Netflix now being region locked :(

Forums › Online streaming services › Netflix now being region locked :(

1 | 2

GV27

5977 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 4212

#2536021 7-Aug-2020 07:08

Talkiet:

That is of course, assuming you are going to let facts and data sway your opinion.

Cheers - N

I guess that comes with the huge caveat than the content you get in one region isn't comparable to what is available in another. If you have to sign up to three other streaming services to get the same amount of content that other countries do then that's not much help.

BlakJak

1330 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 735

Trusted

#2536782 8-Aug-2020 18:47

GV27:

Talkiet:

That is of course, assuming you are going to let facts and data sway your opinion.

Cheers - N

I guess that comes with the huge caveat than the content you get in one region isn't comparable to what is available in another. If you have to sign up to three other streaming services to get the same amount of content that other countries do then that's not much help.

I appreciate that not having the content you want is annoying - but seriously what else do you want them to do? These are the deals they strike with the distributors of the content, they can't ignore licensing and nor should we as consumers.

Be clever with the way you subscribe to your content - instead of maintaining access to four different providers, do one at a time. Reduce their income. That's how to effect change.

Technical circumvention is only going to drive them to implement more and more inconvenient measures to make it difficult for us. It's just driving escalation that's ultimately to our detriment.

No signature to see here, move along...

Lias

5655 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3978

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2536930 9-Aug-2020 09:38

Talkiet:

What you're advocating for is ludicrous and I see it as just about amounting to the suspension of copyright in NZ. It would be _brilliant_ in the very short term, I grant you that.

It seems the better we get it here the more some people like to complain.

I still hear people saying the uncongested gigabit fibre to over 80% of the population is not good enough, and everyone wanted Sky to lose their monopoly and for services like Netflix etc to launch in NZ.

It's all happening and now there are complaints that we have to buy multiple services, and that these companies DARE to want to make a profit.

But I'll give you credit for being extremely consistent in your opinions though.

I will say it's not price gouging in the slightest... 30 seconds on Google found this:

Which puts NZ in the bottom half (better half) of price per title and also shows the top and bottom 10 countries in terms of cost of Netflix compared to average income.

Here's a link to the google sheet with the data.

Check it out before doubling down on implying that we're paying too much here.

Here's a pic of one of the tables (admittedly this is for basic Netflix - they haven't created the premium comparison for this particular set of metrics but it will be in the same ballpark.

That shows New Zealand having NF costing 0.23% of the average wage in NZ, which puts us 15th cheapest out of 76 countries. (Sorry, the screenshot was taken when sorted by GDP/capita)

In fact, if anything, the data suggests that Netflix charges customers in poor countries WAY WAY WAY more (in terms of percentage of wage or) than in developed countries. We're getting a great deal.

That is of course, assuming you are going to let facts and data sway your opinion.

Cheers - N

I have no objection the suspension of copyright, but I'm sure people that create content do and I accept that they should get _some_remuneration, but arguably far less than many do now.

To flip that around, just because we have it better than we did, doesn't mean we have it as good as we could (or even we should) have it. Personally, I'll stop pushing for more when we end exclusivity and allow all platforms to access all content and only pay the content owners based on the percentage of viewers (ala spotify).

Why should we pay more because we earn more as a country, that's just penalizing success. Multinational companies trying to make us pay more simply because we can is exactly why we need to smash the laws that let them do so, the interests of NZ citizens must always be put over any foreign companies profit. They should supply us content at the absolute (not relative) cheapest price they supply it anywhere in the world, which based on that spreadsheet appears to be Turkey at US$2.85 per month.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3934

Trusted

#2536936 9-Aug-2020 09:53

Lias:

[snip]

Why should we pay more because we earn more as a country, that's just penalizing success. Multinational companies trying to make us pay more simply because we can is exactly why we need to smash the laws that let them do so, the interests of NZ citizens must always be put over any foreign companies profit. They should supply us content at the absolute (not relative) cheapest price they supply it anywhere in the world, which based on that spreadsheet appears to be Turkey at US$2.85 per month.

