WDTV Live and MKV subtitles, how?

[neomaine]

Have a WDTVLive (current firmware) that I've been using for quite awhile now and have been very happy with. However, up until now, I haven't coverted and DVDs or BRs with subtitltes or had enough subtitles that I really worried about.

I had been converting DVDs to divx. Now, with hard drives fairly cheap, I've been using DVDdecrypter to copy to a VOB and using MakeMKV for BRs and simply keep everything.

Haven't tested the VOBs yet, but I can't get the MKVs to display the subtitles. The reading I've done seems to suggest that subtitles (pgs) should play from MKVs. The WDTV Live has subtitltes enabled, I can see the list of them when toggling through the subtitle menu but nothing is being displayed regardless of which ones I chose. I'm beginning to think the subtitles are in a see-through color/font.

Any ideas of what I might be doing wrong?

[cal_tony]

PGS.sup in a MKV container will not play on either the Seagate or WD players. They must be converted to idx/sub or srt. They can than be remuxed back into the MKV or left out as long as the have the same name and are in the same folder.

Lots of threads on this subject here and at the WD forum.

Tony

[neomaine]

Well, that's where I was going with it (coverting the subs) but thought I had seen someone else say that they could be read directly with the latest firmware. Thanks for the correction.

[stiltman]

This is also my biggest peeve about the wdtv live
Plus the ones I get working look like sh!t most of the time
The only one that seems reliable is Handbreak with it set to force subs only....something like that

I was going to try MakeMKV next, but if you're having problems with that too....

[neomaine]

I ended up dumping the MKV and re-ran things through TSMuxer. Yah, I like have the drives spinning...

Anyway, this time I kept the movie, down converted the dts-hd to dts and kep only the english PGS. What do I see? Not subtitles but what's I would equate to closed captioning. Was mildly exited at first seeing the text come up but quickly realized it wasn't what I was looking for. Where would that have come from? Again, the movie, the main audio and the first PGS. Hadn't seen this before. Anyone?

I'm going to start playing with things like Subrip, suprip and others and re-muxing with MakeMKV and see if that helps. I know, I'm probably way behind the game but I like playing around.