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Comment by tuna74 | Hacker News Reader

"Forgot another point that became very annoying, the show is available but not with the subtitles I want and/or need. For example, watching a Swedish TV show on Spanish Netflix doesn't let me have English subtitles for example. But if I use Swedish Netflix, it would work, but technically breaking Netflix's ToS. Content rights have completely fucked up the user experience."

I think you can set which subs (and audio tracks) should be available in you Netflix profile. I can get chinese voice and subs for a lot of stuff in Sweden.

It is the same for Disney+ as well.

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No, Netflix/Max/Etc literally limit the options available to you. They want to try to dissuade people from purchasing those services at a discount in lower CoL regions, and don't want to deal with multi-region licensing for dubs/specific media/etc.

The only regions that give you carte blanche (in general) language options are the anglophone countries and some EU regions.

But they're also geocoded (presumably, for travelers), so if you can get a VPN/tunnel that works, you can use another regions' primary languages. Max, last I checked, is the only one that outright limits usage outside of your region.

"No, Netflix/Max/Etc literally limit the options available to you. They want to try to dissuade people from purchasing those services at a discount in lower CoL regions, and don't want to deal with multi-region licensing for dubs/specific media/etc."

Have you actually tried to do what I have described? If you want to test, try with a studio Ghibli movie on Netflix, they have dubs and subs for a lot of languages.

Did you actually read what I wrote and what you even quoted?

Go buy a Netflix/Max/Prime/etc account in Mexico/El Salvador/Indonesia/etc. It'll be 1/3 the price and you'll be limited to "original" (usually English) and Spanish for dubbing/subbing. In some cases you won't even have the original options. I've lived in a few of those low CoL regions, that's literally how it works.

As I said in the following paragraph (which you probably also didn't read), those limits do not exist for most accounts originating from English-speaking regions (especially North America) and some Western European nations. So if you're using your American/British/Canadian/etc account to try to disprove a point I never made, it's already been addressed.

Just....read.

> I think you can set which subs (and audio tracks) should be available in you Netflix profile. I can get chinese voice and subs for a lot of stuff in Sweden.

It's a geo-content restriction of some sorts. I'm guessing some of the subtitles Netflix is leasing/renting/whatever, they only lease for specific regions.

I'm 100% sure I've watched shows in the past on Netflix where if I use a VPN to set my location to Sweden, I could get English or Swedish subtitles, but if I use it without VPN (so Spanish location), it would refuse to allow me the English subtitles and instead allows Spanish or Swedish subtitles.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable knows exactly why that is.

"I'm 100% sure I've watched shows in the past on Netflix where if I use a VPN to set my location to Sweden, I could get English or Swedish subtitles, but if I use it without VPN (so Spanish location), it would refuse to allow me the English subtitles and instead allows Spanish or Swedish subtitles.

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable knows exactly why that is."

If you are in Sweden Netflix algorithms give you Swedish as a language option. But you can add this in your profile as well when you are not in Sweden.

Last I checked, a lot of the time this is entirely dependent on region. For eg. the Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex series on Netflix exclusively has English dubbing and English subtitles everywhere but Japan but changing these settings did not make the Japanese audio available anywhere else that I was able to find out. It's also very annoying that sometimes the only subtitles available are closed captions when I really only want dialog subtitles. It's a real pain that all dialog and subtitle options aren't available out of the gate for everything.

geolocking content is violating human rights.

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