u/andywarhorla

Not that I’d ever get these from Amazon, but they are up for preorder.

Time to buy everything in the Curzon Tarr box again!

Don’t Play with Fire aka Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind - never thought this would see an official release, let alone one with multiple cuts including the uncensored version

The Cars That Ate Paris - went straight from DVD to 4K, plus the extras in this include Weir’s made-for-TV The Plumber and some short films

Brimstone & Treacle - I have the Vinegar Syndrome 4K, but this release includes the original BBC Play for Today version on Blu-ray

I recently bought a region-free Panasonic DP-UB820 from 220 Electronics, and the ability to add external subtitles from a USB drive was a big selling point. I buy a lot of foreign titles and French, German, or Asian releases often lack English subtitles. Even foreign releases of films in English can be an challenge, as I have some hearing issues and prefer to watch English language films with English subs.

I wrote this guide because I saw a lot of conflicting information about this feature when searching online, with posts from folks flat out stating external subs don't work on the UB820. Not true! 220 Electronics also do themselves a disservice by not highlighting this feature, I had to reach out to their sales & engineering teams to confirm. I believe this feature also works on a region-free DP-UB9000, not sure about the DP-UB420. Apparently the Rattlebyte DIY region-free kits also support external USB subs.

Caveat #1: This only works for Blu-ray and 4K discs, not DVD's.

Caveat #2: Although it works on most discs, I've found some that won't display the external subtitle menu option. I suspect it has do with authoring problems with the disc, for example in this batch The Baby of Mâcon wouldn't let me select external subs, but it also won't display the disc's runtime normally (it just shows --).

Step #1: Find a subtitle file. Must be in SRT format.

I tend to use subtitlecat.com, but there are many sites that host subtitle files (subtitlecat also lets you translate srt files from one language to another, although I haven't tried this out). I'm using English subs in these examples, but obviously you can download whatever language you need.

Try to get subs that match your release, or at least the format, to minimize sync issues. For instance, I have a Japanese Blu-ray of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Foreboding. There's also a French DVD release, and if I tried to use an SRT file designed for the French DVD on the Japanese Blu-ray, the subtitles would go out of sync due to PAL framerate timing differences.

Step #2: Put the SRT file on a USB drive.

This is the most critical step. The SRT file MUST be in a folder called sub, and you MUST rename the file to sub.srt. If you don't do this, the player won't find the external subtitles to display. See the screenshot for an example.

You can put other files and folders on the drive. I put all the subtitle files for my discs on the same USB drive and then swap them out of the sub folder as I need them. You don't need a very big drive since these are pretty small text files.

Step #3: Plug the USB drive into the player.

The Panasonic players have their USB ports in the rear, so I recommend getting a USB extension cable for ease of inserting and removing the drive.

Step #4: Turn External Subtitle on.

Start the movie, then go to the subtitle menu. You should see an option now called External Subtitle. Set it to On and the subtitles will show up.

Side note: The UB820 Panasonic remote is not great, but it's easy to find a replacement that has its own Subtitle button. I'm using a N2QAYA000172.

Step #5: Adjust the other settings as necessary.

Subtitles: Off, otherwise you'll get double subtitles

External Subtitle: On

Subtitle Style: some settings you can't change on external subs, this is one of them

Subtitle Position: -14 works well for me, -20 if it's a 2.35 ratio with black bars

Subtitle Luminance: can't change

Subtitle Size: I like Small

Synchronization: adjust this if the timing of the subtitles is out of sync

Character Code: default is UTF-8 which is fine unless you're using an Asian character set, then you might have to set to UTF-16

Lastly, some photos of my TV screen showing the subtitles in action for Les Dames, Spider, La Femme Publique, Foreboding, and Once Upon a Time. As noted above, the external subtitle option didn't show up for The Baby of Mâcon, probably because of authoring issues with the disc (the timecode is borked).

By the way, the transfer on the French 4K of Spider is absolutely beautiful!

Unfortunately I received this right before leaving town for 4 days so I won’t be able to dig in, but just a heads up that these are shipping. As seen in the last pic this set is a total double-dip for me, but at least I’ll have English subs on Innocence and Evolution now…

Been dying to hear about what’s included in the restored version, kind of surprised there haven’t been any reports given the huge anticipation. Everything I’ve read so far has been either very generic (“It was amazing!”) or focused on the wrong aspects (“Peter Jackson was there!”) leaving me yearning for in-depth details from a fellow obsessive film nerd. Does it include the rape of christ and femur scenes? Was there any quality drop during those sequences? How did the restoration look overall?