www.makemkv.com

long story short i ripped many dvds over a couple of days and stored them on an external harddrive--my netbook hasn't got the memory.

to watch them, i plug the hard drive into the USB port of my tv. all has been going well, subtitles appearing. i'm watching 'the killing' which is in danish, and the first 3 dvds of season one were fine. selected season 4... no subtitles. they appear if i play on my netbook (but it's not a viable home theatre option, crap sound dark pic), and my partner has downloaded a thing to watch them on a VLC on a Macbook--subtitles appear.

any idea why they would suddenly not appear? when ripping, i deselected director's cuts and all, but left subtitles in. the 'subtitle' button on my remote does nothing. i haven't got access to the dvds--they're in a box halfway around the world.

Player software is probably looking for a track marked "default".

VLC and most software will automatically display whatever the FIRST subtitle track is, whether it is marked as "default" or not. Which subtitle track is the "correct" one can change from disk to disk in a series, as well as season to season.

You can use tools like those found in the MKVToolnix set to edit the MKV file to make sure the "correct" track is marked as default.

There are other options out there, as well.

thanks, i'll have a look at that.