@Gargron oh i believe it could be part of the utterly awful German copyright law.

@Gargron Yes, had the same with „The Deuce“, I prefer english with english subtitles.

@Gargron

It’s been that way for streaming services in Germany since the 1930’s

@Gargron
Pardon my nordicness, but that sounds insane.

@Gargron

Exactly this.

@Gargron Germany and France are known to dub and translate everything :(

@Gargron I note that you are subscribed to Disney+.

@Gargron THAT. 🙄

@Gargron Amazon Prime, isn't it? Their subtitle choices are the absolute worst. Sometimes it's not even in a language I speak.

@Gargron ugh. yeah. happens a LOT on prime.
I hate it so friggin much

@Gargron on Prime Video it's very often the case when you live in Germany, there's no OV on a lot of movies/series

@Gargron pretty sure there's not a single streaming service that is actually good at delivering quality experiences to users

@Gargron And it's just text! Offer all the languages that you have and let me choose my favourites in the settings!

@Gargron It's one thing to only have the German audio track and subtitles when the movie is originally in German. It's the total collapse of civilization when it's made impossible to hear the original voices of the actors if they don't speak German.

@Gargron It's even worse. You don't need to be in Germany (or Austria or Switzerland) to have this problem.

@Gargron Oh Christ this drives me insane.

I don't want to listen to an awful dubbed version when I can understand the original language.

@Gargron oh hey! It’s not just Mexico! Depending in the streamer, we usually get both audio options but only Spanish subtitles.

@Gargron this is basically just a symptom of how utterly fucked up IP and copyright are nowadays. It empowers IP-owners to charge ridiculous rates per language they license out, and since per design there can only ever be one rightholder to a given series or movie, Streaming services can either pay or walk away.

@Gargron to be fair, I believe free subtitles results from legal action by deaf people. They're for the deaf people in that country

@Gargron That is truly ignorant of the streaming service. May I ask which one it is? Was actually starting up my computer today to watch a bit of a movie on Disney+. Upon resuming from where I stopped it had shifted to German audio and Chinese subtitles. Took a couple of reloads to get the changes in settings kick in back to English.

@Gargron I feel like this is a German thing, back when I lived in Brazil I never had any problem watching things in English, even on normal TV

@Gargron this so much. I‘m watching Fargo right now and it’s so awful with the German dubbing.

@Gargron this is something I whole heartedly agree with. I like to watch movies in their original language sometimes...

@Gargron I have an equal Problem with the swiss #Tatort I don't understand why the #ard doesn't Stream the swiss audio track.

@Gargron in similar vain: if you want to learn German by watching (I learnt English this way and it was super effective), they provide only dub in your regional language and maaybe original English :sad_dog: For this case though illegal ways aren't a rescue because nobody really cares about German dubs¹ to even illegally re-distribute them :blobsob:

¹which is surprising cuz my friends say they're often very good

@Gargron When it comes to legal streaming https://rakuten.tv/ has the best support for foreign language audio. It‘s the only place where I could find Into the Spider-Verse in both Spanish and Dutch (+English of course).

@Gargron when we were in Berlin last year we just got local TV in our hotel so I had some fun watching Next Generation with my schoolboy-level German.

@Gargron The same happens in Portugal and it drives me crazy. Why do these companies do this?

@Gargron it's probably cheaper to only licence the DE dub.

@Gargron

That's why I constantly and always connect and route my Internet traffic via a VPN server at home.

Less possibility for IP based location tracking, less chances for geoblocking services I have when being home. And access to my otherwise Internet isolated devices.

If you want to get started quickly with a "lesser effort setup", consider a free Cloud Connexa account (by OpenVPN).

@Gargron What I absolutely despise? Everything in the ZDF (German public television) Mediathek works without lag or stutter, except for the live stream, which stutters un—bear—ably on my Apple TV. What am I supposed to do? Watch yesterday’s news instead? News are the only content I ever watch in a live stream, and watching a canned news show is pretty pointless, IMO.

