Netflix available in Brazil

"Netflix is already woring with PS3 US model here in Brazil.

How would you explain this? I mean, if Netflix adopted a different DRM for Brazil, does it mean that the PS3 hardware already support it, while the Live Plus do not?"

That’s exaclty what I was thinking.

I have a PS3. Bought more than 3 years ago. Netflix was launched in Brazil yesterday. I turned the PS3 on, pointed it to netflix. It asked me to download a new version of the netflix software and voilà. It’s working perfectly.

Why can the PS3 work without a new DRM hardware? Guys at Sony would never do something like “hey guys, you want netflix? buy a new ps3!”.

If WD says that we will have to buy a new player just because Netflix, I will sell my player, cancel netflix and will never buy anything from WD or netflix again. There are other brands, other players and online services just waiting.

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gstvSett wrote:

Why can the PS3 work without a new DRM hardware?

Um.  Because the PS3 has _ always _ had the DRM capabilities?  It was legally necessary to allow it to play commercial BluRay discs?

The 8655 chip lacks the DRM capabilities.  Netflix will apparently never allow their streams to be decoded by a device that lacks DRM.

It’s not WD saying you need a new player, it’s Netflix.  They say the player must be DRM-capable.  The Live Hub you purchased lacks the DRM capabilities and was never advertised to work with Netflix outside of the US (or now Canada).

I don’t see anywhere where either Netflix or WD said that the 8655-based Live Hubs would ever stream Netflix.

In the case of my player are the mark of compatibility “Netflix”. Nowhere says that is not supported, only says the service is not available outside the U.S. and Canada.
If it turns out that my player is not compatible when they launch the service here, this is a fraudulent product and I personally denounce a Wester Digital at the office of consumers.

In my WDTVLIVEHUB: Go Setup → About → Online Service Info : NETFLIX ESN: WDBAB…

So, inside my WD there´s a specifc ESN for Netflix…just in case…

Ya’ll are barking up the wrong tree. 

As far as has been officially announced, for the unit you own, NetFlix is *NOT* available outside the US.   

raulsola wrote:

Do not understand why not go to work access to Netflix in Brazil, if it works in the U.S. and Canada.
Is there any operational difference?

 Yes, the physical hardware.

raulsola wrote:

In the case of my player are the mark of compatibility “Netflix”. Nowhere says that is not supported, only says the service is not available outside the U.S. and Canada.
If it turns out that my player is not compatible when they launch the service here, this is a fraudulent product and I personally denounce a Western Digital at the office of consumers.


 What on the world do you understand with “the service is not available outside the U.S. and Canada.”? That means that even if NetFlix goes global, you won’t be able to use it outside of the U.S. and Canada on that device, just how much more clear does it need to be for you to understand?

The Hub is newer than the Plus, if it was added to the Plus without the need of a firmware update or anything at all and it was not advertised to be an upcoming feature (Like NetFlix Canada was) then it means it simply works in the Plus at a hardware level and not on the Hub. Check WD’s page and the official NetFlix support for Brazil section notes it’s only for the Live Plus, no update needed or anything. Why? Because the device allows it. The Hub does not.

Also, the Hub’s feature page has this info:

Enjoy popular movies, classics, and TV episodes instantly. Review your Netflix recommendations, search for content, and add items to your Netflix instant Queue - no PC is required. Access your Netflix unlimited membership and instantly watch TV episodes and movies on your big screen.*

* Netflix unlimited membership required. US and Canada only.

While the Live Plus feature page has this info:

Enjoy popular movies, classics, and TV episodes instantly. Review your Netflix recommendations, search for content, and add items to your Netflix instant Queue - no PC is required. Access your Netflix unlimited membership and instantly watch TV episodes and movies on your big screen.*

* Netflix unlimited membership required. US, Canada and Brazil only.

So NetFlix Brazil is not even advertised on the Hub, but it is with the Plus. Adding to that I found the following support article on WD’s site with the following info:

A WD TV Live Plus purchased in the USA or Canada or a WD TV Live Hub does not work with Netflix in Brazil

Problem:
A _ WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player _ purchased in the USA or Canada or a _ WD TV Live Hub Media Center _ does not work with Netflix in Brazil

Cause:
The WD TV Live Plus model sold in Brazil is model WDBREC0000. This is a special version of the WD TV Live Plus designed to be used with the Brazilian Netflix service. Other Model WD TV Live Plus units and the WD TV Live Hub are not compatible with Netflix in Brazil.

