Netflix to expand to Germany, France and Switzerland

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27496055

by nkurz • 12 years ago

68 72 12 years ago

Ecio783• 12 years ago

Netflix also must contend with the fact that French audiovisual laws require local broadcasters to invest significant sums in domestic content. However, Les Echos newspaper has suggested Netflix might get around this by basing the service in Luxembourg.

Actually Netflix is already based in Luxembourg for its European activities and there have been news that they're going to move to Netherlands: http://www.wort.lu/en/business/move-to-the-netherlands-netfl...

dorfsmay• 12 years ago

Aren't there equivalent laws in Canada (minimum canadian content)? Netflix is available in Canada.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

The CRTC has basically washed their hands any internet content. They worry about the internet itself, but not the actual stuff you put on it the way they worry about radio/cable/broadcast content. It's naive and inconsistent but as a Netflix fan I can't really complain about it.

To their credit, Netflix does license a bunch of Canadian content from the CBC and Global TV, which shows a good-faith attempt to provide Canadian content. I doubt they pay much for it though, and I doubt their ratio matches the CRTC's requirements.

w1ntermute• 12 years ago

while French TV has a lot of subtitling - in Germany foreign language movies and TV shows are generally voiced over

Can anyone explain why this is? I hate watching dubbed video, especially when it's live action.

TillE• 12 years ago

Tradition and market demand, I guess. I'm not completely philosophically opposed to dubs, but the truth is that the vast majority of German dubs are awful. And I'm talking about major Hollywood films and popular TV series. It really sounds like a bunch of actors sitting in a studio, reading lines melodramatically with zero nuance.

I swear, German radio dramas (which are quite popular) have better voice acting.

galaktor• 12 years ago

Strange. I lived there for nearly 20 years and must say they have pretty much perfected the craft of dubbing movies. I personally still prefer some "alternative voices" over the originals, i.e. for Homer Simpson (sounds more like the fool that he is) or Arnold Schwarzenegger (who's English destroys any fourth wall the moment he opens his mouth).

_ak• 12 years ago

German dubs are so awful and widespread, that even porn in Germany is dubbed and often enough, even German porn is re-dubbed.

Ralfp• 12 years ago

Majority of population preffers it that way for one reason or another (like old people having eye issues and people used to "listening" to TV and others just peeking at it at random while doing other activities), and minority watches movies in cinemas/dvds/bluerays/internet where stuff if subbed instead.

AlexanderDhoore• 12 years ago

Dutch people prefer subtitles. German, Italian, Spanish and French people prefer dubbing. It's weird and I don't know why it is. Things just evolved to be like that.

t__r• 12 years ago

The majority of English TV on French national tv is most definitely dubbed. As far as I know it's only the Dutch. Don't know about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe though.

ardemue• 12 years ago

Where do you get this impression? I've lived in France my whole life and most people I know try to avoid subtitles as much as possible. Most of the foreign TV contents are dubbed anyway, except on a few channels (Arte).

This may be less true for the new generation accustomed to watching subtitled TV shows on the internet, instead of waiting for a few years to get them in French on TV.

mattw1810• 12 years ago

I think that this is at least partially attributable to the average understanding of English in those countries. When you are watching a movie with subtitles, but have absolutely no idea what is being said in the movie because the spoken language is unknown to you, it can be very distracting, because you are missing a certain amount of context. I believe an above-average amount of Dutch people is at least capable of comprehending basic English speech, which puts the movie's subtitles into context. In countries where English isn't as wide-spread, this is more problematic, which is why dubbing is more effective there. Similarly, even in the Netherlands movies which target family audiences are often shown dubbed by default in movie theatres, because the subtitles are just not as effective even if the children that are watching the movie can read them.

skrause• 12 years ago

As a general rule the more speakers a language has the higher the chance of mostly dubbed content. High quality dubs are not cheap and it's easier to finance it when your target language has a 100 million speaker instead of just 5 million.

That's why Germany, France and Spain like to dubs, but not smaller countries like the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries. And medium sized countries like Poland often have really crappy dubs (sometimes one speaker for all characters).

Ecio783• 12 years ago

For Italians it is easy explained: our average level of foreign languages' knowledge is ridiculous and if a movie is broadcasted in Original Version most of the people will not understand a bit.. Things are improving with newer generations (e.g. various MTV sort-of shows are subtitled - in Italian) but it will take time, and I'm not sure we will be ever be at the same level of Northern countries..

On the other hand I could say that many Italian dubbers are very good compared to other countries (sometimes they are italian actors as well)

toolslive• 12 years ago

It's true. Kids also learn to read subtitles at an early age (by the time they get 7 most can read subtitles). But Disney doesn't seem to understand: it dubs programs in Dutch, and you get Hanna Montana and others dubbed with an awful (to my Flemish ears) Dutch accent.

punee2• 12 years ago

A lot of subtitling in France? Nope. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find any (by default that is, you can always turn them on). The overwhelming majority of shows are dubbed in France too.

