Why are we still stuck with teletext-era style subtitles?

From what I've read, it seems that subtitling on digital broadcasts (DVB) can do much more than the old teletext system can - and yet the subtitles we get today are still basically the same as from the teletext area. The only exception is that the font is no longer fixed width, I think. But it's still the same seven colours (four really; you never see red, blue, or magenta being used for subtitles, the first two for readability-against-black reasons) in black boxes.

As I understand it DVB subtitles can do all kinds of symbols and graphics if you want it to - italic or bold text for emphasis, for example, or different fonts.

Is it just that the current system works well enough? Or/and that no-one wants to deal with two systems for archive and new stuff? Or that less is more when it comes to subtitles?

(also years ago I saw a demo of animated subtitles which tried to convey a sense of the tone of voice. I guess that's long since abandoned)

I think what we have is just fine. I'm not sure I relish the idea of subtitles that resemble Disney Sing-along Songs.

Sky's subtitles are the bold Aerial style font and have been since the first digiboxes back in the late 90's. It would be nice if they updated them, as they do look awful on a HD broadcast.

On Freeview, the subtitles on a HD channel look a lot nicer and easier to read, but look stretched and jagged on an SD channel, yet it appears to be the same actual thing just awful on SD broadcasts like the quality of the image has been downgraded. Why they both can't appear sharp and correctly proportioned is anyone's guess.

Perhaps it depends at what stage the subs are added.

It looks to me, switching between BBC One and BBC One HD, that the SD subs are being stretched, along with the picture, for anamorphic display. They're probably encoded at the same "scale" as an SD picture, too, so they get upsampled by the box/TV along with the rest of the picture.

The UK's subtitling system is still based on WST (aka teletext) subtitles under the bonnet. The systems used to embed subtitle data into SDI/HD-SDI video signals that most (all?) UK broadcasters use internally are still based around the same 40x25 character-based system with the same colour control codes etc.

Digital TV actually allows you to chose whether you then encode in conventional WST format (i.e. CEEFAX style) or whether you use DVB Subtitles, which are nicely bitmapped (with the 'look' dictated by the broadcaster not the receiver) Important to remember that WST is still very popular in mainland Europe - and is still in use in places like Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc. (This is also useful if you still have analogue cable ring mains in use as you can re-code the WST data into blanking for analogue receivers to decode)

DVB Subtitle encoders render subtitles in a nicer format (using Tiresias as the typeface usually) but are still, in the UK, being fed 40x25 7 colour data using a system that dates back to the mid-70s or earlier...

Also because Sky are still using conventional teletext subtitling for broadcast (in the DVB WST implementation) with the Sky box rendering the subtitles (hence Sky are in control of the tyepface) and aren't using DVB Subtitles (i.e. the bit image ones) that Freeview and Freesat use, DSat broadcasts carry both flavours of subtitles - DVB WST for Sky, DVB Subs for Freesat)

If you use a third party reception solution for DSat you can often chose between WST and DVB Subs, and the WST typeface will vary between receivers (some offering more 'CEEFAX' character shapes than others)

When I watched 'This is BBC One HD' with the subtitles on, they were the same as the BBC One London (BBC London News) subtitles.