A few nights ago Peter Bregman was watching a show with his daughter and attempted to change a setting on the television to get rid of the subtitles.

“She said ‘don’t’,” said Mr Bregman, who lives in New York. They had watched a Harry Potter film with subtitles and moved on to slapstick sketches by The Three Stooges — all were already in English. His daughter was one of many new fans of watching film and television with the dialogue playing at the bottom of the screen.