Ji-N:
Brownie:
I can't reply directly to the comment about VIU as the comment is too long but hopefully they see it. I requested for VIU Malaysia. Dunno about the others but I've been told that whilst they are the same company they are run differently - not quite sure what they meant by that but also I've noticed similar to Netflix that they have certain titles in say Indonesia that they may not have in Philippines. Maybe whoever requested the other two felt the need to specify.
The thing is, Netflix has one website with availability of titles that varies between countries, and that's counted as one service. The same for Viki, and numerous others. Viu seems to be the same, too, as far as I can tell (though I can't access more than the page telling me I can't access the service), so I don't know why that's counted differently.
The consensus which was decided on earlier in this thread was that region availability for a title on a service should not be specified, as it can be difficult for one person to find out the availability for all the countries a service operates in, and it can change over time. And it's not very needed, because, though there is a huge number of VOD services worldwide, one show tends to only be on five or so different ones, or fewer. It would be pretty quick to click on all of the links and find out if any currently work in your region (especially if you leave out ones which are obviously from their name for subs in a different language than you're looking for, or marked as having only untranslated content – as I think there's moves to add the capacity for).
Related to that, and that it's been mentioned recently, the different national versions of Prime Video is an issue I think should be brought up sooner rather than later.
This is a strange case, in that for most of the world Prime Video is its own site, at primevideo.com
Except for in at least five countries: Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. In these, Prime Video is part of the country's main Amazon site. So, for example, the Amazon Original drama Tokyo Girl is found on those different sites at these URLs:
- https://www.amazon.de/dp/B086R4XB6F in Germany (possibly also the German-speaking parts of Austria, Belgium and Switzerland, as they don't have their own Amazon sites)
- https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B01MXWJR22 in Japan
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086R5T82K in the UK and, I think, also Ireland (which I think use the same site, as there isn't a separate Irish Amazon)
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086HVQ29R in the USA (but not Canada, which uses primevideo.com)
- https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0H7JSOSG61118Z9K9YUUN70GT4 everywhere else.
The separation is not as clear as between the US and Japanese Hulus; the different Amazons are under the same ownership and a page at one in a foreign region will give a link to the correct site for your region. However, they are different sites, and a link to one will not work for the others – it's not even just a case of changing the domain name, as they all have different item codes.
So it might be a better idea than using "Prime Video" as the name for all of them to only use that name for links to the primevideo.com site, and to have Amazon.de, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com each as a separate service? Otherwise people might be entering addresses to all those sites as Prime Video, but they won't work directly in any another country.
There are quite a few programmes such as the drama My Engineer and the talent show CHUANG 2020 that have YouTube channels unto themselves with full, English-subtitled episodes. It is important to link to this legal way of watching them; however, won't it result in an unusably long list of services if these are each counted individually?
Perhaps there could be a generic "Official YouTube Channel" service to use for all of these, and a note in the form for adding service links that if a drama/show/movie is available in full on an official channel named after itself, the video should be linked to under this name, instead of creating another service?
Related to that, I definitely think official Naver TV channels should be included, as they have lots of English-subbed net dramas in higher quality than YouTube (even though the navigation is only in Korean, which makes it all the more useful to have links to the content on there).
But, with some dramas having channels unto themselves (both The Boy Next Door and Lily Fever, for examples), I wonder if it might be better to count all of Naver TV as one service?
I've yet to come across any pirated content on it, and there's not really even any motivation to put pirated content subtitled in a language other than Korean on it, due to how unknown the platform is beyond Korean speakers. There's also, in my experience, no cases of multiple official uploads of full episodes/movies on different accounts (only of MVs) like there is on YouTube and Vimeo.
V LIVE I think is a similar case?
However, I am quite new to both, and those decisions should be made with the input of people that know both platforms well.
Modern Chinese Cultural Studies (YouTube) is channel which legally (it's a project of the University of British Columbia) has out-of-copyright films (including very well-known ones such as the original Spring in a Small Town) with professional English subtitles. I do not think every channel with an upload of an out-of-copyright film or TV show should be included (that wouldn't be practical), but I think this is a particularly notable one that should be (it's essentially trying to do something like what the Korean Film Archive's Korean Classic Film channels do, though from outside the country the films are from).
NoirRoseHeart:
I would like to suggest Vimeo, but I only can think of maybe around 20 titles, so that is why I'm just suggesting. You can buy or rent the movies or dramas. https://vimeo.com/
Here are some examples:
Some More : https://vimeo.com/ondemand/somemore
Long Time No See : https://vimeo.com/ondemand/longtimenosee
Vimeo has already been bought up a few times; the last I read was that it was planned to be added in the same way as YouTube, with different "people" counted as different services (not what Vimeo calls "channels", I should make clearer, as those are more like YouTube's playlists). So all of those would be under STRONGBERRY (Vimeo) (which has come up a few times, but there are also others I've mentioned with more movies that on MDL).
This is necessary because I know of a few cases of two official uploads of the same movie by different companies. E.g. Love, 100°C can be rented or bought from MATCHBOX or from Peccadillo Pictures, and And so we put goldfish in the pool. can be seen for free either from Koto Production or from NOWNESS. There are sometimes also unofficial uploads (though less than on YouTube), which having only certain approved people on Vimeo also helps to avoid.
