What is missing in a lot of these comments is acknowledging that Netflix may become the largest global "television" network in the world as adoption increases. They have original content lined up and control those rights, and they will continue to expand their reach with that content. Whether they add the "same" streaming content as they have purchased from other providers in the US is not the point here - the big impact is the expansion of their original content to such a massive global audience. Interesting to see this finally come to fruition now that they have enough content to justify a subscription on its own.<p>It will also be interesting to see how other content providers (Amazon, but also CNN, HBO, and more conventional TV Providers) follow suit in the pursuit of eyeballs and expanding global markets.<p>Netflix is based on subscription, but it would be interesting to know if there is a company or network of companies equipped to sell digital advertising localized, at global scale to support a "free" model often seen on US network applications.
In europe we just get netflix lite, with old and uninteresting stuff sparkled with some original content and random rares. I hope someday we'll get this netflix you all talk about.
In my experience, Netflix is horrid outside the US - a much more limited catalogue and a lot of mismatched foreign language content.<p>I live in Jamaica and had subscribed to the version that was legitimately available to us w/o using a VPN or proxy or similar service.<p>The result was twofold:<p>- less content than on the US version (but the same price)<p>- a whole lot of content available in overdubbed Spanish only or with baked-on subtitles.<p>Guess they don't realize that south of the border there are countries that speak English (as well as French, Dutch and Portuguese).<p>Our cable companies have the same problem trying to legitimately license content from US broadcast and cable networks - they want to dump the "Latin American" feed on us...
Netflix is transforming into an on-demand cable channel.
I want to pay a monthly fee and get a Spotify for movies. I don't want to pay 10 Euro a month for netflix originals plus a handful of old movies.
To everyone freaking out about the map not showing all the countries, it doesn't appear to be updated.<p>If you read the press release it is available in every country in the world except Syria, Crimea, North Korea and China.
Now you can cancel your account worldwide!<p>Previously, the Netflix website did not work at all from outside of their regions. Want to cancel online? You cannot. Call them? Only if you are willing to pay for a overseas call. No email support, nothing.<p>I took these steps to cancel my account:
1) Open a Twitter account
2) Tweet about canceling my account
3) Send friend request (or whatever it is called)
4) Accept friend request
5) Send direct message
6) Receive a direct message with an email account
7) Send an email about cancelling my account<p>Cancel a Netflix account from overseas, all in 7 easy steps.
<p><pre><code> enjoy Netflix original series including Marvel’s Daredevil
and Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Narcos, Sense8, Grace and
Frankie, and Marco Polo
</code></pre>
House of Cards notably missing. Lithuanian here, great that we have it now, but have no idea why House of Cards is not available.
I think we'll get to see just how compelling the Netflix original catalog is when we see global customer numbers.<p>My understanding is that Netflix doesn't have streaming rights for most of the content that isn't theirs internationally, and that was the biggest barrier before.<p>My guess is that uptake will be slow, but the great thing is they just keep creating more content, so it'll be more compelling every year.
This is awesome news.<p>Now if only BBC's iPlayer would become global and allow us non-brits to pay for it (effectively subsidizing the TV license maybe?), that would be heaven.
Most people relate Netflix to 'movies'. I have been an on - off customer of Netflix and thoughts of leaving it often crosses my mind.<p>But the only thing which keeps me on it are the TV shows, seasons and seasons of it. I'm currently watching Mad Men , that's 6+ seasons I want to watch. I love the luxury of just catching up on a 30-45 min TV show while I'm multitasking, eating, playing PS4 etc.<p>I think Netflix or competitors who want loyal customers ,expanding library of TV shows should be their prominent strategy.
I would suggest - giving out free episodes for every season, atleast 2 and see the signups go up.
Aws and Amazon Instant Video probably are very separate businesses. And right now, aws is obviously much more successful than Amazon Video. But is that enough reason for Netlfix to be not scared of being a full aws shop and not worrying the fact that their biggest - probably the only - competitor (Amazon Video) also shares the same parent company as Netflix's main tech provider (aws)?
It doesn't have a lot of contents in here (Czech Republic).<p>But! It has complete history of Power Rangers franchise. I think every Power Rangers episode in history is there. So there is that.
I apologize if this is something that I overlooked in the announcement, but does this mean Netflix will now have the same catalog available everywhere? In the press release they only seem to refer to Netflix original series.
Last time I looked the Netflix content that was available to subscribers here (Belgium) was extremely poor and not comparable at all to what US Netflix subscribers are used to.
