A Reasonable Alternative
July 27th, 2011
Many have said it (including myself), and it is true: offer a reasonable plan for accessing media, and people won’t pirate so much.
Too bad by-mail or online media services in Japan are not even close to being like Netflix. I looked into them recently, and only found limited, overpriced by-mail services–essentially charging more than video rental shops for a set number of videos (usually something like four or eight) per month.
Hikari TV has a rental service in addition to traditional PPV. However, I don’t know if it requires a decoder box to operate. I have a Toshiba TV, which can access Hikari TV directly without a box, but I haven’t tried to rent any movies yet.