

Netflix launches in Brazil, rest of Latin America to follow shortly. - jedberg
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/05/netflix-starts-rolling-out-movie-and-tv-show-streaming-service-to-mexico-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/

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missing_cipher
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. :)

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fabiandesimone
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.

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fbuilesv
They will be using the local currency for every country.

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fabiandesimone
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 :)

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jedberg
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.
:)

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fabiandesimone
Not really :)

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

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rlander
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).

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fbuilesv
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.

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jasontsui
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.

~~~
joshuamerrill
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.

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mrpollo
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

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mrpollo
from their blog post

[http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/netflix-launches-in-latin-
am...](http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/netflix-launches-in-latin-america.html)

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"

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jamesgagan
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.

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fduran
(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)

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jamesgagan
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

~~~
fduran
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.

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goddamnhippie
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).

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DevX101
Was no one doing a netflix clone in Latin America all this time?

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crazygringo
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.

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designium
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. :(

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joshuamerrill
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.

