Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 4005 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 1 of 12 18 June 2015 at 3:09am | IP Logged |
I need recommendations for a streaming service to watch French films for the Super Challenge (something
other than Netflix which I have). Ideally, there would also be Spanish cinema available as well (my next
language, but this is not a deal-breaker). I will be away from my home and my all-region DVD player/DVDs
for the next 2 1/2 months. I have watched a fair amount of what Netflix offers in the French catalog, and I feel
like I am starting to run out of choices there. Ideally, the service will have an iOS app that I could then connect
to my AppleTV. I also have a VPN. My research so far has found:
MHZChoice (Re-launch Fall 2015 so not an immediate option for me)
Fandor: $10/month; iOS app; 20%off coupon; Free 2-week trial available. Fandor appears to have a good
range of classic and newer French films.
Mubi: $5/month; iOS app; Every day a new films becomes available for 30 days. Selection always changing.
Hulu/Amazon: I believe I read here on HTLAL that these two services do not offer an extensive
selection of French/international movies.
Can anyone recommend any of these services above or an other option not listed above?
Edited by Mohave on 18 June 2015 at 3:11am
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Kavakos Newbie United States Joined 3579 days ago 5 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese
| Message 2 of 12 18 June 2015 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
I have Amazon Prime and Netflix, and there is a LOT of overlap in general. If you already
have Netflix, I don't think you'd be getting much out of Amazon. I can't even find a way
to select Prime movies based on language/country... It seems like all foreign films are
grouped together, and can only be separated further by genre.
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garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 12 18 June 2015 at 11:11am | IP Logged |
I have Netflix and there are a few good foreign films but not exactly a huge selection. A couple dozen French films and ten or so Italian ones, and seems similar for other languages. This is in the UK though, I don't know if the US version has more. Using a proxy/VPN to access Netflix France is an option, but even with that I didn't think the selection was amazing. Seemed to emphasise US/UK material over native French, and a lot of the "premier" French stuff wasn't there presumably due to entertainment laws and uncooperative distributors, although if you're aiming for massive input and quantity over quality then it's probably enough to keep you busy for a while.
I'm not sure whether to keep my Netflix subscription now that I've exhausted the Italian stuff and French is a low-priority language for me now. There has been talk for a while of them launching in Italy and Spain, which would encourage me to keep it and use VPNs, but still nothing definitive as far as I know.
Mubi looks very interesting but I can't find much information on their hard-to-navigate website. I realise that the selection is constantly changing, but it would be nice to know how much foreign stuff tends to be available. Anyone have any experience?
Edited by garyb on 18 June 2015 at 11:11am
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 12 18 June 2015 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
Keep an eye on Francophone TV, especially with the Replay TV option. They're not yet signing up new customers yet, but when they do, they'll offer a pretty good selection of TV channels.
The way you'd use this for film streaming is to pick a channel which shows films, and then just jump back day-by-day until you find a film that looks worth watching. You won't get as many French art films as you might get elsewhere, but you will get lots of popular films and well-dubbed films, plus a bunch of pretty decent TV series.
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Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3967 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek
| Message 5 of 12 27 June 2015 at 9:15pm | IP Logged |
This is an excellent potential resource, but they seem to have changed the address to
Francophone TV
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5318 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 6 of 12 28 June 2015 at 12:41am | IP Logged |
Mohave wrote:
I need recommendations for a streaming service to watch French films for the Super Challenge [...] I also have a VPN. |
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Have you already checked out Arte? They offer lots of documentaries and a couple of movies in either French or German without commercial interruption, however, you'll need Hola Unblocker or a dedicated VPN to access their website outside of France or Germany.
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AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4636 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 7 of 12 28 June 2015 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
The Australian public broadcaster for ethnic minorities, SBS, has 133 French language movies and 58 Spanish language movies
streaming for free. But you'll need to use a region unblocker. They do have an IOS app.
Edited by AlexTG on 28 June 2015 at 1:08am
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kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4887 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 8 of 12 29 June 2015 at 11:33pm | IP Logged |
I like Mubi a lot, and the mobile app works very well on apple products. I
don't know about android. The selection varies; there will be months where I don't
find anything I'm interested in, and then months where there are five or six films I
want to watch. At $35 a year it's worth it.
The current French flics are:
La fortresse
Vol spécial
Conte d'été
Hulu has the Criterion Collection, but I have mixed feelings about it. They
tend to focus on canonical directors rather than great films, and to me it seems like
you have to wade through a lot of sub-par films to find the good ones.
Filmon Live TV is
another free one to check out. They live stream France 2, France 3, and France 5. I
haven't figured out the schedule yet, so it's all kind of random. There are no
subtitles, but I find that French tv is far easier to understand than French podcasts
& movies.
It streams well on my ipad and desk top.They are developing a roku channel, and have
an android app that I haven't tried.
They also stream tv from Italy, Hungary, Russia, Germany, Greece, & Kazakhstan, and
have general Asian, Latino, Caribbean, African, and Arab channels. These are hit and
miss; the only show on Italian tv seems to be a home shopping network.
Edited by kanewai on 29 June 2015 at 11:34pm
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