Tuesday, March 26, 2013

TV Japan in Montreal at last!

A quick post on Coco Montreal's Facebook page brought to my attention that TV Japan (which offers mostly NHK programming) is now available in Montreal through Bell Fibe TV (although Bell own web page doesn't mention anything about this yet).

TV japan's press release mentioned by Coco Montreal (in Japanese), also point to a free preview available from March 21st to April 18th.

Some of NHK programming (mostly news and documentaries) are already available in English through NHK World, which can be watched here for free online or via an iOS app.

However, more NHK programming (in Japanese) is now available from TV Japan, a channel owned by NHK Cosmomedia America, Inc. It offers “24 hours Japanese broadcasting everywhere in North America.” Their website also says that it “broadcasts many of its live news programs with English translation as a secondary audio service or with English crawl. An additional few select programs are provided in English or with English subtitle”. We also learn that it is “available in North America through DISH Network satellite service (US only), select Cable Systems [Rogers in Ontario, BC and Alberta] and IPTV Systems [Bell Fibe TV in Quebec, BC, AB, MB and ON] as a premium channel [meaning at the hefty price of $20 per month]”.

It offers a great variety of programming: news, drama, documentary, sports and even anime (although it's limited to Anpanman, Chibi Maruko Chan, Doraemon, Detective Conan and One Piece).

It make me wish that I was with Bell Fibe TV, but lets hope that Videotron will have the brilliant idea to add it to its international lineup on their new Illico Digital TV (they did promised more channel as I recall -- although they just added AMC which is already a good news).

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