I reported my problems with this particular piece from a dvd on
mplayer-users a while ago:
http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2002-May/015346.html
http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2002-May/015657.html

There was no response and I forgot about it, too. However the 
problem still exists with current cvs, so I upload a sample.
It is cut with dd from within the file, because the intro (without
subtitles) is rather long.
Try it with:

mplayer -sid 0 dvd-subtitle-problem.vob

It is reproducable on 3 computers I have tried it on. If you 
cannot reproduce it, I will write a new bugreport. If you
need anything else, e.g. the beginning of the file/the whole
file, let me know.

Andreas Lange
andreas.lange@chemie.uni-regensburg.de