How many of you are Netflix subscribers ?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just now, WaveHunter said:

I don't use a VPN at all, for anything; just normal wireless connection that my condo provides.  No need for VPN to use Roku.  For PirateBay, which is simply a torrent site on the web, I just download movies or other content via a Torrent App on my laptop, like uTorrent, and then transfer the movies to a USB Stick and plug t into the TV for viewing.

 

As I suggested to Rumak above, I didn't think you were doing your Pirate Baying via the Roku device.... 

 

But the difference is, I believe Rumak is WANTING to access his movies and TV content via his streaming device, which makes the breadth of content it can access more important in his case than in yours.

 

[WaveHunter]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

To the best of my knowledge, if you buy and order a new Roku device and set it up in Thailand with a Thai IP address, you're going to be limited to only using Roku channels that are international and not the U.S. focused ones.  It really depends on what kind of content and content sources the user wants to access.

 

YouTube is international these days. Netflix is international these days. Same with Spotify, the music service. But lots of other streaming providers are U.S. only, like Hulu, Showtime, YouTube TV, others. Where you get up the Roku device and what country your Roku account is registered in is going to determine the channels you'll be able to access.

 

I made a mistake about availability on Lazada and Aliexpress, and revised that post.  Best bet is to buy it from Amazon.

 

I'm not sure whether you are correct or not about being restricted to Thai Channels if you buy it from USA and set it up from Thailand.  I did buy mine and initially used it in the USA, but it works fine for me here in Thailand and anywhere else in the world I travel to with it. 

 

You may be correct, but to be honest, most of the US channels that are free are pretty lame anyway, and the paid ones are not worth the money IMO.  All I use it for is YouTube.

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

4 minutes ago, WaveHunter said:

All I use it for is YouTube.

 

 

YouTube is free and you can use it anywhere on either a Fire TV device or a Roku...

 

But things get more challenging when you start expanding your view to other services. Those that can be accessed via a TH-based Roku device are considerably smaller than those that can be accessed via a U.S.-based Roku device.

 

Whether that matters or not is up to the use habits and desires of the individual user. But as you noted, you're already getting much/most of your movie/TV content via the Pirate Bay in a questionably legal manner that doesn't use the Roku device at all.

 

And I don't think Rumak is looking to go down that same road.

 

[WaveHunter]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

As I suggested to Rumak above, I didn't think you were doing your Pirate Baying via the Roku device.... 

 

But the difference is, I believe Rumak is WANTING to access his movies and TV content via his streaming device, which makes the breadth of content it can access more important in his case than in yours.

 

Well, yeah I get most of my movies from PirateBay and watch them via a USB stick, but the Roku is capable of high bandwidth streaming streaming as well.  I only stream YouTube, but he could stream lots more beside YouTube with it, I would guess.

 

You made a good point about whether or not Roku restricts channels depending on whether or not you register in the US vs Thailand.  Now you;ve got me wondering about that LOL!

 

[WaveHunter]

12 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

YouTube is free and you can use it anywhere on either a Fire TV device or a Roku...

 

But things get more challenging when you start expanding your view to other services. Those that can be accessed via a TH-based Roku device are considerably smaller than those that can be accessed via a U.S.-based Roku device.

 

Whether that matters or not is up to the use habits and desires of the individual user. But as you noted, you're already getting much/most of your movie/TV content via the Pirate Bay in a questionably legal manner that doesn't use the Roku device at all.

 

And I don't think Rumak is looking to go down that same road.

 

I got curious about this issue and did a little research.  Apparently you are correct...to a certain extent.  Apparently, when you register a newly purchased device at Roku.com (which you must do in order to activate it), it will use the IP address of the computer you are on to direct you to a specific channel store from which you can choose channels that you want to add to your device.  In the case of Thailand, it is the Great Britain channel store, not the USA store).

 

However, this is not a problem, and here's why.  Most of the free channels that might be available on the USA site but not on the GB site are lame and not worth adding in the first place.  The better "Premium" channels which are often paid subscription sites such as movie and sports channels, can be added to your Roku directly from the provider's websites, no matter what IP you are using.

