Netflix CEO Reed Hastings provided new details on Wednesday about the company’s online video service in Argentina.

Among other things, Reed said Netflix aims to have all of its TV and movie offerings available in their original languages with subtitles and secondary audio options.

The video streaming company, which already has more than 25 million customers in Canada and the U.S, started streaming in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay on Wednesday, a day after it launched in Brazil. By the end of next week, Netflix will be offering its service to 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

For a look at why Netflix launched here before doing so in Asia and Europe, check out my article here.

For local readers, the key points are that Netflix will: (more…)

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Netflix, the U.S. film and TV Internet streaming company, will launch its service in Argentina on Wednesday.

The company will charge 39 pesos (about $9.28) a month for unlimited streaming.

Netflix launched its first Latin American service in Brazil on Monday and plans to expand rapidly throughout the region. For more details, click on the company’s official press release here or on Netflix’s blog here.

It’s unclear how much the local service will mirror Netflix in the U.S. Will the same films and TV shows be available or will intellectual property and distribution rights change the online library?

Will TV shows and movies be dubbed or have subtitles or some mix of the two? Will it be possible to view the streaming in HD?  Separately, how will Argentina’s Internet service providers and their relatively slow local bandwidth offerings stand up?

Netflix officials have been in the region studying its Internet infrastructure and are confident the service will work well. Rochelle King, Netflix VP of User Experience and Design, said the following in a blog post:

“We’ve licensed thousands and thousands of hours of feature films, classic favorites, gripping telenovelas, documentaries and kids shows we know you’ll enjoy.  We’ve been testing and figuring out the right internet architecture to make sure the quality and speed of the Netflix streaming experience is the best it can be.  And we’ve been training people locally to deliver the excellent customer support Netflix is known for in the U.S. and Canada.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will be in Buenos Aires on Wednesday to formally launch the service. I’ll be at his press conference. What would you ask him?

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Argentina’s leading cable TV provider, Cablevisión, has fallen behind on plans to launch its new ultra-fast Internet service.

A Cablevisión official had said back in February that it planned to increase download speeds by up to 10 times in the first half of 2011.

But we’re now in the second half of the year and Cablevisión’s Internet unit, Fibertel, still doesn’t know when it will be able to offer the service.

Fibertel plans to offer the faster service by deploying the DOCSIS 3.0 modem technology already used in the U.S.

But a Fibertel official said no deployment date is available.

That raises questions about how ready Argentina will be for the planned arrival of Netflix, the video streaming company, which said it will offer its service in Argentina by the end of the year. Netflix requires fast Internet access, especially for HD content.

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Al Jazeera has a nice video here describing how the government has been persecuting economists in Argentina. For an in-depth look at the latest charges, check out my recent article here for The Wall Street Journal.

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Bad news for all the hookers and pimps out there.

President Cristina Kirchner signed a decree banning the publication of sex ads in local newspapers.

Kirchner said the decree will help end discrimination against women who are “humiliated” through sexual exploitation and objectification.

Prostitution is legal in Argentina and Kirchner indicated she wouldn’t do anything to change this, saying she won’t penalize women for exercising the world’s oldest profession. Click here for a post I did back in 2007 about the legality of prostitution in Buenos Aires.

“Let it be clear: We’re never going to condemn any woman because most of the time they don’t choose the life that they’re living,” she said in a speech Tuesday.

But Kirchner indicated the decree offers another added benefit, at least from her point of view. Newspapers, she said, make a lot of profit by selling sex ads to prostitutes.

By banning the ads, Kirchner has taken away another source of income from the ever-despised coup-mongering, opposition media like Grupo Clarin.

Of course, banning the publication of sex ads may do little to prevent the kinky skin-friction business from thriving. Countless local websites offer Amazon.com-like opportunities (warning: this is a graphic, XXX link) for prostitutes to reach their clientele.

Some local whorehouses even use Google Maps to woo Johns into their pleasure palaces.

The ban on newspaper ads seems so old-school when today’s pleasure pushers are so Web 2.0.

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Get ready for a “Historic Moment in Buenos Aires Spicy Food. Everyone is invited to celebrate Fourth of July Weekend with that quintessentially United States dish, CHILI.”

That’s right boys and girls, Buenos Aires will see its first ever annual chili cookoff this Sunday in Palermo. Want to chow down on some delicious chili, cornbread or cookies for as little as five pesos? Or how about just hang out with great people and down a few beers?

