is the new streaming service from WarnerMedia. And if you're running it on Android TV you can customize the closed captions a whole bunch.