Are there any on-demand TV / movie / media streaming portals, e.g., Netflix, available within Japan?

Tsutaya?

For anyone thinking, "I don't care because I don't live in Japan", you can get a VPN in Japan for like $9/month, and stream through it. I do it for my 3DS stuff right now. I have a laptop set up with the VPN and Connectify, so that everything that hooks to the laptop (acting as a WiFi AP) gets routed through Japan.

From somewhere like here: http://www.purevpn.com/
Just google 'get a vpn account'

I use https://www.overplay.net/ because they're one of the few that has servers in Japan. They have quite a few all over the world.

just curious.. what reason do you use this for wccrawford? This would be nice for streaming Crunchyroll through when I'm in Japan

Hashiriya Wrote:just curious.. what reason do you use this for wccrawford? This would be nice for streaming Crunchyroll through when I'm in Japan

As above, I just use it for my Japanese 3DS so far, because the video downloads only work in Japan.

But while I was testing it, I was doing other stuff via the VPN and it was all pretty smooth and quick.

interesting... I just bought a 3DS last month in Japan.. i didn't know that the video stuff only worked over here. The videos really weren't that interesting to me though...

Hashiriya Wrote:interesting... I just bought a 3DS last month in Japan.. i didn't know that the video stuff only worked over here. The videos really weren't that interesting to me though...

They're pretty bad, yeah. I think I get more out of the babyshiba commercials than the actual content. lol

lol I love 豆しば
http://dogatch.jp/anime_kids/mameshiba/index.html

Hashiriya Wrote:lol I love 豆しば
http://dogatch.jp/anime_kids/mameshiba/index.html

lol Even that site won't let me watch their commercial from the US. Jeez.

hmm, could the use of a VPN give me access to blocked websites from behind a firewall at work? they block lot's of stupid sites, but youtube is freely available to overyone ...

Dakoina Wrote:hmm, could the use of a VPN give me access to blocked websites from behind a firewall at work? they block lot's of stupid sites, but youtube is freely available to overyone ...

Yes, but when you get fired for popping a hole in the firewall and letting a virus wipe out the company network, don't come crying to me.

Seriously, that's a bad idea on so many levels. Please don't do this.

wccrawford Wrote:Yes, but when you get fired for popping a hole in the firewall and letting a virus wipe out the company network, don't come crying to me.

Seriously, that's a bad idea on so many levels. Please don't do this.

Well, I guess I'm not the only one with that idea. An old friend from school - working for the same company - seems to be doing the same thing

I agree with you that it's a potentially bad idea. But, there are multiple networks within the building/organization, with a special wifi network for external people like me, which shouldn't be connected to the main network. I surely wouldn't use a vpn on my "main" computer with confidential data. It's for the laptop, which is connected to a separate network to check mails, search lazy programmers'code etc... Shouldn't be too harmful... I'm not a reckless surfer like many other people I've seen; they mostly don't know much about inet security and click on anything. As an IT person the only thing I didn't know here, was how exactly vpn behaves (through a firewall) :| I already use proxy sites to find blocked sites :p security my ... <fill in dirty word here>

anyway, we'll see about it

oh btw, when I started at my firm, I accidentally took down the whole network from Europe to America wasn't really my fault. some app we needed to install, installed a dhcp service (giving wrong ip addresses wtf) and nobody couldn't do a thing on the network anymore. Don't blame me, but the senior developer who obliged me to install the software

This sounds like it might be a solution to a problem I've been thinking about recently. Maybe you knowledgeable guys could offer a bit of advice?

I'm thinking about leaving Japan next year and taking my wife home with me. Her English is pretty good (we only ever speak in English with each other) but it's not quite at that level where she can enjoy English movies and TV shows without Japanese subtitles. Since we love watching DVD's together I was worried what we might do if we went back home.

Is it possible to access something like the Japanese PSN video store or Xbox 360 Zune video service from a country outside Japan? Using this VPN you speak of? Or some other means perhaps?

And if it does work, how do you do it exactly? Aren't there some other problems you have to worry about?

It sounds like it might be illegal and against the TOS so could your ps3 or 360 or whatever been banned if Sony or Microsoft found out about it?

Also, what do you do when you want to switch back so you can access your own country's content? Wouldn't it be a hassle changing the settings around all the time?

Finally, is using a VPN safe from hackers?

Any advice is much appreciated!

A VPN creates a virtual tunnel through the internet. Normally that's used to connect 2 companies together, creating a safe network between them.

In this case, though, the other end of the VPN is the internet itself. That means there's no firewall between you and the rest of the world. You would be responsible for setting one up. So in that sense, no, it's not safe from hackers. You'd have to make it so.

It might be against their TOS to fake your country of origin. I don't know. If you break a TOS, yes, they can ban you.

I'm pretty sure the PSN and other region-restricted console markets would be suitably fooled by a VPN. I haven't tried it with anything other than my 3DS so far, though.