Netflix: 80 Percent of Streaming Content to Have Subtitles by End of 2011

Posted 02/28/2011 at 7:23am | by Paul Lilly

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Netflix is making a push to add subtitles to 80 percent of its online content available to watch instantly in the U.S. by the end of the year, company Chief Product Officer, Neil Hunt, announced in a blog post. The sultan of streaming better get busy. Netflix's catalog consists of 3,500 TV episodes and movies with Closed Captioning, or less than a third (30 percent) of available content. More are being added every week, but is Netflix working quickly enough?

Not according to Mike Chapman, one of the blog's commenters. Chapman crunched the numbers and if his math is correct, it would take Netflix until January 3, 2024 to meet its goal at the current rate. To keep themselves honest, and to make it easier to find subtitled content, Netflix added a new page that lists all titles available with Close Captioning.

There's also the issue of support. Netflix says subtitles are supported on PCs and Macs, Wii, PS3, GoogleTV, and the Boxee Box. There are several omissions to that list, including Roku, Xbox 360, and a host of devices with Netflix baked-in, all of which Netflix says it hopes will support subtitles later this summer.