Netflix to launch in Japan on September 2

Nice. This is going to put a serious dent in Hulu's bottom line... or it'll light a fire under their bottoms! Either way this is good for people who want choice!

Christ, it's about time!

Will any popular American shows be available? What's that,..No? I see. Thanks anyways.

Yup, good to hear. It'll be interesting to see how it affects Tsutaya (Japanese equivalent of Blockbuster Video in North America). It was unbelievable how quickly such a big video rental chain went down after the introduction of netflix.

Wc626 Christ, it's about time!

Ain't that the truth!!

M3M3M3 wrote

Will any popular American shows be available? What's that,..No? I see. Thanks anyways.

You can already get a US Netflix account, with a credit card with a Japanese address, by using a VPN account. privateinternetaccess is one of the bigger ones. I spend about 400 yen per month and I can appear almost anywhere in the world for streaming. I let most of my PC's default to the Japanese node so that my connection is about as fast as with no VPN and no one can snoop on what I'm reading nor can they see from the other end where I am (works with bittorrent for that).

Will any popular American shows be available? What's that,..No? I see. Thanks anyways.

Is there any basis in fact for saying this, or are you just speculating?

if it's anything like the japanese version of Hulu, then it's not gonna be worth using for us foreigners.

There better be a good library of content in high quality otherwise I'm going to be pretty disappointed.. You can already watch every TV show online for free, however it's a hassle finding the better quality streams. I hope they have more than just the Netflix original content..

If the Hulu experience has taught me anything, it's that international licensing bottlenecks render these streaming services practically pointless. The content will be severely lacking. Pass.

descendent, shonangreg is right. While Netflix original content might be interesting there aren't going to be programs less than 3 years old available. HULU has already shown that. Anything that might be "NEWER" is probably on the satellite channels of FOX, SuperDrama, AXN, etc.

Better late than never. Minimal domestic programming, please.

＠smithinjapan Don't count on in!!! Look at what happen to Hulu, samething is going to happen to Netflix

So what just like Hulu, Amazon and every other site the price will be double what it is in the U.S. with half the content.

If it's better than HULU, I'll switch. HULU is alright but Ive read that netfix is the way to go for movies and original shows.

If you have a U.S., UK credit card, just sign up at home and use a VPN. I use tunnelbear. Works great on Mac, windows, smartphones

Don't believe the Hype. You will be disappointed.

If it's the same content that's offered elsewhere, there're tons of TV shows. Only they run about a year behind, but there are some pretty good ones. I've binge watched quite a few.

Now if they could only develop on-time subtitles so me and the wife could enjoy it. I use NTT hikari, and it's not that good. Two different channels both showing endless reruns of law and order, a show I never watched any way. They've canceled the Discovery channel many years ago, along with other good channels. All I was looking for was the cooking shows and maybe survivor or amazing race. All gone.

if you just want American programming, whats the point of getting a VPN anyway? Everything worth watching would be on at a weird time in Japan, so why not just get the torrent and save yourself the trouble.

if you just want American programming, whats the point of getting a VPN anyway? Everything worth watching would be on at a weird time in Japan

Netflix and Hulu are video on demand, not live. You can watch whatever offerings they have whenever you want, it's not on a schedule.

the Japan Netflix will be a watered down version of Netflix, just use a proxy server and join Netflix USA, Hola is a good free one that doesnt buffer every 30 seconds. Just watched a Netflix movie last night, so much better than Hulu japan and probably Netflix japan also.

just use a proxy server and join Netflix USA, Hola is a good free one that doesnt buffer every 30 seconds.

Hola is not good: https://torrentfreak.com/hola-vpn-already-exploited-by-bad-guys-security-firm-says-150602/

Hulu is dead......really sad thought actually I liked more Hulu than Netflix but well it's what it's. I really hope Netfilx can fix iOS App and make more good looking the navigation screen more social!

Daniel Neagari: "＠smithinjapan Don't count on in!!! Look at what happen to Hulu, samething is going to happen to Netflix"

Of that, I have no doubt. But one can hope, can't they?

therougou: "if you just want American programming, whats the point of getting a VPN anyway? Everything worth watching would be on at a weird time in Japan, so why not just get the torrent and save yourself the trouble."

You do know what a streaming service is, right? It's not necessarily LIVE streaming, and certainly not with Netflix and Hulu. You pay the monthly fee and watch what ever's available, whenever you want. Downloading torrents and file-sharing is illegal.

The Japanese entertainment industry doesn't respond well to competition, so will be interesting to see if this suffers the same fate Hulu did. Spotify still isn't available here, so they give us a cheap "AWA" knock-off. Japan is so frustratingly behind in content delivery... Thank the shain middlemen for that!

ganbarre Julian -san

Hulu is dead! Netflix is amazing! More amazing if one knows how to adjust the region block and therefore have access to 20x more content from netflix!

You can already watch every TV show online for free

No, You cannot.

As Smith said "Downloading torrents and file-sharing is illegal"

In my country we have netflix and it is great!, I can sit and binge watch lots of Tv shows and series, plus Netflix was the first to bring Japanese Live action movies that are not available on DVD because the Japanese studios don't make international version with subtitles. I've longed to watch legally "Rurouni Kenshin" (all three of them) or Black Butler, Sadako and others, plus a lot for BBC that only comes on DVD in PAL format so are not use to me

@smith

You do know what a streaming service is, right? It's not necessarily LIVE streaming, and certainly not with Netflix and Hulu. You pay the monthly fee and watch what ever's available, whenever you want. Downloading torrents and file-sharing is illegal.

It's arguably illegal to go around their geographic restrictions and watch via VPN, also. And for Hulu/Netflix it is illegal to save the videos for offline viewing, if I'm correct. So I'd rather not bother and just get them via torrent, and have the shows with me for life. I already pay for Japanese TV service with international programming. Its not my fault they don't make all of the top shows available.