 

When I moved to Thailand, in addition to YouTube, I also had a subscription to NetFlix.  Now I recall that whenever I tried to access the NetFlix channel from a different IP outside of the USA, I would get a pop-up screen telling me to log into my NetFlix account "verification page" and add a verification code that was listed in the pop-up message.  Once I did this, I was connected, and all was fine thereafter.

 

So, yes you are correct that Roku's available channel list will depend on where your IP address is located, but many third party channels can be added to your Roku channel list simply by adding them from the specific Channel provider's website.

 

So, bottom line, if you buy a Roku device from the US and register/activate it here in Thailand, you may be restricted from adding channels directly from the Roku Channel store in the United States, but in most cases, you can add the better ones directly from the channel provider's website.

 

Also, one point regarding use of PirateBay.  Yes, technically speaking this is not legal to do if the downloaded item is protected by copyright law.  Much of the content I download is actually not protected by copyright law and this perfectly legal to download.

 

For content that is protected, many people download it anyway.  The situation is the same on YouTube; there is a lot of copyright protected content that gets posted to YouTube, so those who post it and those who view it are technically in violation of copyright.

 

Whether this is right or wrong from an ethical standpoint is up to the individual to decide.  Practically speaking though, PirateBay has been in existence for over a decade, many people do use it, and I have yet to hear of any individual who downloads from the site getting into any legal trouble by doing it.  

[timendres]

On 9/23/2019 at 1:24 PM, possum1931 said:

I can assure you that I have downloaded lots of Columbo episodes in Thailand, I am presently in the UK and expect to download more when I get back.

Did you download these from Netflix?

[WaveHunter]

1 hour ago, timendres said:

Did you download these from Netflix?

Re @possum1931 comment about Columbo:

 

I love the Columbo series, mainly because Peter Falk is an amazing actor.  You can find many full episodes right on YouTube!  Many classic TV series episodes can be found right on YouTube.  

 

Also, one of my favorite Peter Falk films, The In-Laws can be downloaded from PirateBay.  That film was made in 1979, and was a cult classic.  It's rarely shown on TV anymore.  That's one reason I love PirateBay; you can find many old or hard to find movies and TV shows that are available nowhere else unless you're willing to spend a lot to buy them on Amazon.

[rumak]

2 hours ago, timendres said:

On 9/23/2019 at 1:24 PM, possum1931 said:

I can assure you that I have downloaded lots of Columbo episodes in Thailand, I am presently in the UK and expect to download more when I get back.

Did you download these from Netflix?

I see that many episodes are on Youtube ,as WH says, free to view .  I think that means they are available anywhere right now   ????          My Netflix in Thailand does not list it now as far as I can see

[JHolmesJr]

Kodi subscription is free and it comes with Netflix bundled ????

[WaveHunter]

1 hour ago, rumak said:

I see that many episodes are on Youtube ,as WH says, free to view .  I think that means they are available anywhere right now   ????          My Netflix in Thailand does not list it now as far as I can see

As far as I am concerned, with all the other free options for viewing content, and the ever-decreasing level of quality of NetFlix offerings, Netflix is just not worth it anymore.  Just my opinion but how many poorly dubbed cheaply made foreign films can you tolerate LOL.

[rumak]

1 hour ago, WaveHunter said:

As far as I am concerned, with all the other free options for viewing content, and the ever-decreasing level of quality of NetFlix offerings, Netflix is just not worth it anymore.  Just my opinion but how many poorly dubbed cheaply made foreign films can you tolerate LOL.

you're right.    a friend of mine who saw our posts here is now also interested in alternatives so our

comments here are helping some others .   Getting "started"  might take some time till we get the necessary devices but it will happen.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

15 minutes ago, rumak said:

you're right.    a friend of mine who saw our posts here is now also interested in alternatives so our

comments here are helping some others .   Getting "started"  might take some time till we get the necessary devices but it will happen.

 

Another option for folks interested in quality movie and TV content is a monthly subscription to Amazon Prime Video either thru Amazon U.S. or Amazon U.K.  In both cases, I believe, in order to access the content you'd need to be using a viable U.S. or UK VPN.

 

Unless, of course, you were subscribing via the purchase of the basic edition (international) Amazon Fire Stick device I mentioned earlier. In that case, you could access Amazon Prime Video via that Fire Stick device directly with a Thailand IP, but you'd get a more limited Thailand-specific video library vs. the larger U.S. or UK collections.

