Hi All, I recently bought Dances With Wolves cheaply in Germany seeing that it was te extended version I had been after and had English as well as German. When I sat down to watch it I found that if you select the English soundtrack it is impossible to turn off German subtitles. Therefore I have 2 questions for you 1) Why on earth do production companies do this in the first place?? 2) are there any tricks to get around this?? I had thought about making a backup and removing the subtitles completely and burning my own version of the film, but haven't tried this yet as wasn't sure if it would work. Anyone else got any suggestions?? Thanks, Dave.
It gets worse: there are DVDs of American or English films in circulation in Germany (at least at libraries and video stores) without the English soundtrack! I've never been unlucky enough to buy one of these, but I have on occasion reserved one by mistake at the library. I suspect this was a much more common practice in the early years of DVD. As far as non-removable subtitles are concerned: I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with the film rights in foreign countries.
There is a method for removing these 'burned in' subtitles which should work for your German disk. Haven't got the patience to type it out now - but do a search on the word 'subtitles' and you should find the thread with the explanation.
Thanks, I found page in the end. I had searched first but obviously used wrong search criteria. With locked and subtitles found straight away. Anyway, can I understand why you wouldn't want to try and type that lot in again. I will give it a go later. Thanks again, Dave.