There will be “more than 10 cooks, teams and chefs” competing for the first best-chili prize ever awarded in the history of South America. Ok, that’s probably not true. I just made it up. But this probably is the first big chili event of it its kind in Argentina. So check it out.

As of this posting, 320 people had registered for the event on Facebook.

Where: GENO Beer Bar, Guatemala 5499, Capital Federal
When: Sunday, July 3, 1-5pm

To learn more, click here.

*Special thanks to Yanqui Mike for letting me rip off his Chili banner. I didn’t even ask him for permission! Check out Mike’s site for “mini biographies” of some of the chefs who will be competing.

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Countless thousands of Argentines stood in total disbelief Sunday as one of the country’s greatest soccer clubs lost a key game and dropped out of the nation’s top soccer league.

Club Atlético River Plate did what almost nobody expected. It played so poorly this season it lost its spot in the league and will be forced to play  next season in the “Nacional B” minor league.

To put River’s misery into context, this has never happened in the club’s 110-year history.

River’s loss was a catastrophic blow to the hearts of passionate River fans.

Página 12 journalist and River loyalist Fernando Krakowiak described it this way via Twitter:

“I feel as if a loved one died and I don’t need anyone coming to tell me how I should be feeling about it.”

Before the game, Krakowiak had said he was an atheist but that he was praying for River.

“This represents a before and after in the history of Argentine soccer,” said Alejandro Fantino, a television sports analyst who hosts the popular Show del Fútbol.

By Sunday night pundits and talking heads were already debating the political ramifications of the game and violence that ensued afterwards. One policeman was reportedly killed in incidents following the game.

Fans trashed the Monumental stadium while in some cases hapless police stood-by.

Should fans have been allowed into the stadium to watch the game? Should the government have sent in more police? How could River have sunk so lo so fast? Does the club have millions of dollars or millions in debt? Where is its money? Should the club’s president quit or be fired?

The government, which owns the broadcast rights to major-league soccer games through its Futbol para Todos program, doesn’t have the right to broadcast Nacional B games. Could this benefit Grupo Clarin and its sports channel TyC Sports, which can broadcast the games? Will the government tolerate this?

Maybe it was all a conspiracy from the beginning to help Clarin, one of the government’s top enemies?

These are just some of the questions people are asking about River’s historic loss. The debate has only just begun.

*Photo from Télam

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While cleaning up an old hard drive today, I found some old slang video footage.

So I took a few minutes and edited it into another “Scooping Argentina” lunfardo lesson.

“Hinchapelotas” is a rather crass, negative expression. But it’s also one that’s used fairly frequently on the streets of Buenos Aires.

So it’s worth knowing, even if you don’t use it yourself. It’s not something you’d want to say in a formal setting or with people you don’t know well.

A rough translation would be something like “pain-in-the-ass.” More literally, it would be akin to “ball-breaker.”

If you’re lucky, you’ll never hear anyone apply the expression to you!

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President Cristina Kirchner gave Economy Minister Amado Boudou the surprise of his life on Saturday, choosing him to be her vice presidential candidate in October’s election.

The 47-year-old Boudou appeared exceptionally pleased with the announcement, which took almost all 1,000 people in attendance by surprise.

Boudou’s nice-guy face filled with emotion as he heard Kirchner say he would be the No. 2 person on her ticket.

Boudou is arguably the most affable official in the Kirchner administration. A self-described rocker, he enjoys playing the guitar and singing. He likes to party and is a fan of Argentina’s nightlife.

On one occasion, while making an important announcement about Argentina’s sovereign debt problem, he invited a local rock star to accompany him in the press room.

Boudou is perhaps most famous, or infamous if you’re a critic, for denying that Argentina has an inflation problem. At one point he said not only that inflation didn’t exist in Argentina but that it could not exist given the country’s macroeconomic conditions.

The minister in fact knows this not to be the case, which has led critics to say he’s a Kirchner “soldier” whose loyalty is uncompromising.

Though dismissed by some as an intellectual lightweight with little technical knowledge of economic theory, Boudou’s influence on Argentina has been substantial.

It was Boudou who first proposed to Kirchner that she should nationalize Argentina’s 14-year-old private pension fund system.

It was a radical idea, but one that Cristina and former president Nestor Kirchner grew to appreciate enormously.

In naming Boudou as her VP on Saturday, Cristina praised him for bringing the idea to her. The decision to nationalize the pension fund system was the most important she has made as president, she said.

Argentina’s election is October 23. You can watch Cristina’s speech here.

