HELP: unknown sub out-of-sync...
 

I got this really old film called Cyborg 2 in French. I downloaded the English subtitles from:

http://www.opensubtitles.org/subtitles/158914

however I think the subtitles start 2 seconds early. The subtitles file is in a format that I am not familiar with, eg.

{217}{282}<i>In the year 2074,</i>
{290}{332}<i>planet earth is caught</i>|<i>in the grip</i>
{337}{395}<i>of high-powered</i>|<i>corporate warfare.</i>

and the file extension was just plain .txt

Does anyone know exactly what type of subtitle format this file is in, and what editor I can use to increment the time by 2 seconds?

On DVD's, subtitles are stored as pictures. What you downloaded (whether this is legal or illeagl, I don't know) is a plain text file, used for DivX movies instead. You need some DVD editor software to 1) render it into text and 2) edit its timestamps. Sorry, can't help more, I'm not using such software, I always convert in the DVD => DivX way; but someone else will surely give you exact software names...

I did download subtitles from other sites like mysubtitles.com or titrari.ro and sometimes I had the same problem, but it is not an usual thing however.
Indeed, the subtitles from such sites are made and uploaded by users, and are not from dvd's