Regardless of its Always Enabled setting in Language setting on Server, Subtitle setting in playing back synced content on iPhone always defaults to Off. This is problematic specially when binge watching a TV series. There is no way to enable Showing Subtitle for the whole series and no way to enable it before starting to play each episode.
You would always need to:
-start to play an episode
-interrupt the play back by tapping the … on the bottom right
-tap Playback Settings
-tap subtitles
-tap the preferred language
-exit settings by tapping the down arrow
-wait for play back to resume
and then do these all over again when the next episode starts and half way through it you realized the subs are off again!!