Why subtitles don't show on a TV, and how to fix it

The subtitles work on your computer, but on the TV you get nothing, or a line of strange symbols. Smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, TCL and others all read external subtitle files, but they are much stricter than VLC. A file that a computer player forgives can be silently ignored by a TV.

Work through the checks below in order. They start with the causes behind most cases and each one takes a minute or less.

1. The file name doesn't match exactly

A TV only finds a subtitle that has exactly the same name as the video, apart from the extension, in the same folder:

Movie.Name.2024.1080p.mkv
Movie.Name.2024.1080p.srt

One extra space, a different capital letter, or movie.eng.srt next to movie.mkv can be enough to lose it. Some TVs accept a language code (movie.en.srt), many don't, so on a TV it is safest to use the plain name first and add language codes only once that works.

Watch out for hidden extensions on Windows. Windows hides known file extensions by default, so a file that looks like movie.srt may really be movie.srt.txt (saved from Notepad), and renaming movie.mp4 to match can produce movie.mp4.srt. In File Explorer, turn on View → Show → File name extensions and check both names.

2. Subtitles are switched off on the TV

Many TVs load the file but keep subtitles off until you turn them on. During playback, press the options, tools or settings button on the remote (the name depends on the brand) and look for Subtitles. Choose the external file; on some TVs it is listed as “External” or by its file name. Also check the TV's general accessibility or caption settings, which can override the player.

3. The TV doesn't read that format

SRT is the format every TV supports. Others are hit and miss:

• VTT is common for files downloaded from streaming and web players, and many TVs ignore it. Convert it with VTT to SRT.
• ASS and SSA, common for anime and fansubs, are supported by some TVs and shown without their styles by others. ASS to SRT gives you a plain file every TV reads.
• SUB files come in two very different kinds. A text MicroDVD .sub can be converted with SUB to SRT. A .sub that comes with an .idx file contains pictures from a DVD and can't be converted to text here.

4. The letters are broken, or the file is blank

If accented letters show as é, Ä‘, boxes or question marks, or a Vietnamese, Arabic or Cyrillic file shows nothing at all, the problem is the text encoding. Older subtitle files were often saved in a regional code page such as Windows-1258 or Windows-1252. Computer players guess the encoding; most TVs assume UTF-8 and give up.

Fix Subtitle Encoding detects which encoding the file was written in, shows you the repaired text and saves it as UTF-8. If an older TV still shows wrong letters after that, tick Add a BOM for older TVs and players and download again: some sets only recognise UTF-8 when the file starts with that byte order mark.

If the letters are right on your computer but the TV shows empty boxes, the TV's font has no shapes for those letters. Look for a subtitle language or character set option in the TV's subtitle settings and set it to your language.

5. Strange codes appear on screen

Text like <font color="#ffffff">, {\an8} or <i> printed in the subtitles means the TV doesn't understand formatting tags and shows them as words. Remove Formatting from Subtitles strips them out and can keep italics if your TV handles those.

6. The video is played over the network, not from USB

When you play from a computer or NAS over DLNA, or cast from a phone, many TVs never receive the external subtitle file at all, even with matching names. Try the same files from a USB stick first: if the subtitles appear there, the file is fine and the streaming method is the problem.

For network playback, use an app that handles subtitles itself, such as Plex, Jellyfin or Kodi on the TV, or add the subtitles into the video file as a track (an .mkv with an SRT track is widely supported).

7. The subtitles show, but at the wrong time

If the text appears but too early, too late or further and further off, the subtitle was made for a different release of the video. TV players rarely offer a fine delay setting, so fix the file instead: How to fix subtitles out of sync explains how to find the offset and correct it.

Still nothing?

A few less common causes are worth a look:

• File and folder names with unusual characters. Some TVs fail on emoji, very long names or certain symbols. Rename both files to something short like movie.mkv and movie.srt as a test.
• The USB stick's format. Most TVs read FAT32 and exFAT; some don't read NTFS or Mac-formatted drives at all.
• An embedded subtitle track is chosen instead. If the .mkv already contains subtitle tracks, the TV may pick one of those. Look through every entry in the subtitle menu.
• A damaged file. Open the .srt in a text editor and check that every block has a number, a timing line with -->, the text and a blank line. The tools on this site read files with missing numbers or blank lines and save them in a clean, standard layout, so opening it in Subtitle Cleaner and downloading the result often fixes it.

For more on how the format works and why it breaks, read What is an SRT file?. Every tool here runs in your browser, so the subtitle file never leaves your device.