Does anyone have a suggestion for legal video downloads for recent or popular movies. I have tried Amazon (not available in the Asain area) and Blockbuster (Not available in the Asian area). It seems that producers are always complaining about the copyright violations but make it impossible to get rental movies for a fair price, other than hiking your ass down to the local Blockbuster to rent and return a video from their very limited selection.
Heh. I remember going into Blockbuster and discovering that many of the VHS and DVDs on the shelves were illegal copies.
The impossibility of getting stuff in a timely manner is a great reason to pirate – just to push the bastards.
Have you tried iTunes? Not ideal for films, from what I’ve heard. You might also try a VPN.
AFAIK there is no useful legal service outside of the US or A as the movie companies aren’t supporting it…
So keep on pirating until there’s a sensible legal option…
Yeah, I think if you have to use a VPN to make it work, then that’s a good sign that it’s not legal here in Taiwan. I don’t like it either, for what it’s worth.
Your area still has a Blockbuster?! All the ones in Danshui are gone.
I can use my Canadian credit card to shop in the iTunes Canada store, but I’ve never bought any movies: I don’t want to spend 20 bucks for a file that I can only watch on my computer, unless I buy an AppleTV unit (which allows streaming to a TV). $10 for a file without digital locks, I may be interested, but not $20 for something with near-zero flexibility.
If you have an American credit card, I guess you can buy movies - with a much better selection - from the iTunes USA store.
I keep meaning to see if I can actually use my Canadian credit card and Canada-based VPN (through Witopia) to stream from Netflix. However, that’s an awful lot of work just to give companies money for stuff I can get for free - and from what I’ve heard, Netflix’s streaming selection isn’t that good. I’d also guess that streaming from Canada, through a VPN, won’t exactly lead to a stellar viewing experience.
Note that if you want to be legal (and I understand the desire), the cheapest option in Taiwan may be ordering DVDs through Amazon UK. Their DVD prices are often about half that of North America’s.
Of course if you use a VPN to get around the region restrictions, you’re still technically breaking the law AFAIK.
And don’t forget that region-free DVD players are also illegal!
Yeah, being legal is pretty much impossible, isn’t it?
And don’t forget that region-free DVD players are also illegal!
Yeah, being legal is pretty much impossible, isn’t it?[/quote]
They certainly don’t make it easy.
It is as soon as you don’t want to wait six months for things to maybe arrive here…
And as soon as you want something that doesn’t appeal to the Taiwanese (insert other country that fits here) market, you’re screwed.
Being from a non English speaking country this is really problematic if you want some content from back home…
Don’t know if that by itself proves it is illegal. Seems entirely possible to me that Blockbuster and the authorized video distributor could have a license agreement where Blockbuster is allowed to copy and stock a limited number of copies of a DVD for rentals. Both sides would be benefit; the distributor wouldn’t have to ship out more retail copies and Blockbuster could replace any broken discs without waiting for new shipments. Probably discourages some people from stealing the Blockbuster copies too.
Unthinkable in the US but seems like that might actually work in Taiwan.
isn’t netflix available in taiwan?
just hook up an HTPC or boxee box… right?
No, it’s not available outside of the US
[quote=“benkei”]isn’t netflix available in Taiwan?
just hook up an HTPC or boxee box… right?[/quote]
There’s netflix streaming in Canada too, but legally you’re supposed to be in Canada to do this. As mentioned above, I keep wondering about giving this a try with a VPN, but haven’t yet: I know Hulu has blocked VPN gateways (or whatever the term is) in the past, so I’m not to eager to subscribe for a service that may not last for me.
This works for me for accessing Hulu in Taiwan: reddit.com/r/canada/comments … ew_method/
Actually you can skip all the Firefox extension stuff and just set up the firewall as stated under the heading “To do this under Windows 7:” This basically just blocks your computer from contacting the Hulu servers that do the location-tracking.
Those instructions are only for Windows 7. You can do the same thing in OSX/Linux/Linux-compatible router but I do not know the equivalent commands offhand.
Macworld article on the idiotic difficulties of paying for legal yet convenient content:
macworld.com/article/157817/ … uture.html
What about slingbox? the downside is that you have to have your cable box where you want your content coming from…
Don’t think it’s legal though and the quality is so so…
The law where?
Where?
Just wondering…