TV Japan

[Aaron Gerow]

We subscribed to TV Japan via U-verse over the last year (until we  
just made the move to Japan). Frankly, as I wrote about on my site  
once, I don't think it's worth it. If you are a big NHK fan, it may  
suffice, but if you are not, and especially if you like minpo variety  
or dramas, there is just not much there. In the end, we basically just  
watched it for the news, but even then it was often extremely  
annoying. You pay $25 bucks a month for this programming, but they  
don't even get the rights for half the sports footage they use in the  
news. Thus half the time they do some sports story, the screen turns  
to a still picture and there is wording to the effect that for  
copyright reasons they can't show the image (you can still hear the  
audio). I've seen 5 minute feature stories where 3 or 4 minutes of the  
story ends up this way.

Also, one reason we got TV Japan was for Kohaku, but the broadcast  
quality was so awful, it looked little better than internet live  
streaming.

Since we are looking into other ways to get Japanese TV, I don't think  
we will resubscribe when we return.


Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
site: www.aarongerow.com