Everybody talks mostly about the content. I started using Netflix (Germany + US), because of the technology. I don't want to move to my next apartment with thousands of discs, and when I want to watch something I don't want to search for days before i find the disc. Streaming is the way to go and at least in Europe Netflix is the only one who does it right. (Youtube of course as well, but youtube has no interesting movies/tv shows with licenses and high quality)<p>What I'm really missing is the option to pay for single premium movies like the newest Avengers movie like I could on Amazon or Google. I don't understand why they don't offer the content that may be too expensive to them for general access at least for extra pay.
The linked full list of countries and territories where Netflix is now available <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164" rel="nofollow">https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164</a> does not show all the 130 countries.
Apparently playback is limited to 720p on Chrome/Firefox. [1] Also the selection seems rather limited in Estonia, not even House of Cards season 1 is available! Very disappointing.<p>[1] <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742?ba=GSButtonClick&q=" rel="nofollow">https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742?ba=GSButtonClick&q=</a>
Aaaand... they don't accept my credit card. I swear to god, I see this over and over again: services becoming available in my country (in Europe), but refusing credit cards that are pretty popular in Europe (like Maestro and Visa Electron).
Netflix will have a positive effect in countries like India. Their entry will help force ISPs to upgrade their infrastructure and increase average speeds. The benefits will hopefully trickle down to all internet users!
A worldwide VPN just became the best Netflix accessory ever
- <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10724378/netflix-everywhere-ces-2016-vpn-best-accessory" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10724378/netflix-everywhere...</a>
Exciting to now have Netflix officially in Asia (Thailand for me), though its catalogue is decidedly sparse. There's no BBC shows (so no Sherlock or Dr. Who), no AMC (so no Breaking Bad or Walking Dead), no CBS/ABC shows (so no How I Met Your Mother or The Office), and oddly enough no House of Cards (though that's the only original series that seems to be missing here—and presumably that's missing because they sold international rights).<p>If Netflix launched internationally with this sparse of a catalogue a year ago, it'd be a much more major problem. Today, though, Netflix has enough of their own series that there's a decent amount of new/interesting stuff to watch. Perk of owning their own content is that they already have the rights—nothing to negotiate for each new country.<p>Still, for now, the catalogue is sparse enough, you'll want a VPN to get your money's worth from a Netflix subscription outside the States.<p>Another interesting little thing. Better Call Saul is AMC in the States, but it's called a Netflix Original in most other countries—even Thailand where Netflix doesn't have any other AMC shows.<p>Also: HBO, time to get HBO Now in Asia.
Now, I'm curious - is there any way I check what would be available in my specific country <i>without</i> signing up and starting a trial?<p>I want to be able to at least just do a few search queries to check if what I had watched recently is there or I shouldn't even bother and save that "free month" offer for later (because if there's nothing to watch it'd be wasted).
Reducing geoblocking is a step forward. Another step should be dropping it altogether, and DRM too.<p>So far DRM-free video didn't manage to break through on big scale.
I don't know if a netflix engineer reads this:<p>I still have an issue that I can only watch some series/movies (e.g. sherlock holmes series) only in french + english, while my friends can watch them in english + german. All in same country (Luxembourg).<p>Changing the language on the tv and resetting netflix (konami code) changed to the "german" version. But now it's back to english + french.<p>Best thing would be to have access to all 3 languages here and not make any choice/guess based on tv language or browser environment
But you probably can't tell your friend that is from another country to watch what you watched last night because it is more then likely not available in their country.
What can I watch on Netflix? I am in Asia and did not use Netflix before. I visited netflix.com but still don't have a clear view of it. The website says "Watch TV shows & movie anytime, anywhere. Plans from $X a month", but does not provide a complete list.<p>I watched HBO on TV which continuously shows (old) movies. I know Netflix is not like HBO. It is a VOD system, like a video version of Apple Music. Is it correct?
I wonder what the user experience will be since a good experience relies on content loading quickly through CDNs. Netflix mainly uses AWS, Akamai, Limelight and Level 3 along with its own CDN to deliver content. The majority of the new countries do not have local CDN edge nodes.
(This is super frustrating when developing for African and some Asian countries)<p>It seems Netflix has an uphill battle ahead with regards to content licensing and content delivery.
Good news for people that don't have local Netflix because streaming content online is much more convenient than watching DVDs etc. However, the new regions of Netflix will have a maximum number of 500 unique titles which is very low compared to US Netflix (5000 titles). If you want to get a good value for your money, you can use services like Unotelly and access all regions of Netflix. You get about 1000% more content with a minimum cost.
Finally, I get to try Netflix, I thought. I signed up for the HD plan, I went to my playback settings, changed quality to high and decided to watch Pacific Rim.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/LKEcMDo.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/LKEcMDo.png</a><p>Let's just say, it doesn't look like Netflix will be successful to convert me to streaming.
