What's This Rental Business Shite, Viki?

TV & Movies K-Dramas
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Vivi wants its subscribers to pay to rent movies on its site? Ridiculous - what corporate birdbrain came up with that idea? Netflix just invested $700 million to expand its Korean content and purpose-built production facilities in Korea. Their K-,J- and C- dramas are getting better and better. Amazon also has a good selection of Asian TV and movies. What are you telling us subscribers? Pay your subscriptions fees, but if you really want to see newer content, pay a rental? The users on Slack just killed a new feature that would have allowed messaging to all users - we need to kick this new rental idea to the curb too.

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I wouldn’t get too stressed about this, if it fails to bring the numbers Viki wants it will disappear anyway, but we don’t know how much Viki is investing in this option, so maybe we will be a bit upset that the money wasn’t spent differently.

Viki is just a small platform compared to those with the much larger budgets and advertisers/investors, and it steadily needs to find its niche to keep up.
How to compare Netflix’ budget with Viki that was bought from Rakuten for 200+ million only a few years ago? It can’t, they are not at the same level, but play in the same league.

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That rental thing is only for US and Canada so I decided to not be bothered by it since I’m from Europe. And I assume it will go away soon anyway. I think it’s just a method to gather more money to maybe buy more licensed things. Hopefully more normal Kdrama instead of webdrama and more QC worldwide license.

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And here I was naively thinking that “rental” was referring to downloading episodes to mobile devices so that you can watch them without internet, on the go


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That would be cool but I don’t think that will happen.

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:open_mouth::scream::astonished: Omyword!
:face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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Why is Viki trying to charge a rental fee when I already pay for a Pass Plus?

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Ikr? I pay a subscription but now they want me to pay again to rent Josee and New Year Blues?? I am not happy about this one bit.

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I wish they would get it together and allow us to download. I don’t always have access to WiFi so downloading is sometimes the only way I can watch when I have a chance to get connected.

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I saw it and was surprised, but when I went to investigate, there is no place to ‘pay’ for a movie. I have Viki pass plus.

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Y’all have to pay to rent Josee? I’m able to watch it free here! :astonished:

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I was not charged anything, so I don’t know what the movie charges are about. Better watch the ones on your watch list before the prices go into effect!

Oh! I’d PAY to see Seo Bok! I can’t find a US release anywhere.

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So after happens in the US and Canada, they’ll implement it everywhere?

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Is your credit card saved with them? I wonder if they just automatically charge the credit card on file.

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Well, I have not signed up to watch any movies. There doesn’t seem to be a place that tells you what the charge is, etc., so I don’t think it’s in effect. They can’t just put out charges without telling you what the price is and without you agreeing to the charges.

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:film_strip: MOVIE RENTALS

As a heads up, movie rentals will be coming to Viki in March (select titles only, with initial release in California, Washington, and Canada). More details to come soon in the next few weeks!

It’s only some selected places and not all is told about how it works, so to me, it really looks like a trial. We will see if this idea sees the light for other regions in the future. Even if I would live in one of these places I would not be too worried at the moment since the information is really scarce.

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Paradoxically, because they are not allowing this, I spend more time watching Asian dramas on Netflix than I do on Viki. When I’m home, I don’t have that much time or patience to watch anything, since I prefer to use the time for subbing.

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Recently I’m also watching mainly Netflix for couple of reasons. They also got much Asian content there now (with nice-to-read lines in the middle of the screen and usually correct grammar/syntax, and in the end that’s more important for me than pausing every second scene/cut because of way too long & weird lines here).

On VIKI it often feels more like reading a text RPG than watching a show :unamused:

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Viki Pass Plus does not have to pay.

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I received an email from Viki about the movie rentals, so it seems weird that it would only be offered in a few places. There was no indication that it was a trial in select places.

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