W7 non-VLC free player with PGS subtitle support?

I know VLC player has PGS and XSub support. I use it on Vista64. But the last 1/2 dozen releases, it crashes on W7 as soon as I touch it. So I can't use it. Even reinstalling an old version that used to work, won't work.

Anyone know another free player that can play .m2ts and .mkv with PGS and optionally XSub support for Windows Seven?

Sorry to hear about the problem with VLC, but it is not inherent with W7, because I use it without any issues on 2 rigs both running W7 x64. If reinstalling didn't fix the problem, I would suspect that something else is involved, but have no idea of what. Since it may be some other app, have you tried using it on a clean boot or Safe Mode?

Something I plan on trying (but have not done yet) is converting the files to another file type that WMP can play with FormatFactory. I don't know if it will work or not. I am currently trying to download a .mkv, but its pretty big so it might take a while. If you want to try it first, feel free to do so and see what happens. If you want to wait, I will report on my own results as seen as I get around to it.

Maybe this will help:

MKVMania

I also Googled and found returns that indicate that MPCHC will play Blu Ray, so I would assume that it would display .m2ts subtitles also, but have not personally tried it.

Just updating to say that I successfully converted a .mkv file to a .avi file and it works perfectly in Windows Media Player.

seekermeister said:

Sorry to hear about the problem with VLC, but it is not inherent with W7, because I use it without any issues on 2 rigs both running W7 x64. If reinstalling didn't fix the problem, I would suspect that something else is involved, but have no idea of what. Since it may be some other app, have you tried using it on a clean boot or Safe Mode?

Click to expand...

It worked for months in W7 so it's pretty weird. Especially since the version that worked won't work on reinstall. It's like as soon as I touch it something sends a WM_CLOSE message to the window.

Thanks for the input on MkvMania but I use BD Rebuilder heavily and I have to use the versions of FFDShow and Matroska splitter compatible with it. That's the whole reason I want to be able to look at the PGS subs.

Splash Lite player plays .mkv very well but there's no PGS subs support. You have to spend $20 for the Pro version. I don't play whole movies on my PC. So I don't want to spend for a player just to test sample a video.

There were some ports of Linux type players but the controls are so foreign, and they insist on using black on black Gui so there's just about zero chance of figuring out how to use them. It's really annoying this user interface stuff is considered acceptable. Might as well have command line controls if you can't see the buttons on the Gui.