North Korea has produced a Netflix-style video service called 'Manbang'
Manbang and chill, anyone? A Netflix-style video service has reportedly become available in North Korea, allowing people to watch internet-based video on demand at home.
NK News reports that North Korean state TV announced on Tuesday the set-top box called "Manbang", which will provide, in addition to live TV, articles from the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper and the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Korean Central Television, the reclusive nation's only broadcast news station, also posted a video on YouTube for the outside world to take a glimpse of Manbang.
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While Manbang translates to "everywhere" in Korean, the service will ironically be pretty limited. There are only five channels available, and all feature government-approved news and educational shows, providing similar indoctrination on the government's ideologies that other forms of media there already do.
And the number of people who have access to the internet at home are likely to be in the minority, given the cost of computer ownership versus household incomes, and that reportedly very few devices are connected to the internet at all.
Like with other internet TV services such as Netflix or Hulu, Manbang's users will be able to type in a title of a show to search for relevant content, or flick through a catalogue of episodes, says the report.
KCTV's video showed the process of selecting an episode on the interface:
It appears that the set-top box connects to the TV by HDMI, and requires a cable connection to a modem.
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
