VLC shows all subtitles in italic and/or bold, depending on font

Question

When I play a movie with external subtitles, VLC shows all subtitles in italic and/or bold, depending on font - I tested:

• Arial, Times New Roman: everything appears italic, regardless of whether it's marked with <i>. <b>-marked text appears bold+italic.
• Tahoma, Calibri, Cambria: everything appears bold, regardless of whether it's marked with <b>. <i>-marked text appears bold+italic.
• Georgia: everything appears bold+italic, regardless of <b> and <i>.
• Garamond, Verdana: all text appears correctly.

Notes:

• VLC 2.1.1 on Windows 8.1 (ever since VLC 2.0.5 on Windows 8)
• Subtitles default encoding is set to Default (Windows-1252), happens regardless to encoding
• Happens with all .srt subtitles
• I've tried to disable formatted subtitles, in both "Kate overlay decoder" (WTH is that anyways) and "Text subtitles decoder". It disables formatting - but the default style still happens, according to the font (example: Arial - everything is italic).
• I don't have font problems outside of VLC subtitles.

Solution 1

Change the subtitle language to "Unknown" or "None"

Solution 2

I changed subtitles font to Calibri and it worked.

Comments

[Admin]

Did you tried running Reset VLC media player preferences ?

[Admin]

Yes I did - no effect.

[Admin]

This is a known issue in Windows 8. No fix yet. See this VLC forum thread: forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=104049

[Admin]

The title is misleading. Can someone rephrase it so it's not ambiguous?

[gparyani]

"We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed."

[Jonathan]

How would I do that? Options only have "preferred subtitle language", and that doesn't change anything.

[David Richerby]

Upgrading to a new version of the operating system seems like overkill for what is really a very minor font problem. Also, I've no idea what that link points to but I've no desire to follow it.