Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

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  HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor.
  They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet
  streaming running and proven.

I guess (failed to find how I can check it so far) that this is again US only. Of course we're talking about a US anti 'piracy' law, so that kind of makes sense. But the GP still has a point: Making content available, in a reasonable way, would make people like me shell out a good amount of $currency (in this case, USD?) to get access.

I love a couple of TV series. In Germany everything is dubbed (Yeah, Sheldon Cooper sucks if he talks German.. Don't even get me started on Dexter, who sounds like the most uninteresting guy ever on the German show). I'd love to pay for timely access to good content, in its original language.

All of Netflix, Hulu (and, with the disclaimer that I couldn't check yet, probably HBO as well) play that braindead, stupid 'Not in your country' game. Which isn't 2013 and something I have problems to accept since the 90s.

The service is built, but does not work, unless you already have a cable subscription, even in the US.

There's no way, to the best of my knowledge to legally watch Game of Thrones, besides buying it on DVD/Blu-Ray or actually subscribing to HBO (and using that subscription to watch it on-line).

You can stream past seasons on Amazon Instant Video and iTunes.

Download a service like Hotspot Shield. It will run your IP through a proxy and make it look like you live in the US. Boom - US HULU, US Netflix, no problem

That's a band-aid until the copyright maximalist bandwagon expands its jurisdiction to your local government, and at that point they'll be sending notices to you or cutting off your internet access.

>> In Germany everything is dubbed

OT: I've seen a few of these dubbed shows across Europe and Asia. And you know what I found fascinating? Most of these dubbed shows from Europe are done really well. Of particular note is how much pains go in choosing the the dialogues in order to lip-sync with how the original is spoken (Check some HK action films to see the contrast (-;)...

>> who sounds like the most uninteresting guy

In most cases, I noticed they take pains to get similar sounding actors/actresses from the original, perhaps this was one of those occasional poor choices.

I challenge you to compare a couple of 'well-known' German voices.

- Bruce Willis in any movie - Kirk - Dexter

These samples are picked for being quite different. While one might argue that Kirk is an improvement (cue the protest!), Bruce Willis has a very different voice and Dexter sounds so. damn. boring.

The production quality is usually alright. Still, depending on the content a lot of context/humor is lost and voices regularly don't match the original, at all.

Edit: For fun - someone on Youtube allows you to compare Bruce (and more.. ;-p) directly here [1]. So these voices are ~fixed~ in our heads as the normal voices of the actors. It's actually pretty hard to find non-dubbed content here (TV? No way, unless on discs. Cinema? Hardly. Some movie theater show originals, but usually just a very limited/blockbuster selection. And I'm living in/near a 1000000 citizen city here, so that's already the bright side).

1: http://youtu.be/kc0NRc0qaws

Unblock-us and similar services are quite nice for watching all of Netflix.

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