Subtitles won't display with Serviio -> Sony

[David A. Smith]

I have tried all the options I could dope out, but I cannot seem to get an MKV that Serviio + Sony will display subtitles, if the source is Blu-Ray quality. DVDs are no problem. The Sony says "On:" or whatever, indicating that it recognizes that there are viable subtitles, just nothing ever displays. Tried the various selections before ripping, just no joy.

I apologize if this is an old problem, and is discussed elsewhere. Thank you for any help.

[Chetwood]

DLNA sucks and some TVs cannot play back bitmap-based subs over it. You shoul rip an 1 minute clip with MKVToolnix and try various subtitle formats (Vobsub, SRT, internal/external) to see if that makes a difference.

[Grauhaar]

As far as I know, DLNA (UPnP) supports only VOBSUB (DVD) and not HDMV/PGS (Blu-ray) subtitles.

Solution is to convert the HDMV/PGS subtitle(s) with the Java tool "BD Sup2Sub". Extract the subtitle track and use in the java tool the output format "SUB/IDX" and remux the new track with MKVTollNIX to the mkv file.

[Woodstock]

Piling on here, if I play the same file over SMB networking and DLNA, using the same playback hardware, subtitles will only be available via SMB. This is because SMB networking allows the player to see everything about the file, as if it were playing it back from a local device; DLNA does not.

My family accesses our network via DLNA, because they're using a "Smart" (sic) TV. They don't care about subtitles. I do, so my players use SMB.