I've been a VLC junkie for a long time now when it comes to watching anime; however the current version butchers more modern subtitle files as it can't read the ending brackets that separate the subtitles from the linear notes so you end up with your subtitles all over the place and it's very annoying :(

I first tried to solve this problem by learning how to hard sub an mkv to an avi, and it worked quite well most of the time but the results could be hit or miss and it took a long time to as you have render the avi at least twice. (learnt a new skill from it though so woot)

I have been searching for media player that will play ass subtitles straight out of the box for a while now, i didn't want something that used ffdshow like media player classic or goom player as i wanted to be able to watch things on laptops that don't have any codecs installed.

I tried mPlayer, i didn't like it at all it's only useful if you hook it up to fileconveter and use it convert video

The solution to the problem came the other day in the form of The KMPlayer from Korea

http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4094

It plays all the modern subtitles practically flawlessly and includes all the correct fonts as well, it even gives you the options to resize the subs on the fly o.o

The only real downside to is that the file itself is quite large 30+ meg, but i've just checked VLC's file size and they're about the same so it's not really a complaint at all

It look like my days spent hard-subbing anime to my liking are over... i don't know if this is good or bad