@Gargron international, multilingual considerations are only secondary to American tech companies. They annoy me almost daily. I like watching Italian shows and/or movies and would like to watch them with Swedish subtitles so that my wife can follow.

@Gargron I hate going to a UK newspaper site and they give me their terrible, terrible US page instead of the UK news I went there to see. Don't change the url I typed in.

@Gargron I would rather call it deliberate restriction. Selling other languages - if any - in separate packages.

Happened more than once that I added the wrong version to my personal watchlist, had to cancel and re-add the correct one.

... A personal quirk of mine is that I watch every movie in the original language, with subtitles if necessary.
Yes, I know how to swear in Korean. Or in Polish. 😈

@Gargron that’s why I use a US App Store account even though I live in Switzerland.

@Gargron Yes, this is so annoying! I like to watch movies in the original language, if I know it. I mean German dubs are not that bad, but some jokes get lost in translation. So if I want to watch something in English I do not want to start a 7 day trial period for "special streaming++ whatever" when I am already paying for the basic streaming service, thank you very much!

@Gargron it's not only in Germany. In the US basically everything is English only. Had family over for christmas that doesn't speak the language fluent enough to understand. Too many movies, regardless of release-year do not even have subtitles other than English (or sometimes Spanish). Even movies that were not originally shot in English and just dubbed.

Hate the (geoblocking for artificial scarcening in a globalized digital market) game, not the player.

@Gargron That girl has a lot to tell you. The Princess will share many shocking truths; nothing will be the same again!

- https://inconservative.news/patriot 🔥

👆👑🦅🇺🇲🙏

@Gargron here in France, we were watching The Middle from Amazon (no DVD available of course, don't buy what you can rent on a streaming service...) and we have episodes in English only (?!) and one episode on some parts where a character is not dubbed (while others are). Never saw this, and I followed the French original TV airing where everything was normal 🧐

@Gargron in Netflix you can change your settings, and indicate the languages that you want to see. But certain countries (UK, Germany) shortcut those assumptions. Maybe they prefer not to pay for the right to those audio/video tracks with the expectation that almost nobody misses them?

BTW, the same happens with DVDs (and I guess BlueRay discs): many Region 2 DVDs sold in the UK do not have other languages beyond English (not even in subtitles), but those same titles sold outside of the UK do.

@Gargron Oh the now-defunct Sony Wakanim was horrible at this.
They had DRM-free downloads. Awesome!
But! Hardcoded subtitles, only "local" subs were available. Local in their "Scandinavia" (which included NL as well, because we're Nordic now I guess) was English. Fine by me, Dutch anime subs are rare anyways.
However, almost all of Eastern Europe was Russian to them (Bad take.), all of Belgium was French. You live in Baarle-Hertog? We'll assume you only understand French.

@Gargron Prime Video and iTunes movie trailers for some reason 🤷‍♂️

@Gargron That's why you use an American VPN.

@Gargron You should consider a VPN if this keeps happening 😂

@Gargron yarr harr fiddle tee dee

@Gargron While in Kazakhstan right now, I try to learn Kazakh language a bit. And absolute majority of audio tracks and subtitles for movies on streaming services here are on russian. I don’t even think about assumptions here

@Gargron Yes! We've had that too, in the Netherlands. We wanted to watch a Japanese animated movie with English subtitles. Every streaming service and every online dvd shop only offered Dutch subtitles. Eventually we got a family member in the UK to buy the dvd there and post it to us. Crazy.

(We did want to actually own a copy.)

@Gargron +1

@Gargron in Belgium one day it’s in French. You pause the video. And the next day on the same device you resume and it’s in Dutch 🤷🏻‍♂️

@Gargron I was so surprised about it... there was a bunch of unexpected things in Germany for me (lack of digitisation) but this was just off 😅