Netflix, where’s my House of Cards?

The big news that Netflix is now officially available in 130 new countries, including Zimbabwe, has been a cause of excitement and celebration for a number of reasons, but more specifically one major one.

There’s just so much content to get on Netflix. The company has invested a lot of resources into sourcing, securing and even creating some of the most popular shows in TV right now.

We might have been given the service, but sadly, the company cannot give us all of the cake, just parts of it. There is a lot of content that most people were looking for when they accessed their local Netflix account but they can’t seem to find in the roster.

Shows that have defined Netflix like House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, as well as other critically acclaimed shows like Breaking Bad aren’t available. You can only access these shows if you use alternative DNS settings and pass off as a user in the USA.

In fact, a lot of the recent shows that have been tucked under the Netflix banner in the USA aren’t accessible. Some of this content is geo-locked. The reason – Netflix cannot make this content accessible in markets where it doesn’t have distribution rights.

For Africa, most of this content is already being distributed by Naspers’ MultiChoice through its DStv channels. The company secured distribution rights for most of the sought after, fresh content, something that has been awesome for its large pay TV client base (which is the biggest in Africa).

The only hope lies in the fact that Netflix is currently working on owning rights to as much of its original content as possible. This means that now that it has entered all these territories, it will want to distribute its own stuff there. When distribution rights held by other companies like MultiChoice expire, Netflix will likely hold off on any renewals.

So you will get all the new shows that Netflix continues to churn out (they won’t be on DStv) and you will get your House of Cards.