Can someone confirm whether signing up to e.g. Netflix in UK and using VPN with USA ip will give US selection of the movies? I signed up in USA and regularly switching to UK netflix for some EU tv-series which are not available in USA. If that works, it would make the subscription quite interesting even for the new countries which just got released.
I have always wondered why couldn't YouTube dominate over Netflix's territory? Mostly what NFLX has is content which makes the barrier to entry not that hard but YouTube has more publishers/creators and with a wider reach it can easily reign over this market but quite surprisingly it doesn't.
What was stopping them?<p>Living in Russia (St.-Petersburg), [1] I'm experiencing firsthand the territorial restrictions that transnational companies impose on us. E.g. Amazon doesn't offer <i>any</i> books in Russian and for a long time there wasn't anything of substance to read in App Store nor Google Play, either.<p>I assumed it's because copyright law works different in every country: to be able to offer all the property they already have rights to in the USA, in the new country (e.g. Russia), they have to strike deal(s) with the copyright holders in that country, perhaps a lengthy and/or impossible task. Yet it doesn't look like it in case of Netflix: they started working in 130+ countries overnight.<p>[1] I wonder if it the Russian St.-Petersburg mentioned in the press release? Works either way: Singapore is far from both.
Oh, yeah! I just wonder if movie selection is the same, or if in some countries there are more titles. Anyone got information on that?<p>I pay for proxy service just to "pretend" to be in USA and than pay the Neflix regular price. I believe a lot of ppl will subscribe to Netflix once no additional tricks are required.
I'm surprised it took so long for some video content company to go global. The USA is only 16% of global GDP. By just monetizing that and leaving the rest of the world to torrent shows if they want to keep up there's a lot of money being left on the table.
I can't tell if we just saw a tipping point here. Maybe I'm just elevating this. It has the feel of when Apple inverted the negotiating positions between device makers and wireless providers.<p>Now I see why Netflix produced their own content. Negotiating for world-wide streaming rights can be tricky. Having a small set of content that they control, which gets turned into a guaranteed set of content that can be delivered for a global network gives them a lot of leverage for negotiating other content. Well played.<p>On the other hand, I remember Crunchyroll being available in many countries (not sure if that is world-wide), though they don't have the clout that Netflix has, and their content is very specific.
The sad thing is you have to sort of 'cheat' netflix if you want content that isn't just seemingly random B level shows by using a US proxy. I'm in Canada and honestly had no idea just how much better the US version of netflix was.
Atleast in India, it will not take off. Present internet facilities in India will not be able to serve this. At an avg HD streaming of a movie in netflix for 2hrs takes around 3GB bandwidth. In India, except Hyderabad, any major city the internrt charges are so high that no one adopts it.<p>For ex: in Bangalore, for 2000rs, you get 20mbps connection capped at 50Gb and after that its 8mbps only. If I take BSNL, for 2000rs, you get 10mbps capped at 30Gb and so on. However it might be good for Hyderabad people, where 2000rs, you get 50mbps connection capped at 350Gb.<p>My point is Indian internet cant simply scale to serve Netflix presently. They should tie up with ISPs to something magic
I'm failing at finding TV shows outside China for my parents.<p>I tried lot of IPTV boxes (tvpad, xiaomi box ...) but they all end up super tricky to use outside China.<p>Hope Netflix will figure out something great to provide Chinese content! If anyone here has any recommendation :)
The announcement <a href="https://media.netflix.com/en/press-releases/netflix-is-now-available-around-the-world" rel="nofollow">https://media.netflix.com/en/press-releases/netflix-is-now-a...</a> links to the full list of countries and territories where Netflix is now available <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164" rel="nofollow">https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164</a>.
But that is not 130 countries.
India and Russia are not there for example.
This is really great! I remember not while back my parents visited me and I introduced them to Netflix. While I am at work, they were happy browsing the shows, thanks for the quality content. However, my parents doesn't have that much bandwidth to stream 720p at their home. Moreover, the ISP has a data cap as well. So, its good to see that they will be able to watch the shows they liked, but limited internet access will be annoying. Cant say if the ISPs will flow and adopt accordingly.
This is good news. Netflix is only remotely usable when you can hop between different territories after you've watched the three new titles that get added each couple of months.
And Google could one day build a video store where anyone can monetize their video content, which would probably include both big and small content owners, like TV studios and individuals like me and you. Not sure how copyright would be managed. Youtube basically does this but the only way to monetize on youtube right now is via ads. I don't see why Google wouldn't want to add the ability for youtube content creators to monetize directly via rent/purchase options.
