Future subtitle possibilities on non English friendly imports?

[bruceames]

There's quite a few movies I'd like to get if I could be assured of being able to overlay subtitles on them. For example, Hero, Ran and several Japanese, French and German releases. What are the obstacles and how likely would it be possible in the future? Would I need my player connected to a PC when I play it, or could I download the subs into persistent storage or something? I don't want to limit my buying options based on present/temporary constraints.

[Arkadin]

yeah non-English subs have become the "region coding" of foreign releases.
I agree it is VERY frustrating. I have gotten a number of release like "Ran", "Army of Shadows", "The 400 Blows" despite the lack of English subs because I have other versions that do have subs. Those movies are too awesome to wait for English sub versions.
I am also hoping that downloading subs will become an option in the future, but from my understanding the lack of English subs is actually intential in many instances due to contracts.

[kannisto]

At least the "Titledrome" solution seems to be possible on PC based environments.

These threads in AVS forum discuss that solution with Vexille (Japanese Anime title without English subs):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...Vexille&page=2
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1015973

For that to work one needs to get this Titledrome SW (at least a LITE version is free, I'm not sure if those guys used the free version or not) and the subs need to be found from somewhere in the internet in a suitable format. I haven't played around with this on my PC environment yet, but I plan to try it out sometime when I have enough time. Maybe soon as I'm on holiday still for 10 days and I got back home from my holiday trip already.

I just got 2 French titles without English subs: Kirikou et les betes sauvages and Le coeur des hommes. They are both Warner France releases, and both have French DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio tracks according to their back covers. No English... Interesting that Warner uses DTS-HD MA on their France specific releases. These are good targets to play with subs if I can find the subs from somewhere...