NetFlix Coming to Taiwan? Do they or will they have subtitles?

Do you have a Taiwanese credit card? That may be required - not sure. I remember having trouble years back because my credit card wasn’t matching the country I was in, or something like that.

I do.
Can’t wait to binge Bojack and Narcos.

I didn’t have to.

Narcos was awesome. I think I’ll watch it again

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Ozark!

Yeah? hmmm

Next guess: are you working through a VPN? Netflix really does not like VPNs these days, and if you’re using one, you may have to turn it off.

No, I don’t use a VPN. I can only imagine using one if I lived in Mainland China. Why do you think it’s needed in Taiwan?

They don’t have all the shows and movies that are on the US Netflix.

Some people use VPNs to pretend to be in different regions - I’ve used one in the past to watch Canadian hockey games, or pretend to be in the United States to get a different Netflix catalog (that no longer works, or at least no longer works easily). They’re probably useful for piracy as well. But anyway, if you’re not using one, that’s not the issue.

Now I’m confused why you can’t sign up.

I was probably trying to sign up with the US site. I just went to Netflix.com and kept getting denied. :man_shrugging:

It’s free netflix time again! They really are losing titles instead of gaining them. But, I like the odd classics like PeeWee Herman and other classic series.
They have some interesting Taiwanese show with English Subtitles. But, I’m going to cancel. There are other alternatives. If they open up their American catalog, then I would definitely join.

What’s an example of something popular on the American version that isn’t on the Taiwanese one?

You can compare the catalogs here:
What’s in Taiwan: https://netflixable.com/taiwan/en-US
What’s in the United States: https://netflixable.com/usa/en-US

A quick check shows that Coco and Black Panther are available in the USA, but not here (mind you, I believe Disney’s pulling everything off Netflix in the next year or so). A few years ago Parks & Recreation was available there, not here. On the other hand, Star Trek Discovery is available here but not in the US or Canada.

Oh here’s a site for total numbers: https://www.finder.com/global-netflix-library-totals
United States: 1,326 TV shows; 4,339 movies.
Taiwan: 139 TV shows, 398 movies.

Huh. About 10% of availability. I wonder if that’s still current; that seems awfully low.

Please oh please explain what the "no local distributor or no distribution rights in your country means to my satisfaction!!!

I like offbeat stuff that usually only has local appeal. I actually like a lot of offbeat stuff that only has limited appeal in a variety of countries… but this is what I usually get…
I’m sorry but the content you clicked on is not available in your country. When I contact the owners they tell me that they don’t have distribution rights in the country. (They are the program producers.? Huh? This rule is in place to protect the local program distributors.
WTF- No one is going to want a copy of the movie or series in Taiwan. No one is going to bid on it.

So who are these mysterious distributors that are preventing Net Flix and other program providers from opening up the program to certain regions?
Why are they so anal about blocking proxies. Don’t they know they will not stop people who really want to see the programs?
Don’t they know that they are actually hitting money out of an outstretched hand and yelling “Your money is no good here… !”?

Could it be an issue of ehem censorship? Like, they have rules here for not showing certain body parts or certain situations -sex, drugs, cough cough- and usually cut those off from local showings.

I don’t think those rules apply to Netflix. “Altered Carbon” has an absurdly long scene of a naked woman running around, and there are plenty of drugs in it, albeit of a sci-fi variety.

I think Netflix itself doesn’t particularly care about proxies, but the companies they work with care a great deal. Some MOD channel subsidiary of Sony here paid for the rights to that movie, damn it, and therefore no one else can have it.

My guess on distributors: the East Asian rights for whatever production company were bought by some minor offshoot of a Hong Kong company years ago, and nobody can be arsed to figure out where the rights are.

This is one reason Netflix is producing so much more of its own content, because it automatically has the worldwide rights to all of that content. Picking up other content is either too expensive, or too much hassle.

I suspect the problems are similar to the “copyright black hole”:

Once upon a time, three things held true. Copyrights were relatively short. You had to renew them (most people did not.) You didn’t get one unless you asked. Now none of those hold true. Copyright can last for more than 100 years. The result is that the world’s libraries are full of books that are still under copyright, commercially unavailable and, in many cases, “orphan works” with no known copyright holder. Copyright has exhausted its function, yet the works remain trapped in the cultural black hole.

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Because they are all greedy pricks and have no idea that the internet works globally

Oooh Narcos Mexico coming 11/16