Not sure if this helps in iOS5 but in my video stream i have an option for subtitles and an option for forced subtitles for each language. I i change to the forced subtitle option it wont show any subtitle (only if you have forced ones).
So if you make your videos like this and have that forced subtitle with not subtitles at all you can select the forced subtitles to make the trick in iOS5.
Here is a print object of how my selection group option array looks like:
<__NSArrayM 0x2006d590>(
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x200297a0, mediaType = sbtl, locale = en, title = (null), option ID = 3, associated forced-only option = <AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x2006d600>>,
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x2006d600, mediaType = sbtl, locale = en, title = (null), option ID = 3, default = YES, forced subtitles only>,
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x20057210, mediaType = sbtl, locale = zh, title = (null), option ID = 4, associated forced-only option = <AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x20044bc0>>,
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x20044bc0, mediaType = sbtl, locale = zh, title = (null), option ID = 4, forced subtitles only>,
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x2002d450, mediaType = sbtl, locale = ce, title = (null), option ID = 5, associated forced-only option = <AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x20028660>>,
<AVMediaSelectionTrackOption: 0x20028660, mediaType = sbtl, locale = ce, title = (null), option ID = 5, forced subtitles only>
)
Hope this can be of any use for you because there is not much info available for this subject.