Just joined the PLEX family with the lifetime pass. Finally found my media collection solution. Will PGS subtitles ever be supported in the future? I’m quite new and haven’t explored all the features yet but I sure hope that PGS subs will work ASAP because I have been spending more time looking for PGS subs than movies themselves. Thanks and keep up the good work, PLEX team!
PGS subs are supported.
But to view them, on most Plex clients, the server’s ability to “burn them in” is needed. Which means “transcoding”. So you need a server that is strong enough to do that.
That is because bitmap-based subtitles are usually only supported on BluRay and DVD playing hardware.
Many Plex clients on lesser hardware, like mobile phones or set top boxes (and smart tv as well!) only support text-based subtitles directly. (e.g. SRT)
Keep in mind that while bitmap based subtitles may look better under some circumstances, but they also have some disadvantages:
- scaling them to different (screen-)sizes is more computing-intensive
- you can’t change their color
- the text cannot “reflow” to account for changing text sizes and changing screen aspect ratios
So TL;DR: in the streaming media world, PGS and VOBSUB subtitles are not the first choice. Whenever you have the chance, get a SRT version of the subtitle instead
(or additionally, because you can of course select which subtitle to watch).
Using my PC as a server, I CAN play PGS subtitiles on the LG OLED C7 but not on my iphone. Thanks for providing such a complete answer. Maybe someday the PLEX team can program some sort of a text recognition add-on for lesser hardware. Thanks again!
Vobsubs & PGS are supported on the nvidia shield tv when direct playing a file. Also supported on hardware that runs PMP: Pi, for example.
Early 2021 clean-up: implemented (might require new player to be activated)
