I know from firmware upgrades to my Philips DVD player that, when flashed, the player settings are reverted to factory defaults. This includes the option to define which TV type is attached to the player (choices are 4:3 or 16:9). The default is 4:3.
If I don't change it back to 16:9 and play an anamorphic disc using this 4:3 setting on my 16:9 TV, I see a letterboxed movie with subtitles way down in the black bars. If I zoom in to take full advantage of the entire wide screen, these subtitles drop below and out of the frame. This resembles the viewing experience of these newly release sub-quality 4:3 letterboxed editions when trying to watch them on a 16:9 screen (zoomed in to use the full width of the wide screen).
But I believe there is a way around this problem ...
According to my knowledge the subtitle's font type, size, colour and position in the frame (amongst other things) are controlled from the IFO files that go with the VOB files that contain the video and audio data ('stream'). If you copy the movies on the extra discs to your hard drive, you could use some editing tool to try altering some of the values for the subtitles and get them somewhat higher in frame. I'm not sure if IfoEdit enables you to do so, maybe some other tool.