You're simply wrong here for for too many economic reasons to even start to list.

Simply, as mentioned earlier, this will mean either most of the countries in the world will lose legal access to the content entirely, or the studios will all go out of business. There isn't another option with what you propose.
Wanting to believe otherwise as strongly as you obviously do still doesn't make it true.

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Lias

5655 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3978

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2536937 9-Aug-2020 09:55

BlakJak:

Technical circumvention is only going to drive them to implement more and more inconvenient measures to make it difficult for us. It's just driving escalation that's ultimately to our detriment.

Personally I believe the only way 'piracy' will end, is when content owners all freely release their content with some sort of donation model. As long as people charge for content, other people will crack/decrypt/rip/share/copy/etc it. As for that being to our detriment, I have faith that the talented and motivated individuals who are dedicated to ensuring content is freely available will always outsmart those who seek to stop it. You have Wikileaks, DDOSecrets, etc leaking top secret information, hardware and software DRM constantly being cracked and circumvented (e.g Denuvo, jailbreaking phones/consoles, etc). Information will always find a way to get out, because it wants to be free...

Lias

5655 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3978

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2536938 9-Aug-2020 09:58

Talkiet:

You're simply wrong here for for too many economic reasons to even start to list.

Simply, as mentioned earlier, this will mean either most of the countries in the world will lose legal access to the content entirely, or the studios will all go out of business. There isn't another option with what you propose.
Wanting to believe otherwise as strongly as you obviously do still doesn't make it true.

N.

I'm not an economist, so I'll take your word for it.

If they'd rather go bust than accept our crumbs, so be it, they go bust. Someone or something will step into the void they leave.

Dell

Shop now for Dell laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3934

Trusted

#2536939 9-Aug-2020 10:03

Lias:

[snip]

If they'd rather go bust than accept our crumbs, so be it, they go bust. Someone or something will step into the void they leave.

Why would they bother? you have just advocated to destroy the revenue model for that industry globally - who's going to jump in when there's no money to be made?

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Lias

5655 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3978

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2537027 9-Aug-2020 11:53

Talkiet:

Lias:

[snip]

If they'd rather go bust than accept our crumbs, so be it, they go bust. Someone or something will step into the void they leave.

Why would they bother? you have just advocated to destroy the revenue model for that industry globally - who's going to jump in when there's no money to be made?

N

Destroy the revenue model as it stands now perhaps, but that doesn't mean destroying the industry. Cassettes, VHS, DVD, MP3, Napster, Torrents and more have all been prophesied as destroying industries, but they haven't. Most people are generally willing to pay something, and you only have to look around Twitch and Youtube to see how people can create content for free and make money. Spotify gives everyone (most) of the content for a set monthly fee, and pays the creators based on it's popularity. We also have the likes of KickStarter, Patreon, etc as alternative funding methods to the status quo. Change is coming, maybe not how I personally envision it, but the old revenue model is already crumbling,

rugrat

3142 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 945

Lifetime subscriber

#2537099 9-Aug-2020 14:16

As long as a service has content interested in watching why need access to all content. Can’t watch it all at once.

I’m happy chappie, get add free content, no stupid channel screen logo’s on screen, way better sound and picture quality then old days, and choice of watch as much as like of a service for fixed monthly price v’s going to video store. Don’t have to set up recordings to time shift.

With likes of Spotify people will listen to a song lot more then once, not the same with movies, TV shows.

I subscribed to Disney Plus for a year and see that was a mistake. Should just subscribe when they come out with something new. They put a couple of movies on haven’t seen and the only new series they put on that interested me was The Mandalorian. Don’t need a year to watch those in.

I don’t go after any one particular program any more, just look at a service and see how much they’ve got there that would be interested in watching. Even if Netflix stopped adding content it would take me well over a year to get through what’s there now. I’m also enjoying foreign programs on there with dubbed English.

