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Docomo bringing hit show ‘House of Cards’ to Japanese smartphones

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At this year’s CEATEC Japan event NTT Docomo showed off the news that its NotTV service for smartphones has obtained rights to broadcast House of Cards in Japan. The Emmy award winning show is being brought to Japan with Japanese subtitles. Sounds like good news right? Let’s look at the details. One episode of House of Cards will be broadcast via NotTV at 11 PM every Saturday night, starting tonight, October 5. This means you will need to either stay up until midnight to watch the show here in Japan, or set NotTV on your smartphone to record each Saturday night at 11 PM. What happens if you miss an episode, or you forget to record the show? You might think you can watch old episodes streaming on demand or download, right? Wrong. The episode of the week will be rebroadcast on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at different times, then after that time the episode will no longer be available to watch. If you’re not a NotTV subscriber but want to watch House of Cards in Japan, the other way it will be available in Japan is via satellite broadcast on the Imagica BS channel. Some background about NotTV: NotTV…

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House of Cards, advertised on a Tokyo train

At this year’s CEATEC Japan event NTT Docomo showed off the news that its NotTV service for smartphones has obtained rights to broadcast House of Cards in Japan. The Emmy award winning show is being brought to Japan with Japanese subtitles. Sounds like good news right? Let’s look at the details.

One episode of House of Cards will be broadcast via NotTV at 11 PM every Saturday night, starting tonight, October 5. This means you will need to either stay up until midnight to watch the show here in Japan, or set NotTV on your smartphone to record each Saturday night at 11 PM.

What happens if you miss an episode, or you forget to record the show? You might think you can watch old episodes streaming on demand or download, right? Wrong. The episode of the week will be rebroadcast on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at different times, then after that time the episode will no longer be available to watch.

If you’re not a NotTV subscriber but want to watch House of Cards in Japan, the other way it will be available in Japan is via satellite broadcast on the Imagica BS channel.

Some background about NotTV:

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Mr. Spacey, perched at the Docomo booth at CEATEC

NotTV is a proprietary 1Seg-like broadcast service, which certain Docomo Android smartphones can tune into. A 420 yen monthly subscription (about $4) is required to tune in, and when we checked in back in June there service had more than a million paying customers. But because NotTV is a broadcast service it requires towers to be within range to receive the signal, meaning NotTV is not available in all prefectures of Japan.

Contrast this to Hulu.jp’s deal bringing The Walking Dead to Japan. The Walking Dead series is initially broadcast on the International Fox cable channel with Japanese subtitles a couple of weeks after US broadcast, and is made available on Hulu.jp for streaming on the following day. The previously broadcast episodes are available to watch on demand, on a variety of devices.

I guess that Docomo missed House of Cards producer and starring actor Kevin Spacey’s recent speech on giving control to the viewers (see below), where Spacey advises the TV/media industry to make their shows available in any form the viewers want, praising Netflix as an example to follow. I’m glad to see Hulu Japan is picking up the slack in Japan, letting viewers watch the shows they want, when they want, on the screen they want.

Japanese mobile video service NotTV hits a million paid subscribers

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Back in April we mentioned that Japanese mobile video site NotTV had reached the 700,000 subscriber milestone, although at the time it had fallen short of its first year goal of a million. But now Mmbi, the company offering the service, has announced that this target has finally been reached as of June 1st, with subscribers still growing at a decent pace (see chart below). Even though NotTV is late hitting its target, the company still plans to celebrate the milestone with a quiz show this July where it plans to give away 4 million yen to participants and winners. The service originally started back in April of 2012, but in its first few months there weren’t as many NotTV compatible handsets available. The service is backed by Docomo, with many of its handsets offering NotTV. There are now 26 phone models offering the service, and that’s expected to rise to 33 by the end of July, according to Nikkei. The service is available in 33 prefectures, but they hope to offer it nationwide by March of next year. Mmbi has previously stated that its long term goal is to accumulate 10 million mobile video subscribers. It still has a…

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Photo: RBB Today

Back in April we mentioned that Japanese mobile video site NotTV had reached the 700,000 subscriber milestone, although at the time it had fallen short of its first year goal of a million. But now Mmbi, the company offering the service, has announced that this target has finally been reached as of June 1st, with subscribers still growing at a decent pace (see chart below).

Even though NotTV is late hitting its target, the company still plans to celebrate the milestone with a quiz show this July where it plans to give away 4 million yen to participants and winners.

The service originally started back in April of 2012, but in its first few months there weren’t as many NotTV compatible handsets available. The service is backed by Docomo, with many of its handsets offering NotTV. There are now 26 phone models offering the service, and that’s expected to rise to 33 by the end of July, according to Nikkei. The service is available in 33 prefectures, but they hope to offer it nationwide by March of next year.

Mmbi has previously stated that its long term goal is to accumulate 10 million mobile video subscribers. It still has a very long way to go.

not-tv-growth

Japan’s mobile video service NotTV hit 700,000 subscribers. But can it go much further?

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Mmbi Inc. recently announced that its mobile television service, NotTV, reached the 700,000 subscriber mark on April 8th. The mobile channel, which costs users 480 yen (just under $5) per month to use, grew steadily in 2012, but according to figures over on S-Max (which I’ve charted below) it seems as though the pace of subscriber acquisition tailed off a bit in the new year. This is unusual given that NotTV launched a promotional New Year’s campaign back on January 6th. Add to that the fact that it doesn’t appear to have received a boost from Docomo’s spring lineup of handsets, and I think this could be cause for concern for Mmbi [1]. The company’s previously stated goal for its first year was 1 million subscribers (it launched on April 1, 2012), and it has fallen well short of that milestone. Mmbi previously stated that it has the long term goal of reaching 10 million subscribers. While I’m sure NotTV will hit that first goal of a million subs in a few months, it will likely require some creative thinking to reach the second goal of 10 million. (View image version of this chart) Docomo smartphones are compatible with the…

nottv_logo_large_finol

Mmbi Inc. recently announced that its mobile television service, NotTV, reached the 700,000 subscriber mark on April 8th.

The mobile channel, which costs users 480 yen (just under $5) per month to use, grew steadily in 2012, but according to figures over on S-Max (which I’ve charted below) it seems as though the pace of subscriber acquisition tailed off a bit in the new year.

This is unusual given that NotTV launched a promotional New Year’s campaign back on January 6th. Add to that the fact that it doesn’t appear to have received a boost from Docomo’s spring lineup of handsets, and I think this could be cause for concern for Mmbi [1].

The company’s previously stated goal for its first year was 1 million subscribers (it launched on April 1, 2012), and it has fallen well short of that milestone. Mmbi previously stated that it has the long term goal of reaching 10 million subscribers.

While I’m sure NotTV will hit that first goal of a million subs in a few months, it will likely require some creative thinking to reach the second goal of 10 million.

(View image version of this chart)


  1. Docomo smartphones are compatible with the service, which it promotes since the carrier is a stakeholder in NotTV (along with Dentsu).  ↩