Netflix launches in Brazil, rest of Latin America to follow shortly. | Hacker News Reader

Netflix launches in Brazil, rest of Latin America to follow shortly.

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53 pointsjedberg24 comments

This is great news for Argentina!

Our TV providers are pretty much Telecentro and Cablevisión, we need more competition. Hopefully Netflix will be able to shake up the market.

Not sure how our current Internet infrastructure will hold-up, though. Maybe Netflix will help push for more investment in the area. :)

I wonder how exactly are they going to be charging this in Venezuela... given that Venezuelans only have an allowed budget of 400$ a year to use for Internet purchases if they don't allow for payment in local currency (Bolivares) is going to be hard to get some traction.

They will be using the local currency for every country.

That's very interesting. In Venezuela there is a controlled currency market meaning that is illegal to trade in foreign currency without the approval of the local government.

Right now Venezuelan have the following impositions:

You get a maximum of 5000 dollars a year for travel. Is not 5K for every travel you make, is 5K for all the trips you might take on a given year.

Not only that you don't get them all at once: you must report were you are going to and they have a table of predefined amounts for each destination. For example:

If you go to the USA, you get something like 50 dollars a day. This mean that if you go 30 days, they (the government) will approve you 1500$.

These 1500$ of course comes with some restrictions: you can only use them in the country you said you were going to. This means that if I happen to take a small trip to Toronto, I can't spend any of that money. If I do there are serious consequences (penalties)

On the Internet side of things, you get 400$ a year for Internet purchases.

When I say get, I mean you are allowed to buy that amount of dollars at the set market price of 4.3 Bolivares per dollar. This price is set by the government.

At this point it should be pretty obvious to anyone reading this that all these impositions have create a secondary market (which by law, as a Venezuelan, I can't talk about it) But let's say the price of the dollar is quite high.

How is any of this related to Netflix?

Netflix is going to charge in Bolivares. Then they will need to go to the government to ask permission to change those Bolivares at the current set market rate. The main issue here is that most likely the government won't be giving them the needed currency (not necessarily because they don't want to, but because they don't have enough cash to do it).

What happens then: Netflix will be full of Bolivares, that are subject to a 30% inflation a year. So they would inevitably need to go to the secondary market to change those Bolivares to Dollars.

This has its consequences: they would get about half of what they would if the government granted them the requested currency and second, trading in the secondary market is highly illegal these days with some serious jail time.

So, Netflix in Venezuela, to me seems like an strategic move to cover the region, but business wise I don't see it lasting long if the current limitations stay.

Other than that, I think is great they are investing in Venezuela :)

Could Netflix buy a bunch of oil using their stores of local currency and then ship that oil to the states and resell it?

Just a thought. I doubt Netflix wants to get into the oil shipping business. :)

Not really :)

Oil in Venezuela is traded in Dollars so you would have the same problem.

That is bizarre and fascinating, thanks for explaining it!

I can finally get rid of my US$100/month cable service. Awesome.

We desperately need some competiton around here (although not technically,in practice it is a monopoly).

This is a huge step forward for Netflix and [hopefully] for other tech. companies. The latin american market is huge (especially Brazil, a country that's exploding economically right now).

If this turns out to be a good investment for them (and I'm sure it will, they have first mover's advantage) other companies will start following.

Its going to be interesting to see if the Starz deal is going to affect this at all. Anecdotal, but I cancelled my subscription a few months ago after being disappointed with the availability of streaming titles as it was, I cant imagine what itll be like with a further diminished streaming library.

Its a shame that content owners and distributors havent been able to work out a deal. There is money to be made every time someone pirates a movie because there is literally no way for them to pay for it. I wonder if it would be possible for Netflix or Hulu to sustain libraries like that without moving the price past traditional cable services.

Yeah, I tend to agree. I personally find that 90%+ of the movie content on Netflix is not worth watching (the TV show selection, however, is great).

If Netflix continues growing, I could see a scenario much like the iTunes Music Store vis-a-vis the record labels, where a dominant distributor can essentially dictate terms to content providers.

I wonder if this means that if you have a US account and travel to Mexico or Brazil you are going to be able to watch w/o the restrictions? if so would the content be the same? or different from an account of the country where I'm currently on vacation? I guess we will know soon

from their blog post

http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/netflix-launches-in-latin-am...

Read the 1st comment http://yfrog.com/18s1ep

"Fantastic. Does that mean if I have a US account I can use it when I visit these countries?"

Answer: "yes you can, but you will be able to see only the content available in country you are visiting"

I wonder what the selection is like in Latin America? Here in Canada the selection is pretty meagre compared to the US, but I still think it's a great deal at $7.99 a month. Just watched the BBC "Sherlock" series and that alone was worth the price.

Sherlock is a great series. I torrented the first 3 episodes when they came out in 2010, and they were an absolute treat. I love the format that they chose - going for quality over quantity, and creating a true movie-length story by making them 90 minutes each.

Unfortunately, season 2 won't be coming out until 2012, though I'm not sure why.

(shameless plug) I'm creating a list of the best Zip.ca and Netflix.ca movies and tv series for us Canadians, still a work in progress: http://bestmoviescanada.com/ (for Netflix you can click to watch the movie directly)

I think it's a great idea - there's a lot of crap to sort through. I checked out your site, I think it would be easier if you made separate lists for netflix and zip.ca

Thanks. Netflix is going to go on a second list since they have few good and recent movies, its strength is in tv series and documentaries.

Telefonica released internet plans up to 30Mbps in Peru just two weeks ago. But it comes with mandatory HD cable. If you want just internet, the fastest plan they'll give you is a 4Mbps connection (or a 5Mbps "business" plan).

Was no one doing a netflix clone in Latin America all this time?

Globo launched Muu (muu.globo.com) a month or two ago, which is basically a Brazilian clone of Hulu, and will probably be Netflix's main competitor. Yes, it's pronounced like the sound a cow makes.

Globo runs the main broadcast TV channel and the main cable TV channels as well, so they've presumably got the rights to Brazilian TV content pretty much locked up. They also own the main cable channels which show movies as well (the Telecine channels).

It will be interesting to see how the Muu vs. Netflix competition pans out.

Terra launched one earlier this year too (http://videostore.terra.com.br/Web/VideoClube) 1/3 more expensive, not-so-good selection for the subscription service, also has "rentals")

There's also http://www.netmovies.com.br/ , which follows the original disc-by-mail model, but has a very crappy online selection.

I subscribed and unsubscribed because the selection of movie is awful + it doesn't work with Linux or a CPU with less than 1.2 Ghz. :(

There's been quite a lot of talk that NFLX is overpriced. As the company continues to expand internationally, I wonder whether we'll look back and marvel how cheap it was.

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