BlakJak

1330 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 735

Trusted

#2537229 9-Aug-2020 18:24

Lias:

BlakJak:

Technical circumvention is only going to drive them to implement more and more inconvenient measures to make it difficult for us. It's just driving escalation that's ultimately to our detriment.

Personally I believe the only way 'piracy' will end, is when content owners all freely release their content with some sort of donation model. As long as people charge for content, other people will crack/decrypt/rip/share/copy/etc it. As for that being to our detriment, I have faith that the talented and motivated individuals who are dedicated to ensuring content is freely available will always outsmart those who seek to stop it. You have Wikileaks, DDOSecrets, etc leaking top secret information, hardware and software DRM constantly being cracked and circumvented (e.g Denuvo, jailbreaking phones/consoles, etc). Information will always find a way to get out, because it wants to be free...

... and when there's no profit to be made from generating content, content generation will cease to be a commercial venture. A 'donation' model isn't going to scale.

We're now heading into a world where the producer is now the distributor (ala Disney+ and Netflix) and this is making the consumer ultimately pay more / hold more commercial relationships (one now has to subscribe to multiple services to watch multiple shows, depending on who produces them) but at the end of the day, i'm making a choice about what I believe is worth paying against the value i'm getting in return. I'm also recognising that there are loads of people who need to be paid and thus there's a need to respect the paid-for model. Piracy created DRM, it's forcing compensating controls which are ultimately making life as a consumer more difficult.

I'm not saying i've never had pirated media, i'm saying that it's not unreasonable to pay a fair price for the media because that's respecting the people involved in the production and distribution of that media.

For that reason, I do make an effort to watch media via the (legal) means available to me - ads and all - because that's showing respect to the people behind that media, and respecting that i'm getting some value in return for the cost I pay, whether in subscription terms or because i'm being subjected to ads...

So where I have a legal consumption option I'm not going to circumvent region locks and nor do I think others should either, for the most part.

No signature to see here, move along...

richms

29104 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 10222

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2537240 9-Aug-2020 18:33

I will pirate anything that they will not take my money for, anything on free to air I will pirate. I want the advertising supported zero monetary cost model to go and die in a fire.

Even with things like TVNZ on demand where they should be able to target much better ads than OTA broadcast, they fail well short. When I had add supported youtube, the ads on that were _much_ more relevent to me.

Netflixes monthly cost is close to nothing for what is available, same for disney+. Effective cost per hour watched would be under a dollar for both most months. Perhaps a pay per show thing would be an option in the future but for now the flat rate is all that there is so I will deal with it, and as a result just put something random on in the background when doing other things.

Richard rich.ms

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

grolschie

911 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 159

#2541421 15-Aug-2020 07:59

Talkiet:
I pay a slightly discounted price for NF as the HD is bundled with my ISP plan and the upgrade to UHD is $5 billed through my ISP.

I didn't realise you can upgrade the bundled Netflix. Is this possible with Spark? Pity you cannot upgrade Spotify to Spotify Duo the same way.

grolschie

911 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 159

#2541482 15-Aug-2020 10:51

grolschie:
Talkiet:
I pay a slightly discounted price for NF as the HD is bundled with my ISP plan and the upgrade to UHD is $5 billed through my ISP.

I didn't realise you can upgrade the bundled Netflix. Is this possible with Spark? Pity you cannot upgrade Spotify to Spotify Duo the same way.

Update: yep, the Spark website allows you to modify your Netflix subscription.

K8Toledo

1018 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 311

#2541519 15-Aug-2020 12:15

Movieman:

My son lives in the UK and he has Netflix 4K, which allows up to 4 or 5 users on the one account. I log into his account, and get the 4K for free. I hardly watch it though. Just the occasional Netflix Original movie.

My sister lives in Los Angeles & my parents do exactly the same with her Netflix account. Personally I don't watch Netflix (lack of decent content).

1 | 2