The invention relates to the field of set top boxes, and discloses a method and a system capable of enabling a set top box to display add-on subtitles. The method and the system capable of enabling the set top box to display the add-on subtitles specifically comprises a reading module, a converting module and a displaying module, wherein the reading module is used for reading words of corresponding time in subtitles according to the current play time; the converting module is used for converting the reading words to corresponding UNICODE, then calling FreeType bank to obtain RGB (red, green, blue) formatted data of words, converting RGB formatted data to ARGB (alpha, red, green, blue) formatted data, storing to word displaying area, and finally informing displaying progress; the displaying module is used for reading ARGB formatted data when the subtitles need to be displayed, and copying the ARGB formatted data onto framebuffer to display. According to the method and the system capable of enabling the set top box to display the add-on subtitles, adopting assigning way to visit and protection of shared memory, and achieving data caching by means of the shared memory, so that copy of data is greatly reduced, and system efficiency is improved.