Over the last few months, English-speaking buyers of the fabulous French boxset have asked if there is any way to deselect the "permanent" French subtitles when viewing the English-language versions of the eps.

As is usual with solutions to problems of this kind there is some good news and there is some bad news.  The good news is that a particularly cunning Australian DVD-brainbox, Grant Taylor has indeed found a method to achieve titleless nirvana; the bad news is the workaround does not work around all DVD players.

It's still early days regards a player compatibility list but so far the procedure has proved effective on the following decks:

• Pioneer DV515
• Philips DV-711

It should be pointed out that while Carlton and TF1 would certainly be more than a little upset that their subtitle measures can be bypassed,  the workaround is not illegal; you are merely exploiting the capabilities of an off the rack piece of hardware.

Thanks once again to Grant Taylor for sharing his subtitle workaround with the rest of us:

 
First of all here is some info for  those interested in how the discs are encoded regards audio and subtitle streams -

FRENCH AUDIO WITH NO SUBTITLES is:
AUDIO 1 - French
SUBTITLE 1 French (this subtitle stream is actually blank)

ENGLISH AUDIO WITH FRENCH SUBTITLES is:
AUDIO 2 - English
SUBTITLE 2 - English (this subtitle stream is actually French titles)

Required parameters for English language sans French titles (the tricky bit):
AUDIO 2 - English
SUBTITLE 1 - French (remember that this stream is actually blank)

The DISCS are encoded to disallow switching between Audio & Subtitle tracks or the deselection of the French subtitle stream on the "original English language" versions.  To get 'round this restrictive bit of encoding, we need to alter the way the player is set-up to play discs.

Set-ups vary from player to player so a bit of lateral thinking is required when applying the following instructions to your deck.
 

• Load the disc into the player

• wait for the disc menu to appear, then press STOP on your remote. Some menu's won't allow "stop" so select a different menu e.g. "episodes x & x", until you can.

• Once stopped, press MENU on your remote which should take you to the PLAYER Menu **some remote's have a button for "disc menu" and another for "player menu" - it's the player settings you want to change

 
• Go into LANGUAGE SET UP and make sure it is set up to play ENGLISH AUDIO.

 
• Next, there should be a SUBTITLE option - this needs to be changed from ENGLISH to FRENCH so that the player defaults to French subtitles automatically (for those who missed it the first two times, the discs FRENCH subtitle track is actually blank).

**With some machines you can also turn the subtitles ON/OFF from the player's MENU.  In order for this to work - they must be switched to ON so that the French SUBTITLE track automatically begins
 
• Once that's been changed, exit the player's MENU screen.




DO NOT load up the disc menu again as this will
cancel everything you've just done

The way a DVD disc file structure is set up means that each episode on the disc is a TITLE (numbered 1 - 4; and 5 for bonus stuff), so:

• While in STOP mode, press numbers 1 - 5 on the remote, depending which episode you want to watch and the disc should begin then play that episode.

**Because you have not loaded the discs MENU it should use the default of the player you've just set up.  If you press the AUDIO button it should be AUDIO 2 English and press the SUBTITLE button it should be SUBTITLE 1 French.

You must repeat the above procedure each time you load a disc..

FYI: It appears that the French titles on the episode of The Saint on the bonus materials disc cannot be deselected  because it's probable the subtitles are burned-in on the source print - Grant hasn't played around with the disc yet but if there are any updates to this info, you'll read it here first.