Solution:
You will need to use a WD TV Live Plus (model WDBREC0000) to access Netflix in Brazil.

That means the Live Plus players that CAN play NetFlix in Brazil ARE MADE to play NetFlix in Brazil and importing will not help at all, this means it’s REGION LOCKED which is something legally done to protect international third party intellectual property, just like the PS3 (You can play PS3 games from any region, but you CAN’T play Blu-Ray movies just from any region and buy downloadable content from another region), the Wii and the 360.

There’s nothing you can do about it, if you don’t have a media player made and distrubuted to support the features of your region as established and dictated by the PROVIDER of that feature then you are plain and simply out of luck and no matter what you do, how much you complain or how many of you are joining together you won’t change a thing.

Those of you who imported a North-American Live Plus won’t get NetFlix because of the regional model number with different hardware and different features, so your best chance is to replace the players for the Brazilian version, and you won’t get NetFlix if you travel to the US and bring it with you.

You get what your country allows you to get. Don’t like it? Then move to another country, end of the story.

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Well, before these problems, I returned my player to the store, and I have returned the money. Thanks for the replies.

If you got your money back, go get the correct version of the media player you mean. I dont see where the problem is. 

Everyone else, stop assuming when you’re buying things so you stop finding yourself in these situations. If it turns out to work, like it happens with the PS3 it would seem, perfect, happy for you, really I am. If it doesnt, then guess what, no one said it would.  

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Thanks for the explanation.

I still think that this DRM policy is something completely ■■■■■. I’m completely sure that WD and netflix know that ALL the WDTV players that are in brazil were imported. Every single one of them. There is no brazilian version (now they just made one).

And I’m pretty sure that they liked selling it. Now both companies just don’t care about old owners. That’s ok.

The new player costs 250 US dollars (wdtv live plus). Very few people will buy it. It’s just too much money just for netflix. The Hub is a lot more advanced and costs almost the same.

New TVs with the netflix service will cost extra. Everything that is new and popular in US or europe comes to this country costing a lot more than it does in the countries they came from. So very few people will accept to pay a lot more just because of a red icon.

In the end, the service will be very unpopular and everybody who has a wdtv player that won’t get netflix in a simple firmware upgrade will be very disappointed with this brand. No matter how good the explanation for DRM hardware is.

I can understand the reason now thanks to the explanations here. But 90% of the other owners won’t even try to know why it works like that.

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I’ll never buy anything from WD.

Extremely disappointed.

gstvSett wrote:

Thanks for the explanation.

 

I still think that this DRM policy is something completely ■■■■■. I’m completely sure that WD and netflix know that ALL the WDTV players that are in brazil were imported. Every single one of them. 

No they don’t; there was no official WD distributor selling Live Plus in Brazil or Argentina until now. No official distributor dealing with the manufacturer directly means the company itself doesn’t sell the device on that country or region. You can import them from resellers, but if you can’t get it directly from the manufacturer then it’s officially not made to be sold/distributed in your country and some lack of support should be expected.

Live Plus was meant to be sold only to US and Canada, If you want to see this with your own eyes then go to WD’s official online store and change the country in the upper-right corner. You’ll only get to see the Live Plus as a sellable item if you choose USA or Canada as your country and disappears right away if you switch to Spain, France or Germany.

This means that to WD’s and NetFlix’s eyes you should not have a Live Plus to begin with, at least not until now that is officially being sold in your country.

That is just not true, the Live Plus was sold in Chile everywhere, main retail companies and others, and what was sold is the one that was sold in the USA.

As far as I know, WD has *not* introduced a LIVE HUB for Latin America NetFlix support.

The KBA article says you must buy a WDTV Live PLUS for NetFlix Latin America.

Though that could, of course, change at any time…

Sorry about the frustration Brazilians are venting out in this topic.

If I’m not mistaken, when the Plus came out, Canada wasn’t supported. But eventually it became supported via a firmware upgrade.

Since the plus already has the required DRM for US and Canadian Netflix, and a firmware upgrade enabled it for the Canadian one, it seemed a safe assumption that it would work with the Brazilian Netflix whenever it came out. I mean, why would someone require a new hardware to support a new DRM “region”, that only complicates things and makes the production of the box more expensive. But I’m sure this is about region locking, like DVDs and, to some lesser extent, Blurays. It’s not about the capability of the hardware I think.

That being said, of course it was just an assumption, and people buying it were at risk of it not working for that purpose.

