Since the 18th June 2010 mkvmerge has added support for reading PGS subtitles from PGS/SUP files.
Can someone from WD advise if there are plans to support PGS (.SUP) subtitles in MKV files ?
MKV is a popular container, and I like using it with my WDTV Live because you can have chapters.
It would be much simpler when converting Bluray source material to MKV to just use the PGS .SUP subtitle file, instead of extracting and converting to .sub and .idx.
Also there is some excellent software being developed (such as BD Rebuilder) that will shrink a Bluray considerably but still maintain high quality (thanks to X264). The functionality now exists to output this shrunk Bluray directly to MKV, however without subtitles as yet. If WDTV Live supported PGS (.SUP) subtitles in MKV files this functionality could easily be added to the product, which would then make the WDTV and hard disk storage an attractive proposition to many people currently using optical media to backup their content.
I can’t say for sure if WDTV will support PGS subtitles but I will suggest you a way displaying Bluray subtitles when play ripped MKV movie.
The Pavtube has recently released so-called ByteCopy software, which will work for you. It can copy Blu-ray to MKV without de-coding any video or audio streams, but meanwhile convert PGS subtitles to DVDSUB, which is supported by WDTV. I have tried with my WDTV Live Plus and it worked like a charm. And you can still have chapters.
I believe this is much easier than extracting and re-packing the subtitles.
Anyway, let’s expect the day that WD to become aware of PGS subtitles issues.
MKV is a container file format in which there can be many audio, video and subtitles streams, allowing the user to store a complete movie in a single file.
Experienced movie fans usually choose for movie ripping because the MKV format lets them to do lossless backup of their CD, DVD and Blu-ray Discs with desired audio tracks and subtitles.
