Stop region-locking subtitles

A Short Story

It’s a balmy evening in 2026, in between spring and summer. I want to watch the film There Will Be Blood (2007) with my wife, so I sit down in my apartment in Seoul, South Korea, and open the apple tv app on my lg stanByMe¹.

I’d already looked it up online and confirmed that it had Korean subtitles. I did find it odd that the English subtitles and/or closed captions weren’t present despite being it released in the US… but I glossed over it since I just wanted Korean subtitles, and surely both would be available, right?

So I find the film in the app, and… it only has English subtitles.

…

Ok, well, time to use my second apple account² I guess. Sign in on the tv. Oops, can’t add payment info in the tv app, so sign in, again, into a private chrome window (signing in on firefox is broken again, it seems).

Now add payment info, except, only South Korean cards, Naver Pay, or the Toss app work. But I have a Korean bank account so no big deal. So… I can watch it now?

Nope! Now I need to verify my age. Which can only be done on the iphone or ipad apps. So on my phone I sign out in the apple tv app, which also forcibly signs me out of apple music and clears my downloaded music. Then I sign in, again, to my Korean account, do the verification, sign out, and sign in with my original apple account. Apple music is now “syncing” and apparently re-downloading all my albums from before. The fuck? Ok, but can I just watch the movie now?

Yes. I can finally watch There Will Be Blood, in Korea, with Korean subtitles. But only because I have a secondary Korean apple account and banking info, which can only be obtained under a visa—tourists are just out of luck.

Region does not dictate language

Why. Why do apps assume a language for me given my account region and physical location? I have a U.S. apple account so therefore I can’t possibly speak Korean or want Korean subtitles? I get more baffled the more I think about this, as the U.S. in particular has a ton of languages.

For me, this is arguably a very common use case: I simply want to watch something in the official language of the region I’m physically in. I don’t know what I’d do if I wanted to e.g. watch something with German or Spanish subtitles, let alone Romanian ones, other than pirate and find them manually…

I want to note that apple isn’t the only offender here: netflix has done the same thing. Again I have to ask: why? Have the c-level execs at these giant companies never considered that people might speak multiple languages or might need to interact with different regions?

I’ve already written about garmin and nintendo doing this as well, at least they can point to limited hardware memory. What are these tech giants' excuses? And before you say anything, I find it hard to believe it’d be that intensive to serve subtitles globally.

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If anyone is listening: language learners in particular need to find lots of stuff to watch in with audio/subtitles in their target language. I’m sure they would pay for a service if it was known to have lots of translated subtitles.

I’m (probably) one of more apple’s ideal customer profiles: I like to watch films and I’m lazy. I’d rather just pay the $5 or $10 or whatever than deal with a headache. But trying to deal with multiple subtitles through official channels is incredibly annoying, to the point that I’d rather just pirate this stuff moving forward.

Footnotes