The explanation is some form of ingrained linguistic pride and more pragmatic concerns: viewership would drop about 30% if they stopped dubbing.

http://www.slate.fr/story/18195/pourquoi-la-france-double-t-...

Ecio783• 12 years ago

Agree, I moved to Luxembourg and started recently watching some French TV: almost everything is dubbed (while on Sat you can sometimes found the second audio track).

I would also add that while UK televisions are very good at subtitling (almost all the programs are accurately subbed with a 1:1 correspondence with what it is said), French TV are less scarse (not all the channels have subs available and some of those subs use different words)

stdbrouw2• 12 years ago

And interestingly, even for non-dubbed films they'll still translate the title. So the original Star Wars with subtitles will still be announced as "La Guerre des étoiles"

midhir• 12 years ago

In fairness, Scrubs is way funnier in German. [1]

Interestingly, when Elliot actually speaks German in the episode they dub that into Italian.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_AMLQ2QTA

darklajid• 12 years ago

Grimm is the most hilarious series - if you know German and watch the original seties. Dubbing a series that is full of 'weird' references in a language to just that language is.. a stupid move.

dasil0033• 12 years ago

That reminds me of how when they show Fawlty Towers in Spain they dub Manuel into Italian.

k__2• 12 years ago

I got the feeling, that most Germans think subtitles are a sign of bad quality.

Many people I know also say, English (and reading) is hard for them and since they watch movies and TV-shows to relax, they prefer german dubbed stuff.

I understand English rather well, so I don't need subs. And if I watch stuff in English, I get it sooner than people who wait for the german dubs...

morsch2• 12 years ago

A huge majority isn't comfortable and completely unused to watching movies in English. I continue to be surprised to find people who dislike it even among my highly educated young^Hmiddle-aged peers. On the other hand there's a sizeable minority who is violently opposed to dubs -- I faintly hope Netflix will monetise on them.

dan_bk• 12 years ago

Well, it remains legal to download music and movies in Switzerland (PirateBay & Co), so there's that.

galenko• 12 years ago

It's not about legality, it's about convenience, while living in the UK, I honestly stopped downloading illegal stuff and was surviving on spotify+netflix+lovefilm+bbc iPlayer.

Now I'm in Latvia for a while and none of those (except for spotify) work without a proxy. So TPB is my friend again.

I have no problem with paying, just make it convenient and reasonably priced (iTunes I think is not, maybe I'm not rich enough).

syjer2• 12 years ago

In Switzerland, you can legally download but not upload, so bittorrent should not be considered safe.

The interesting loophole for the bittorrent users is the fact that a private company cannot arvest the ip ( http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathe... ) addresses from trackers, thus making quite hard the prosecution. (And from past cases, it looks like they will prosecute only people that are doing it for money, not for personal use).

Interesting move from netflix, but I'm quite curious how they will handle the localization of the content. Will they provide italian and french content too in Switzerland? Or like everybody else, they will ignore us linguistic minorities?

ben0x539• 12 years ago

How hard can it be to disable upload in bittorrent clients and be a bad but considerably more legal torrent citizen?

k__2• 12 years ago

Same here in Germany.

So people are using free streaming services and direct downloads.

grosbisou• 12 years ago

"More likely, we'll figure out some stuff's working, some stuff's not; we'll adjust the formula."

I absolutely love this mindset from Netflix. Every conf talk, article I hear from them they talk about stuff that didn't work, that did work for a while but didn't scale. Then show what worked better.

erikb3• 12 years ago

I'm a German and want to say there is no real competition here. As far as I'm concerned we are waiting desperately for a reasonable streaming service! Even watching in English would not be a problem as long as we could have Netflix! There are people here paying VPN and Netflix, so money should not be an issue.

morsch2• 12 years ago

Eh? There's at least two large video-on-demand streaming services by large companies like Vivendi and Amazon in Germany. Maybe you don't like what they offer (I don't), but saying there's no competition is far-fetched.

erikb3• 12 years ago

Please don't take it too literal.

pille• 12 years ago

Netflix will face no competition in Germany as long as they choose to offer the content in its original language. Those other services insist mostly on showing the ruined/dubbed versions.

flowerpot• 12 years ago

I can confirm that. If Netflix is able to offer as big of a selection as in the US then the mentioned services, then Netflix will quickly take over the market. I know of many people that would even prefer watching in English as dubbing is often not very natural.

sch1zo• 12 years ago

I'm one of these people paying for VPN and Netflix and I just hope they don't break this as I can't imagine them bringing the same content to Germany. For the content they bring here I hope they make the undupped versions available too. These often have different licenses. Amazon Prime Video for example has an ok library but doesn't offer the undupped versions for a loot of stuff.

