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Apple Debuts New Apple TV and iTunes Movie Content in Japan

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aussieinjapan

macrumors member
Jun 30, 2010
76
4
gorleegor said:
Itune store within iOS devices should be controlled by the a/c login, so if you have an aussie a/c it will take you to aussie store after login ; similar to my situation which will take me to Japanese Store after I log on my japan itune a/c.
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I did read on another web page when I was reseaching the new model (back story is I almost bought an American version from ebay last sunday) and this person said that while he could log in to his American account from germany - it wouldn:t let him rent tv shows. Sorry Im at work so I dont have the link to the story.
 
A

anjonjp

macrumors member
Dec 29, 2009
59
0
Tokyo, Japan
Long awaited welcome move

I have just had a look at the Japan iTunes Store and after much clicking around to bypass the 'memory bug', I found my way in.

Hmmm - this is the initial catalog offering so it's probably not fair to be over critical at this point. Here are some observations:

(1) Only 171 movies are subtitled. The others are ALL dubbed in Japanese.
(2) Of the 171 movies that are subtitled, I have yet to find one where the subtitles can be switched off. Not a big deal, but would be nice to have this considering most DVD players have been able to do this for years.
(3) Of the 171 movies - only a certain percentage can be purchased, the rest being rentals. None are recent movies.

Tsutaya et al and SkyePerfect TV offer better choices, so if Apple wishes to compete, then it will have to do better than this. That is obvious.

Still, I reiterate, this is a good move by Apple and long awaited.
 
T

Tyrion

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2002
508
5
Same here in Switzerland, but the movies are only available in dubbed versions. LOL, not paying for that. What the hell is wrong with Apple?
 
S

Snowshiro

macrumors 6502
Jan 12, 2008
387
6
anjonjp said:
(1) Only 171 movies are subtitled. The others are ALL dubbed in Japanese.
Click to expand...

This is something they need to address. In my experience, the vast majority of Japanese prefer to watch foreign movies in the original language with subtitles. It's certainly how most movies are shown at cinemas. Dubbed movies are a poor second choice for a lot of people.
 
B

beg_ne

macrumors 6502
Jul 3, 2003
452
0
J&JPolangin said:
...um, no... Y8,800 = $110 USD right now...before tax and it looks like the Y is getting stronger...
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Actually at the moment its $107. But how is $107 not on par with $99 when taking into effect how volatile the exchange rate can be?

And which tax? The advertised japanese price should already include tax, so if you consider the US price is $99 before tax in most places it's going to be higher than Japan in the end.
 
z4n3

z4n3

Guest
Jun 2, 2008
288
0
And finally in Spain, although Apple sent out a press release last Sat, there is no big announcement on the actual webpage only a small link on AppleTV page

AppleTV SPAIN

At last I can get some real use from my old ATV :D
 
M

mrklaw

macrumors 68030
Jan 29, 2008
2,685
986
do TV shows work

1) If you're not in Japan
2) on a mac mini?

I'd love to be able to buy/rent some TV shows for the wife and we have a JPN account which we use for music, but I have no idea if movies work - might be geo-restricted.
 
M

monchiwai

macrumors newbie
Nov 10, 2010
22
0
Tokyo
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

They enabled the Buy now button earlier and I have placed my order. Should be coming in 2 days. Can't wait :)
 
A

aussieinjapan

macrumors member
Jun 30, 2010
76
4
Snowshiro said:
This is something they need to address. In my experience, the vast majority of Japanese prefer to watch foreign movies in the original language with subtitles. It's certainly how most movies are shown at cinemas. Dubbed movies are a poor second choice for a lot of people.
Click to expand...

Actually that is not true. If you go to the cinema outside of the big cities like Tokyo etc most of the movies from Hollywood are now mostly shown in Japanese. I read that young people cant be bothered to read kanji anymore, they find it mendoukusai and that (and I'll use the example that was in the newspaper) the film companies dont have to write a long explanation - a lot of younger people after watching indy jones didnt know who the Nazis were.

Here are 4 examples taken from the english media in Japan.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/...ubbed-as-japanese-audiences-tire-of-subtitles

http://www.japantoday.com/category/...th-subtitles-or-dubbed-into-your-own-language

http://www.japantoday.com/category/...nazis-todays-kids-cant-handle-movie-subtitles

http://www.japantoday.com/category/...s-tend-to-shy-away-from-movies-with-subtitles

I can understand movies like Toy story being dubbed because its for little kids but dubbing Hollywood movies is overdoing it ! Watching Bruce Willis in Japanese is just plain wrong.

Oh and thats why I canceled The Star channel package on Skyperfect. They stated having all three channels dubbed into Japanese on Sunday (when I had time to watch movies). Why OH Why ??
 
S

Snowshiro

macrumors 6502
Jan 12, 2008
387
6
aussieinjapan said:
Actually that is not true. If you go to the cinema outside of the big cities like Tokyo etc most of the movies from Hollywood are now mostly shown in Japanese.
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To be fair, your linked articles would seem to suggest that the majority of movies are still subtitled more than dubbed and the most of the movies which have the reverse ratio are aimed at younger audiences. But I take your point that the trend is changing, and I'm surprised to see how quickly. However even if the ratio goes to 60-40 in favor of dubbing, it would still make sense for Apple to provide both versions when the minority is still almost half your audience. Especially when this is exactly the kind of thing that can be done so easily with the available technology. I'm actually very surprised to learn that iTunes movies don't have the capability to have multiple audio/subtitle tracks in the same file. Surely they wouldn't have chosen a format that doesn't support this.