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The battle against Argentina’s poop-filled streets is ugly and ongoing.

It’s also a metaphor for the society’s inability to clean up other kinds of criminal and political trash.

But I was absolutely delighted – even inspired – the other night when I came across this genius gesture of civic responsibility.

Tired of constantly cleaning up the poop on his front lawn, my neighbor came up with a brilliant solution. He decided to help his thoughtless neighbors help themselves – to a bag, that is.

The idea is simple: offer people free bags to clean up after their dogs. Thoughtless people need a hand once in a while.

People who let their dogs crap on your lawn aren’t always beasts or malevolent souls. Sometimes they’re just lazy and inconsiderate.

It’s precisely these people that my neighbor had in mind when he decided to offer free plastic bags to those who might otherwise not clean up after their dogs.

Has my neighbor’s thoughtful gesture worked? I don’t know. I haven’t been able to ask him about it yet. (I’ll update this post once I’ve heard from him.)

Argentina has many exceptionally wonderful attributes. And, like all places, it also has some downsides. For me, one of the very worst of these is cynicism.

Cynicism corrodes the culture and prevents people from standing up to corruption, injustice, abuse of power and even smaller civic transgressions.

When people become accustomed to injustice, they too often lose all hope that they can combat it.

When confronted with the evils of life, too often people begin to feign offense but then quickly retreat and do nothing, saying, “Son todos corruptos. Es un país de mierda. Somos así.”

This kind of fatalistic thinking is pervasive. It’s also depressing, counterproductive and entirely unnecessary.

But with this tiny gesture, my neighbor has fought back. He’s creatively acted to make his little part of the world a better place. In effect, he’s said to the world, “Hey, things don’t have to be this way. We can do better.”

It’s a minor move, a simple, hopeful act. But it’s also a powerful one.

And who knows, maybe at the end of the day it will actually make a difference.

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Pretty much everyone knows by now that Argentina’s inflation statistics are controversial.

Virtually all private-sector economists, and even some within the Economy Ministry itself, say the statistics agency, Indec, is fudging the data to make inflation appear lower than it is in reality.

Indec and other government officials dispute such charges and say Indec’s data “have never been better.”

Whatever the case, fewer people are aware that economists also question other statistical data such as economic growth.

Though economists unanimously say the economy is expanding robustly, they don’t necessarily agree about the pace of growth. I looked at this issue in a bit more depth in an article Wednesday for my newswire. Here are a few paragraphs from it:

Gross domestic product grew a blistering 9.9% on the year in the first quarter, according to the statistics agency, Indec. That was much higher than the 8.6% gleaned from Indec’s monthly economic activity reports that capture most components of GDP.

“When you get a discrepancy that big it starts to raise questions,” said an economist at a prominent local research firm. The economist spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of government reprisals. Earlier this year, the government fined at least nine consulting firms about $125,000 each for publishing economic data that differed considerably from Indec’s numbers.

A broadly-respected estimate by Orlando J Ferreres & Asociados, or OJF, put first quarter growth at 7.2%.

Some economist say Indec exaggerates GDP by about one percentage point. Others say it’s closer to three points.”The overestimate is between two to three points on average,” said Gabriel Camano Gomez, an economist at Joaquin Ledesma y Asociados.

To read the article, click here. If that link doesn’t work, try this one. For more on the controversy over inflation, click here.

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President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Tuesday she’ll seek reelection in October’s presidential election.

The announcement makes it likely that by the next presidential election in 2015, Argentina will have been governed nonstop for twelve years by one or another Kirchner.

Cristina’s husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, took office in May 2003. Many had initially expected him, not Fernández, to run in 2011. That would have allowed the dynamic duo to remain in power perpetually by rotating through the presidency.

But an unexpected heart attack killed those plans, and Kirchner himself, last October.

I met him only once. But by most accounts, Kirchner was the ideas-man behind both his first term and Cristina’s. It’s unclear how her second term might differ from her first if she’s elected.

Whatever the case, some things are likely to change given a series of economic challenges that didn’t exist when Cristina took power in December 2007. She faces a major test in handling inflation that virtually all economists say surpasses 20% annually. She also faces a currency whose value in real terms is appreciating at the rate of around 15% annually, making Argentine companies and their products less competitive abroad.

How will she deal with such issues? True to her style, she hasn’t said.

Alberto Fernández, who is unrelated to the president and was her first cabinet chief, said Tuesday he expects the next four years to be “difficult.”

Time will tell. Critics have been discounting the Kirchners from day one.

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