The subtitle question was pretty much already answered correctly, though I'll elaborate further since I made it so I know what I did to it.
Basically, heres what I did. The subtitles are in the black bars in the laserdisc version of the movies. When I cropped some of the black bars off to turn it into an anamorphic ratio DVD, I didn't lose any of the subtitles, and I wanted to leave the originals in so as to stick with the "Definitive Collection LD-on-DVD" motif. Since they are still fully there on the disc, you can see them just fine on any 4:3 display and probably all 16:9 digital projectors or most specifically anything that doesn't overscan the video. CRT-based 16:9 sets (projection or not) still have some overscan, however. Sooo, on these TVs you may not be able to see the subtitles at all, because erasing some of the black moved the subtitles out of the "safe-title" area as they call it. To compensate for that, I made it so you can turn on dvd-software subtitles of the same lines that will not appear in the overscan area, and in most DVDs should actually occupy the video frame itself. This way, those who can see the LD subtitles don't have to worry about anything, and those who can not see the LD subtitles can turn on the software encoded DVD subtitles. The bottom line is, if you're still using a display that overscans the video, you better hope it overscans the LD subtitles all the way or you might see a subtitle and a half. I suspect the people using analog 16:9 sets are in the minority, however. Most people probably watch on a PC monitor, a 4:3 tv, or 16:9 digital projection.