Netflix available in Brazil

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Hub Discussions
21

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

22

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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23

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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24

I’ll never buy anything from WD.

Extremely disappointed.

25

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.

26

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.

27

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


28

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.

29

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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30

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.ï»ż 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.

31

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?

32

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.

33

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.

34

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 availableï»ż)

  • 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.

35

jpbarbosa wrote:

 

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

How’d you manage to yank that out of your fourth point of contact?

36

I have a WD TV Live HD Media Player which I bought in Canada in June, 2011. Netflix launched in Barbados, where I live, on Monday, September 12, 2011. Netflix works perfect on my pc but I got the same message as “Brazil” after logging in to Netflix on my WD device. Is there ANY firmware solution?

What are my options? Is there a USB plug in fix or something short of BUYING a new DEVICE?? I would appreciate any advice.

37

Is there ANY firmware solution?

Nope.

The Latin American/Caribbean firmwares can not be made to run on the North American devices, and vice-versa, apparently at Netflix’s insistence.

 Is there a USB plug in fix or something short of BUYING a new DEVICE?? I would appreciate any advice.

Nope.

Netflix wants separate devices, so WD has to make separate devices.

38

I thought this was covered here and in the post from WD support. This is a hardware limitation that CAN NOT be fixed in firmware. You must buy the proper WD device for your region.

39

That’s so brilliant to admit to violating Netflix’s Terms Of Use and essentially committing theft of their services.

You do realize that when you signed up here you agreed you wouldn’t post anything that violates any laws, right?

40

RoofingGuy wrote:

That’s so brilliant to admit to violating Netflix’s Terms Of Use and essentially committing theft of their services.

 

You do realize that when you signed up here you agreed you wouldn’t post anything that violates any laws, right?

I agree, but while he may be violating the WD TOS for the forum and perhaps Netflix, wouldn’t he still need a Netflix account to be able to actually access content? In that case, he isn’t really stealing, per se. Just circumventing the region rights.

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