After hearing the news clicked on the notification centre and saw this: <a href="http://cl.ly/2O26070b3z0S" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/2O26070b3z0S</a> -- NFLX +9,31%<p>It got me thinking how does this work? Surely people working at Netflix knew that this was coming. Are they allowed to buy stocks with such insider knowledge? Are they buying?<p>Even someone like me with zero knowledge in stock markets would assume this will have a positive impact on the stock price.
Netflix is seriously disrupting the cable TV business model, no the least for example here in Sweden where channels often air TV shows months or even a year after they've aired in the US. Why would I want to watch something both with ads and also months late? It's like choosing to suffer for being late. It doesn't even make sense anymore.
is it just me who is wondering why i can't see netflix' complete movie/series list before i register with my credit card ? Don't tell me, <a href="https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix#/all?page=1" rel="nofollow">https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix#/all?page=1</a> is all they offer?
Here's what's gonna happen. They're already doing this. Charge a premium for streaming bandwidth. Sell a separate 'streaming' package. Bundle. HBO, Netflix, NFL, Hulu, PBS. They all come standard on the streaming package. A mere $25 a month on top of your basic $60 100mbps connection.
I want netflix partner with local translators who already have a lot of tv series translated in a local language, I live in US but sometimes I like watching tv series/movies in russian translation, I really want netflix to have their content available in more languages.
This headline reminded me of Smartflix [0] -- lets you access the entire Netflix catalogue, regardless of your location. Surprised that Netflix lets something like this exist.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.smartflix.io" rel="nofollow">https://www.smartflix.io</a>
I'm a little confused.<p>Map shows very few countries - no Singapore as mentioned in the article<p>Also the article mentioned 190 countries at one point and 130 at other places. Moreover, Netflix claims it has 70M subscribers across 130 countries. How is that possible if they just launched it?
Will there be Netflix servers/CDNs in each country? I wonder what impact this will have on cross country traffic. My country has excellent internal network but outside pipes get clogged at times..
Netflix managed to snag Lee Collins (one of the original creators of Unicode) from Apple recently, which helps explain how they could accomplish the i18n aspects of this with such a broad range of countries.
Hmm. Signed up, but not sure if I'll follow through the one free month.<p>Seriously, all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but The Avengers and Avengers Assemble missing? What a joke is this? (I'm in Germany)
My Samsung TV still doesn't show me the Netflix app. As far as I understand they didn't show it in the countries where Netflix was not available. I hope that they will enable it now that it is.
Netflix needs to add live streaming of local channels, and sports to their package (maybe as addon costs) -- thus giving people no reason at all to keep cable.
A quick google searches and it seems that I cannot play this content on my TV in any reasonable way (right now the only thing connected to it is a Kodi setup. There are addons to play Netflix content, but they are unofficial and I found a couple different ones, some being forks of others: A mess).<p>Just like Amazon Prime this is something I'd be generally interested in. But I cannot consume the content, at least not as easily as local media or random grey (or plain illegal) sources. All hail DRM.
Here is a chart of subscriber growth since 2012:<p><a href="http://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-worldwide/" rel="nofollow">http://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-o...</a><p>Does anyone have an idea of the total population of coverage added today? I'm wondering if the growth accelerates from here. Seems like it would, but then Netflix has likely already initiated service in the most lucrative markets.
Where is Netflix available?
<a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164" rel="nofollow">https://help.netflix.com/en/node/14164</a><p>(from the article)
Disclaimer: Cuban here (living in US)<p>Available in Cuba? Try to find the bandwidth... Seriously, why include Cuba in the list? That makes their statement a bit of a joke in my opinion.
Not a single African country is listed. If was to be available worldwide the least that could be done is at least one country could be added from the entire continent.
Very sad and lame that this is "news".<p>Did we forget how all of this works ?<p>Netflix is a web site. Currently, there is only one global Internet. Therefore netflix is available everywhere there is Internet connectivity.<p>Anything other than that simple scenario is an embarrassing (and epic) fail.
Somebody should tell Netflix that the EU is a unified market by law that does not exempt any digital service. So they had to sell to all EU countries right from the start.<p>At least the whole story with the vpns can stop. (Unless you live in Greece...)<p><a href="http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/buying-services/index_en.htm" rel="nofollow">http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/buyi...</a><p><pre><code> ""For these types of services, and others, you have the
right to buy from a service provider located
in another EU country without:
-price discrimination
-having the seller refuse to sell to you simply
because you live in a different EU country.""
</code></pre>
edit: You cannot deny services to the whole European Economic Area (wikipedia has a map so you can compare and see the excluded countries)
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area</a><p>edit:formatting