¡Hola, Netflix! The movie-streaming service, which to date has been available only in the U.S. and Canada, has launched in Brazil and will be launching in 42 more Latin American and Caribbean countries later in the week.
According to a post announcing the launch on the official Netflix blog:
Over the last few months, our team has spent countless hours in the region learning as much as we can about how Latin Americans think about, and enjoy, movies and TV shows. We’ve licensed thousands and thousands of hours of feature films, classic favorites, gripping telenovelas, documentaries and kids shows we know you’ll enjoy. We’ve been testing and figuring out the right internet architecture to make sure the quality and speed of the Netflix streaming experience is the best it can be. And we’ve been training people locally to deliver the excellent customer support Netflix is known for in the U.S. and Canada.
The subscription service, which will be streaming-only, has already begun in Brazil, where the monthly fee is $BR14.99 or $9.10 American (that's about a dollar more than it costs here in America). Netflix will be rolling out service to other Latin American countries during the week, with launches in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay coming up soon, and Mexico receiving the service on September 12.
Users can set their language preference to English, Spanish or Portuguese and will at the very least be able to enjoy programming from CBS and Showtime, which signed a big deal with Netflix to make their content available in Latin America in late July. Netflix has also announced a deal with Miramax that will make much of its library available for streaming in the new countries as well.
Netflix's expansion outward from America began in September 2010 when it launched its streaming service in Canada and the company announced that it had hit the 1 million member mark in August 2011.
This is some good news for Netflix, which recently had Starz publicly walk out of contract renewal negotiations. This means around a thousand TV show and movie titles will be pulled from Netflix in February 2012 when the contract with Starz expires.