One wonders however whether things are different for DVD rentals. I can understand cinema-goers finding it hard to both read subtitles and deal with 3D at the same time, but when the 3D is removed (i.e. for home viewing) I wonder if this changes the figures. Certainly amongst my circle of friends, I know of not a single person who prefers dubbed movies.
 
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S

sukuba

macrumors newbie
Nov 10, 2010
5
0
Aomori, Japan
Most of the time now, movies in theaters have two showings, one will be with subtitles, the other dubbed. That goes for most of the Hollywood movies, but especially for the ones that target kids.

Almost all of the DVDs that you can rent or buy have both options as well. Occasionally I'll come across an old movie that doesn't have dubbing as an option, but nearly every single new release has the option.

For the person who asked if they could buy tv shows from overseas, there rant any tv shows available at this time, but I'd be willing to bet yup can buy movies. I have both a US and a Japanese iTunes account and I make purchases from both reguraly.
 
A

aussieinjapan

macrumors member
Jun 30, 2010
76
4
sukuba said:
Most of the time now, movies in theaters have two showings, one will be with subtitles, the other dubbed. That goes for most of the Hollywood movies, but especially for the ones that target kids.
Click to expand...

Up in Aomori ? WOW Im in western Kanagawa and my city has two cinemas...Toho and Korona world. Recently, Toho has had most of the movies in Japanese with one or two ones in English which are usually shown early in the mornings or very late at night - its gotten worse over the last 10 years Ive been here. Doesn't surprise me because one of the TV networks has a huge stake in Toho so they churn out crap and as one of my students stated (She's in her 60's) "Toho shows movies for old women to cry". While Korona often sticks the English movies in the smallest section of the cinema - I had to travel all the way to Shinjuku to see Toy story 3 in English as even in Yokohama, you could only see it in Japanese.

sukuba said:
For the person who asked if they could buy tv shows from overseas, there rant any tv shows available at this time, but I'd be willing to bet yup can buy movies. I have both a US and a Japanese iTunes account and I make purchases from both reguraly.
Click to expand...

Oh that was me. I read one another forum (Sorry don't have the link) about a guy who tried to access itunes USA from Germany. He could buy stuff but not rent. It blocked him.
 
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kfury77

kfury77

macrumors regular
Jan 9, 2007
145
83
Osaka, Japan
Got my Apple TV

I'd owned the previous 40GB and 160GB models. I'll sell on my 160GB HD model now though. Here's my initial thoughts on the new model:

* I was pleasantly surprised with how great the build quality is. The unit is heavier than I thought and the black plastic with shiny AppleTV logo on top looks really smart. The aluminium remote feels great, a lot nicer to use than the plastic white one.
* Operation seems faster. I clicked around all the menus and there was no lag. This is an improvement over the original one
* Picture quality of the menus didn't look fantastic on a 24" Samsung monitor with HDMI. I'm not sure exactly why, but the text looked pixelly and the album cover artwork didn't look HD at all. I'll compare it to my AppleTV mk 1 later on.
* Overall there are some nice UI improvements, such as being able to view customer reviews of films (though only the first page), always showing the HD option and not the SD option (you can change this in settings).
* Accessing a shared library and streaming music and videos from a computer is a bit slow and cumbersome. I have TV shows on my iTunes on my computer, why don't my TV shows appear as an option from the menu. I really hope they fix this in a software update.
* The unit doesn't get hot at all, even when streaming HD. As anyone who has AppleTV Mk1 will know, the original gets very, very hot - even when not in use, so this is a welcome change.

Overall, a decent little box. I rent a film or two every weekend, so I'll be using this quite a lot. Looking forward to software updates with extra apps though (Weather, sports news etc). With iOS4.2 coming next week for my iPod touch 4th gen, the functionality should improve. Hope I can play Angry Birds on my TV. haha.
 
A

autumnmike

macrumors member
Oct 12, 2005
72
6
kfury77 said:
I'd owned the previous 40GB and 160GB models. I'll sell on my 160GB HD model now though. Here's my initial thoughts on the new model:

* I was pleasantly surprised with how great the build quality is. The unit is heavier than I thought and the black plastic with shiny AppleTV logo on top looks really smart. The aluminium remote feels great, a lot nicer to use than the plastic white one.
* Operation seems faster. I clicked around all the menus and there was no lag. This is an improvement over the original one
* Picture quality of the menus didn't look fantastic on a 24" Samsung monitor with HDMI. I'm not sure exactly why, but the text looked pixelly and the album cover artwork didn't look HD at all. I'll compare it to my AppleTV mk 1 later on.
* Overall there are some nice UI improvements, such as being able to view customer reviews of films (though only the first page), always showing the HD option and not the SD option (you can change this in settings).
* Accessing a shared library and streaming music and videos from a computer is a bit slow and cumbersome. I have TV shows on my iTunes on my computer, why don't my TV shows appear as an option from the menu. I really hope they fix this in a software update.
* The unit doesn't get hot at all, even when streaming HD. As anyone who has AppleTV Mk1 will know, the original gets very, very hot - even when not in use, so this is a welcome change.

Overall, a decent little box. I rent a film or two every weekend, so I'll be using this quite a lot. Looking forward to software updates with extra apps though (Weather, sports news etc). With iOS4.2 coming next week for my iPod touch 4th gen, the functionality should improve. Hope I can play Angry Birds on my TV. haha.
Click to expand...

Dude, do be a favor. Check on your apple tv, under settings, about, to see what os your are running. in the states were are all on ios 4.0 . is that true with the new ones shipped? seeing if there is any improvement.
 
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