I’m sure someone at S4C has tried to find a way to establish an international subscription service for it’s programmes. @Deborah-SSi is right that it should be a simple win-win for viewers outside of Wales, S4C and the production companies. It should be a simple matter of changing the contracts/copyright so content providers get a fair cut of the subscription.
However, international copyright laws are complex and very messy as anyone who purchases music or film internationally knows, often the demands of big corporations come before straightforward producer-consumer contracts. It is perhaps more important for a large sports media corporation to have control over access, rather than allow a small number of international subscribers access to the S4C coverage of the 6nations and Welsh premier league football. It is more complicated than it should be. For example I love Indian cinema [Bollywood], I no longer live in a big city, so in order to watch the films with English subtitles, I have to obtain DVDs direct from retailers in India. It’s mad, but the market in the UK for non-Hindi speakers is tiny, so this is a work-around for a market too small to attract the big players. I could just learn Hindi of course!
Many times there are ways around (even leagal ones) but it’s sometimes hard to find them …
Aha! Another Bollywood fan! I have to admit it is something I do really miss from living in Australia. We had live Bollywood shows in Perth quite often and I went to Indian festivals where people of all ages joined in. I loved the dancing. And yes, Hindi is fairly high up on my list of languages to learn specifically because I want to watch the films without subtitles.
I’m bumping this thread because someone appears to have uploaded some episodes of the classic comedy Pobol y Chyff to YouTube. It’s an early nineties S4C comedy about a pair of Welsh learners (one of them played by Rhys Ifans) and their efforts to familiarise themselves with Welsh culture. Yes, it quite heavily takes the Mickey out of a certain type of Welsh learner (I can see a bit of me in there, for example), but as a friend observed, it pretty much has everyone else in Wales in its sights, too. Anyway, it’s chyffin’ great.
BTW, Tresaith bwtcampers might recognise a young face in the Jacpot episode!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zskZSPp_jLQ
Diolch yn fawr iawn! When were they on? I didn’t see S4C on Gower unless the weather was weird and deflected signals! When I first moved up here to Scotland I didn’t watch much because I found I had forgotten my Welsh!