I don’t know why it took this long or what finally nudged Apple into doing this (the Netflix effect maybe?) but the iTunes Japan Store finally started bundling Japanese language dubs and Japanese subtitles into a single movie title. Just like a DVD. Not having both versions available in a single movie package was a confusing, expensive pain point and one reason I stopped using the iTunes Japan movie store.
There is a lot of great voice talent in Japan and I prefer Japanese dubs when watching foreign films, they are just more interesting and dramatic to me. Disney wisely spends a lot of money preparing excellent Japanese language dubbing. Pixar films are a lot more entertaining that way and of course popular with Japanese audiences. Twin Peaks season three just started on WOWWOW and the Japanese dub is just as much fun to watch as the English version.
Apple could sweeten them deal and really pull my money back to the iTunes movie store by offering a monthly fee for unlimited rentals. Streaming really isn’t a good option for my area of Tokyo. Gigabyte fiber internet has been in place for years but performance has seriously degraded for many users, myself included, over the past year or so.
The basic NTT internet infrastructure performance is good but internet provider gateway points (So-net, etc.) are choked out. I suspect the transition to IPv6 is partly to blame but the real reason is likely that Japanese broadcast TV is so bad that Japanese customers are abandoning it in droves and streaming instead. Case in point: internet download speed rapidly deteriorates after 8pm on weekdays and all through the weekends.
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