At this point, Netflix has become a streaming giant available in almost 200 countries. And if you're reading this article, there's a good chance you also have a Netflix account.

However, if you've ever traveled outside your country and wanted to continue watching your favorite series from your hotel room or Airbnb, you might have had the unpleasant surprise of discovering it's not available where you are.

This is because of copyrights and royalties.

Each country has its own set of laws governing intellectual property and the unauthorized copying of media content.

Then there are the studios.

Hollywood studios invest millions of dollars in each film and show they produce. Blockbusters can cost hundreds of millions in production and marketing.

When there's so much money on the line each time a movie is made, studios go to great lengths to ensure that copyright is tightly enforced so that they can get the most out of their investments.

Studios have always aimed for high box office returns, but the life of a movie after it leaves the theater has changed considerably in the last decade. Piracy used to be a minor issue because replicating VHS tapes and reselling them on the black market required a significant amount of effort. But the shift to DVDs, the rise of the internet, and then of online streaming led to digital piracy, which took a toll on studio profits.

In response, studios started increasing their revenues by selling their productions through companies like Amazon and Apple. At the same time, Netflix successfully transitioned from a DVD-by-mail service to streaming and became a major source of revenue for studios.

Every country has its own culture, which also influences streaming preferences. Studios view countries as markets with different content demands. A movie can be extremely popular in the U.S., for example, but uninteresting in the Netherlands.

Both Netflix and the studios are aware of these differences, so they negotiate different rates for streaming a production depending on the country. Because of this, negotiations can lead to Netflix paying the amount the studio demands for a title in one country but not in another.

For instance, Netflix has permission to stream the anime Naruto in the U.S. but not in the U.K. This might be because Netflix considered that the audience for this title in the U.K. was too small to warrant paying the licensing cost.

A global traveler such as yourself is subject to the same constraints that determine which countries have access to specific content. Netflix has to restrict what you can view when you travel abroad, or it would have conflicts with its studio partners.

If you're from the U.S., while you're at home, you enjoy an extensive Netflix catalog of around 6,000 titles. But if you decide to travel to Italy, the catalog available there will be less than half of what you're used to.

Netflix has streaming rights to around 15,000 titles, but that's worldwide. The catalogs for each country are much smaller. Currently, the smallest libraries are in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Albania, and Morocco.

How Can You Access Larger Netflix Catalogs?

Netflix has revolutionized the way we watch TV and movies, and the sheer volume of content available on the platform is mind-boggling. However, it can be aggravating when you can't watch a show or movie because of your location.

Fortunately, there's a solution for that: using a VPN to get access to larger Netflix catalogs. A VPN masks your IP address and lets you connect to Netflix through servers at different locations. Each device connected to the internet gets an IP address based on its location. This IP address can show if the device is located in New York, London, Paris, or somewhere else.

With a good streaming VPN, you can pretend to be practically anywhere and watch anything you want by having your traffic routed through encrypted servers from all over the world.

We do need to note, however, that using a VPN goes against Netflix's terms and conditions. As we mentioned before, Netflix needs to restrict content based on location in order to avoid conflicts with its studio clients. Netflix also regularly updates its VPN blocking technology, so not every VPN will work. You have to look for one that has a good track record with evading this VPN blocking technology.

Once you find a reliable Netflix VPN, most of the work is done because VPN providers usually try to make them as easy to use as possible. For most, all you have to do is install the VPN on your device, turn it on, and then it will ask you to choose from the many available servers in different locations. You're essentially choosing where you want your device to appear to be located. That's the location Netflix will see, and it will grant you access to the catalog.

But what country has the best Netflix catalog?

Uswitch did a study on this and evaluated 30 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, and Italy. Keep in mind that their study is focused more on quality than quantity. The study used IMDb scores for every movie and series in each country's catalog.

Although Netflix originated in the United States, this study found Japan to be the country with the best catalog. Japan got a score of 100% taking into consideration IMDb scores and prizes the movies and shows on their catalog won.  

Following Japan, we have the Czech Republic and South Korea. The U.K. is fourth while the United States is almost at the bottom of the list on spot number 29, just above Malaysia.

If the list is narrowed only to TV series, the U.K. takes the number one spot with the most highly rated titles. The U.K. also has the most series of any rating.

In terms of movies, the Czech Republic got the best score, followed by Japan and South Korea.

So even if you're lucky enough to be from a country with a very large Netflix catalog like the U.S., you could be missing out on a lot of high-quality series and movies available in other regions of the world.