NameNickHN• 12 years ago

Even watching in English would not be a problem

Actually, that would be the only reason why I would subscribe to Netflix. I completely and utterly despise the German dubbed American and English TV shows and movies. That's why Amazon Prime streams are useless to me.

erikb3• 12 years ago

It's true that there is a difference in quality. But I have to say compared to 90% of the other countries our dubbed versions are actually quite good. I remember watching some dubs on the russian VKontakte where random people (not even the gender seems to be equal) speak directly on the original audio. You have both Russian and English at the same time. Therefore I'm rather proud of the German dubs.

sek• 12 years ago

Yep, I hope it's not the dubbed crap everybody else has. I wonder if this is a licensing issue or a service issue.

jordigh5• 12 years ago

I find it so ridiculous that an internet company has to "expand" to another country.

Why can't it just be a matter of removing the geoip checks from your servers?

(I know, I know, still... the internet was not meant to be this way.)

Drakim• 12 years ago

If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

It makes sense that they might have to get local servers, or at least test the waters before opening the floodgates.

jordigh5• 12 years ago

If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

That's not the limiting reactant. The actual issue with region lockout is copyright bullshit.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Netflix's control plane is in AWS, and their content is distributed by global CDNs; there are no local servers to get.

I would agree though that you do have to ensure content has been staged to your CDN, you have a local control plane in the EU for end-user latency, etc.

StavrosK• 12 years ago

I use it from Greece through a proxy and, even then, it's great.

tikl1• 12 years ago

"money"...

ngoel36• 12 years ago

Lawyers

raverbashing• 12 years ago

- Copyright issues

- Procurement of local films and dubbing/subtitles for existing ones

- Localization of interfaces/apps

- Payment options adequate for every country

- Local tax issues

- Local marketing

jordigh5• 12 years ago

I think just the top one is the biggest one.

If someone in Germany wants to pay for non-localised movies or tv shows in English (or any other language) and can use the English website... why stop them?

DenverR• 12 years ago

While it may be that easy for Netflix on a technical side all of the content must be relicensed for each new region. Often times the content distribution rights for the same TV show may be owned by different companies depending on the country or region thus Netflix must renegotiate a mess of contracts every time it wants to become available in a new place.

This is why content available on Netflix in the United States may be different than content available in Norway.

jordigh5• 12 years ago

This is why content available on Netflix in the United States may be different than content available in Norway.

This hardly feels like an "expansion", then.

I guess the people who care can still use VPNs, like they do right now.

haberman• 12 years ago

For me, understanding and accepting the answer to this question was an important step to understanding the difference between pure technology and business.

And even in a technologist's utopia where there were no local legal/cultural/language differences between countries, on a pure technology level you'd need to provision server capacity for new locales.

tomp• 12 years ago

For me, understanding but not accepting the answer to this question was an important step in my moral argument for pirating movies.

I am strongly against piracy, but I am even more strongly agains restrictive, profit-driven, privacy and freedom-trampling business models and legal systems.

r00fus• 12 years ago

I dunno - while there maybe French subscribers who would kill for US TV shows in english only, maybe there's the issue of either subtitling all their content for German and French at least, dubbing some or all of it, and likely adding French-specific content.

Just wondering whether I'll be able to get the French Netflix content without using VPN and a local CC.

jordigh5• 12 years ago

The subs or dubs (France prefers dubs, right?) typically already exist.

See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7780650

As for needing local credit cards, hopefully some day bitcoins or something like it can truly enable international commerce.

frik• 12 years ago

The title is incomplete/misleading - six European countries, not just 3:

  Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg

stdbrouw2• 12 years ago

A policy on maximum title length, most likely.

On a side note, Belgium has a higher population than Austria, and Austria a higher population than Switzerland, so the only reason for specifically mentioning Switzerland in the title seems to be that it has a nice ring to it :-)

aves• 12 years ago

With a scant choice of movies on Netflix UK (most of which are either old or at the bottom of the box-office leaderboard) doubt they'll gain any significant traction in EU. I'd rather have them spend extra cash to acquire licences for streaming popular movies and TV shows in EU.

revelation• 12 years ago

Wonder how that will work out for them. Both Deutsche Telekom and Kabel Deutschland provide their own video on demand services, and together they cover pretty much 99% of all last mile infrastructure.

This is the one thing where they are ahead even of the US competition, which is still deciding if they should "do this content thing" and keeping the network deadlocked and at standstill in the meantime (as the wise aristocrats decide).

johansch• 12 years ago

Netflix launched in Sweden about 1.5 years ago. Last week the results of a poll of the public was presented: About 1 million Swedes have access to Netflix streaming at their home. This is out of a population of about 9 million.

Netflix to expand to Germany, France and Switzerland

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