 

The monthly fee for Amazon Prime Video is $8.99 U.S. via Amazon U.S., or 5.99 pounds via Amazon U.K.

 

   

 

 

 

Amazon these days has a lot of their own original series, as well as a lot of prior movie and TV series content of the type Netflix used to have more of.

 

For example, the entire run of the Columbo TV series is available for streaming to U.S. account Amazon Prime subscribers via Amazon's own IMDB TV Channel.

 

 

[WaveHunter]

11 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

Another option for folks interested in quality movie and TV content is a monthly subscription to Amazon Prime Video either thru Amazon U.S. or Amazon U.K.  In both cases, I believe, in order to access the content you'd need to be using a viable U.S. or UK VPN.

 

Unless, of course, you were subscribing via the purchase of the basic edition (international) Amazon Fire Stick device I mentioned earlier. In that case, you could access Amazon Prime Video via that Fire Stick device directly with a Thailand IP, but you'd get a more limited Thailand-specific video library vs. the larger U.S. or UK collections.

 

The monthly fee for Amazon Prime Video is $8.99 U.S. via Amazon U.S., or 5.99 pounds via Amazon U.K.

 

   

 

 

 

Amazon these days has a lot of their own original series, as well as a lot of prior movie and TV series content of the type Netflix used to have more of.

 

For example, the entire run of the Columbo TV series is available for streaming to U.S. account Amazon Prime subscribers via Amazon's own IMDB TV Channel.

 

 

I had Amazon Prime when I was living in the US.  I had it mainly for free shipping for Amazon purchases but it included the Amazon TV.  What really surprised me was that the content was almost identical to Netflix's content, show for show!  The only thing it had that Netflix did not which appealed to me was all the episodes of The Sopranos. 

 

True, they had original content as Netflix does, but none of it was very memorable (at least in my view).

 

Most disturbing, the user interface (for navigating and searching content) was horrible compared to Netflix...absolutely horrible!  It really surprised me because most things that Google does, they do first-class.  Not the case here.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

23 minutes ago, WaveHunter said:

Most disturbing, the user interface (for navigating and searching content) was horrible compared to Netflix...absolutely horrible!  It really surprised me because most things that Google does, they do first-class.  Not the case here.

 

I think you're missing something here, as your reference above to Google has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon or Amazon Prime Video or Fire Stick devices.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

55 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Unless, of course, you were subscribing via the purchase of the basic edition (international) Amazon Fire Stick device I mentioned earlier. In that case, you could access Amazon Prime Video via that Fire Stick device directly with a Thailand IP, but you'd get a more limited Thailand-specific video library vs. the larger U.S. or UK collections.

 

In reading further on this in the comments on the Amazon website for the Fire Stick basic edition, I see some folks were having problems getting the device past Thai Customs when having it shipped directly by Amazon, who typically uses DHL or FedEx, both of which can have very complicated and arduous customs clearance processes for things like streaming devices. I can't say how often that has been a problem, but it clearly has been in at least some cases.

 

On the other hand, if you have Amazon send the device to a U.S. address and then arrange yourself for reshipping to Thailand starting out with something like U.S. Postal Service Global Priority mailing, which is delivered here by Thai Post, then I'd say you'd be unlikely to run into any Thai customs problems.

 

BTW, a person in Thailand can take out a paid monthly subscription to either the broader U.S. Prime Video catalog or the more limited Prime Video Thailand catalog, and never need or use a separate streaming device at all. Since both services can be played via web browsers or thru Amazon's Prime Video apps for mobile devices.

 

The cheaper/more limited Thailand version would not require any U.S. VPN service and would run on a regular Thai ISP. But the U.S. version would require a U.S. VPN connection and one that isn't being blocked by Amazon. (Both Amazon and Netflix lately have been blocking a lot of VPNs, though some certainly are still viable.)

 

The international/Thailand version of Amazon Prime Video (the cheaper more limited version) is at primevideo(dot)com.

 

Whereas the full and more expensive U.S. version is at amazon(dot)com.

