" i decided to give soft-coded subtitles another try today. I upgraded the omxplayer and the subtitles work perfectly now. All I had to do was press "s" during the playback and it switched subtitles on/ff. Then I pressed left arrow to skip back to beginning and the subtitles started working. For some reason, they don't work until you have skipped a scene. You can change the subtitle-position by typing omxplayer --align center/left (depending where you want them) filename.

I just thought I should reply in case someone stumbles here and sees misinformation.
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if you want subtitles to appear right away, use the -t option. Changes during playback have a delay."