What is annoying Brazilians the most, I think, is the price difference. The Brazilian WDTV PLUS costs about USD 305,00 today in Brazil.

That’s more than what Americans pay for a 160Gb PS3.

I paid about USD 90,00 for my WDTV PLUS last month while I was in the US. I wasn’t expecting Netflix to work, I didn’t even knew it was going to be launched in Brazil, so I’m not that frustrated.

Region locking doesn’t surprise me that much anymore, but makes me sad. “Life will find a way”, as they said in that movie. And the only company that can boss the movie studios around, a little bit at least, is Apple. The rest has to basically bend over and say “please be gentle”.

I’ll keep using my PS3 to stream netflix, it works and is great. And, funny enough, if I use a proxy in a machine I have in the US, it will stream the US content to me, while still presenting me with a Portuguese interface. If the DRM is different, at least the PS3 can handle it transparently.

buckey wrote:

That is just not true, the Live Plus was sold in Chile everywhere, main retail companies and others, and what was sold is the one that was sold in the USA.

And there’s your problem. South American retailers will find a  way to get their hands on popular North American products outside of normal sales channels. Doesn’t mean that the manufacturer has sold them there. Apparently, some Chilean retailers have found a way to get the USA version in their stores despite the fact that they aren’t compatible with the region. This happens a lot with electronics. Be mad at the retailers, not WD.

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And there’s your problem. South American retailers will find a  way to get their hands on popular North American products outside of normal sales channels. 

Sure they will, after all, the WDTV PLUS is much more than Netflix. It’s still worth it, as many (if not most) of its features are not region locked. And also because it takes a long time for these products to arrive. I kid you not, Sony even launched the PS2, yes, 2, in Brazil last year, costing more than a PS3 in the US.

So you are saying that I should verify if the products sold in the main retailers are been sold by an official distributor? That just doesn’t make sense.

By the way, I don’t think that WD didn’t officially sold their Live Plus in Chile. I have bought quite a lot of WD hard disk in the same places, where they are side by side with the Live Plus, and one of them was defective and I had it RMA with WD in Chile. How can you possible tell the difference?

buckey wrote:

So you are saying that I should verify if the products sold in the main retailers are been sold by an official distributor?

Yes.

If the retailer that represents the company itself via direct contracts doesn’t have it then it’s officially not sold by that company in your region/country, ignoring third party (unrelated) retailers that can just order a batch from Amazon and then resell them.

Again, go to WD’s official store page and you’ll see the Live Plus will only show in the menus if you change your country to US or Canada in the upper-right corner of the page and see for yourself that WD itself doesn’t supply the Live Plus to the rest of the world.

A replacement is a replacement. WD makes global RMA’s so if you buy something in Chile and you need it replaced then they are going to mail it to you because it’s something you already own no matter where you go it, so that doesn’t count. You may see hard drives beside Live Plus in a store next street, if they don’t have a supply contract directly with WD then WD is not the one that provided the devices for that store to sell them, they got it somewhere else and then they sold it to you.

Where I live there’s an official WD-authorized representative distributor and it doesn’t sell the Live Plus and the Hub, yet several other non-official stores in here sell the Live Plus and the Hub.

buckey wrote:

So you are saying that I should verify if the products sold in the main retailers are been sold by an official distributor? That just doesn’t make sense.

 

 

By the way, I don’t think that WD didn’t officially sold their Live Plus in Chile. I have bought quite a lot of WD hard disk in the same places, where they are side by side with the Live Plus, and one of them was defective and I had it RMA with WD in Chile. How can you possible tell the difference?

Yes. My family used to own an electronics wholesale store in Miami. We did a lot of business with S. America. The buyers didn’t care less about warranties and compatibility if it was a hot-selling product. They would buy Sony merchandise knowing that Sony only honors warranties on products purchased from authorized retailers. I suspect many S. American companies, even respectable ones, are buying U.S. WD products with no regard for compatibility simply because there is a market for them. And comparing a WD hard drive to the Live Hub is ridiculous. A blank hard drive has no issues with DRM and licensing to be sorted out across borders.

WD Live Hub disclaimers (with small letters):

  • NETFLIX: but only in US and Canada

  • YOUTUBE: but not all videos are available (i.e.: Here in Brazil, VEVO Music Videos are NOT available)

  • FACEBOOK: but pictures are not displayed

  • GENERAL PERFORMANCE: fast as a 386 PC from the 80’s 

I think WD could develop a better product.