 

 

[elgenon]

On 9/18/2019 at 6:45 AM, rumak said:

The Thai subtitles are a BIG plus when the significant other is watching....  

 

I am not that savvy about getting the "other means"...... and internet not real fast out here in Boonville.

But if you ever ride by on your motorcycle maybe you can show me how to connect 

 

Netflix on a smart tv is pretty good quality (to my eye)      and no interruptions or logos etc that drive me crazy on true

Are Thai subtitles available on TVs sold in Thailand?

[WaveHunter]

13 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

I think you're missing something here, as your reference above to Google has absolutely nothing to do with Amazon or Amazon Prime Video or Fire Stick devices.

Ooops...I meant to say Amazon, not Google, when I made the remark:

 

"...Most disturbing, the user interface (for navigating and searching content) was horrible compared to Netflix...absolutely horrible!  It really surprised me because most things that Google does, they do first-class.  Not the case here. ..."

 

Sorry about that ????

 

[rumak]

3 hours ago, elgenon said:

Are Thai subtitles available on TVs sold in Thailand?

If you have a subscription that you entered in from Thailand ( talking bout Netflix) ..... you have a choice of a few languages/and subtitiles.     English, Thai, and one or two others.   The content is from Netflix and so it is their subtitles that appear.  Nothing to do with your television.    

If you don't have a smart tv  some of the guys here can explain how you can get Netflix on the tv you have

as it comes through the internet.

[Don Mega]

3 hours ago, elgenon said:

Are Thai subtitles available on TVs sold in Thailand?

I don't think the subtitles are tied to any particular country of origin the TV was manufactured in.

[madmitch]

Netflix and TVMucho. That's all I need, though I agree to an extent about the content on Netflix not being quite so good.

 

I'd like to add a VPN to the Smart TV (LG) but I don't think I can. I use Nord.

 

I have an Android box as well but mainly use this for TVMucho as I find most of the streaming apps a bit hit and miss and I prefer just to hit a button and have the contant in front of me rather than torrent and P2P downloads.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Just got my new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa in the mail delivered by Thai Post the other day after being re-shipped from the U.S.  Amazon U.S. has been running a half off promotion for the 4K stick using the code shown below in the orange box, which drops the price to $25.

 

I can't guarantee the same code will work for everyone, Amazon seems to be selective in which accounts they'll allow the code to work on. But for $25 if you can use the code, the Fire Stick 4K is a seriously good deal for a seriously good streaming device. And as had been said before, these Fire TV devices work best if you have an Amazon account in a country where Amazon Prime exists such as the U.S. or UK, and likewise work best if you use a matching VPN.

 

Amazon U.S. won't ship the Fire TV Stick 4K directly to Thailand, AFAIK. So they'll ship it for free to any destination in the U.S., and then you can have someone there forward it to you here via regular U.S.P.S. mail or have it handled by a re-shipping service if you use one. I paid about $10 total shipping to have the approx. 1 lbs box sent here, no tax or duty charged as it was going USPS to Thai Post, and never touched FedEx or DHL or Amazon's own Amazon Global.

 

 

 

[claynlr]

19 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Just got my new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa in the mail delivered by Thai Post the other day after being re-shipped from the U.S.  Amazon U.S. has been running a half off promotion for the 4K stick using the code shown below in the orange box, which drops the price to $25.

 

I can't guarantee the same code will work for everyone, Amazon seems to be selective in which accounts they'll allow the code to work on. But for $25 if you can use the code, the Fire Stick 4K is a seriously good deal for a seriously good streaming device. And as had been said before, these Fire TV devices work best if you have an Amazon account in a country where Amazon Prime exists such as the U.S. or UK, and likewise work best if you use a matching VPN.

 

Amazon U.S. won't ship the Fire TV Stick 4K directly to Thailand, AFAIK. So they'll ship it for free to any destination in the U.S., and then you can have someone there forward it to you here via regular U.S.P.S. mail or have it handled by a re-shipping service if you use one. I paid about $10 total shipping to have the approx. 1 lbs box sent here, no tax or duty charged as it was going USPS to Thai Post, and never touched FedEx or DHL or Amazon's own Amazon Global.

 

 

 

Just tried and it wouldn’t take the code. Maybe a one day deal.