Purchase mainland versions of movies from here?

Hi.

I'm wondering if there's a (legal) way to purchase/rent Mainland China versions of movies. For example: Frozen, Tangled, Star Wars...

With Netflix, I can switch countries with Hola!
With iTunes, I can just purchase gift cards online to get stuff from the US Store.

But after years I can't still figure out how to rent/buy/stream Mainland China versions of movies without actually going to China.

Some friends are moving to China in a month... Maybe they can buy some kind of gift cards there that will allow me to stream movies from the Americas?

Arqui3D said:

Hi.

I'm wondering if there's a (legal) way to purchase/rent Mainland China versions of movies. For example: Frozen, Tangled, Star Wars...

With Netflix, I can switch countries with Hola!
With iTunes, I can just purchase gift cards online to get stuff from the US Store.

But after years I can't still figure out how to rent/buy/stream Mainland China versions of movies without actually going to China.

Click to expand...

What are the sites people in China use to legally watch Mainland China versions of movies?
You could VPN in to those (slightly amusing that you would be tunnelling into the Great Firewall rather than out of it ).

You mean foreign movies dubbed in Chinese?

http://www.yesasia.com/us/冰雪奇緣-dvd-中國版/1039468901-0-0-0-zh_TW/info.html
DVD region 6

http://www.yesasia.com/us/魔髮奇緣-2010-blu-ray-3d版-香港版/1037941375-0-0-0-zh_TW/info.html
Hong Kong version, but lists Mandarin as one of the languages you can choose from on the disc. All region Blu-ray.

I did not see a Chinese dubbed Star Wars there.

I have not purchased from the above company, but they have been around for quite some years now. There are other companies like this, but I can't think of their names right now.

Not sure if this is what you were looking for?

Yes, that's a good site. I kinda remember purchasing something from them.

But I'm more looking for a "Netflix China" that can be accessed from here. So far the best approximation could be iTunes HK or iTunes Taiwan, but it's hard to find gift card codes for those.

BTW, it's fantastic that Netflix has just arrived to Japan. I checked it via Hola plugin and it even has matching Japanese subtitles for a Netflix-produced series. This is fantastic news for Japanese language learners worldwide. Now, I'm just waiting for them to arrive to a Mandarin-speaking territory so we can all benefit...

I think the PRC is still going with their 34 foreign movies a year quota until 2017, but I may be wrong. I think it was 20 a year before 2012. Of course that is hundreds of movies over the last couple of decades, though that includes movies from all countries, as far as I know, not just the sort of Hollywood blockbusters you gave as examples in your original post. Sure, one can buy a lot more foreign (especially Hollywood) DVDs than that in the PRC, but since you are looking for a legal download option, my guess would be that Taiwan or Hong Kong might be better options.

By the way, since you seem knowledgeable on these sorts of cross border technical matters, would you have any thoughts on my first question on this thread? Thanks!

Fantastic news!

1) A few days ago, iTunes China starting selling movies. Hollywood movies like Star Wars go for 18 RMB (3 USD), while Chinese movies go for 10 RMB (1.60 USD) ... Right now there's even a special offer of a lot of movies for 1 RMB (16 cents USD), and even one free movie (Tiger mountain)! Many of the Chinese movies have matching Simplified Chinese subtitles, and even the ones that don't, you might find subtitles for them in Opensubtitles and have the subtitle file loaded in Pleco while watching the movie.

2) A month ago, Popup Chinese started a secretary service. They can even set you up with a Chinese iTunes account loaded with credit.

The fantastic thing about iTunes China is that the UI can be all English (with movie descriptions in "Engrish") if your system/device is.

Now, the only bad news is that so far I can't get these movies on the AppleTV. The AppleTV won't let me stream Chinese iTunes movies straight from the Cloud... Neither could I copy them to my iPhone... Neither could I stream them from the PC to the AppleTV.So I'm stuck watching them on the PC.

So, my dream came true... In part.

I hope this helps someone else, too.