MetaVerse Episode 37: How’s Your Stream?
A brief chat about streaming anime
Hey all, we’re back sooner than norm with a brief ep. of MetaVerse as we talk about the services Crunchyroll and other sites provide for watching anime. Listening back to it, the discussion does seem pretty one-sided in favor of streaming, but not far enough for it to be viewed as some weird kind of advertisement. I was hoping Sumairii would be able to hang around for perhaps a different take, but oh wells, hope you enjoy and we’ll be back soon!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:20 — 37.7MB)
SHOW NOTES
MetaQ – Where you can, in a sense, direct the discussion of the podcast to your desire. I’ll work on getting Kara for next time, BB.
OP: “Ano hi Time Machine” by Long Shot Party from Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou
OST: Kakumeiki Valvrave OST 1
ED: “Sweet & Sweet Cherry” by Yui Horie from Golden Time
Eren took a bathroom break from fighting Titans, but he still has to worry about people peeking over walls
About Meta Cast
The team behind Metanorn's Podcast, MetaVerse. Our aniblogging experience gives us the expertise to dish out detailed opinions on which series to watch and ones to drop. And remember, we take fangirling seriously!
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I have Crone’s disease. So, I am on the throne and off the throne. It’s laptops and anime and yeah. Sometimes the N7 tablet, but that is too small, and I still don’t like typing on it.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
There are still many arguments to support both streaming and downloaded fan subs. The streams are legal, and are getting more timely. The best reasons for downloading are OP and ED translations, and arguably, better encoding.
I gladly give my coin to the legal sites, but I don’t know if it does support the industry as much as we think it does. I’m not a bean counter, but CR claims nearly 200,000 unique monthly subscribers. One episode of high quality anime probably costs nearly a million or more dollars to produce. Do the numbers. Is one month of subscriber fees even going to pay for one episode? Of a twelve ep show, for 12 eps of 25 or so shows. After all the website overhead and even taking ad fees into account?
Hulu is a pretty good service for anime.
At then end of the day, I support both. But I think, especially on CR, the legal stream is getting much better in translation and in encoding. What will the future hold?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Personally, I have conniptions at Hulu’s (in my opinion) terrible business model (Get a limited service with commercials for free, or pay and get a not-as-but-still-limited service still with commercials), so I am not particularly interested in supporting their service.
I would think your estimate of the cost of an episode is probably quite a bit off on the high side, but I also don’t think that CR’s licensing is more than a drop in the bucket for the industry. When my total cost for a year of CR is less than some studios charge for a BD of 2 episodes, it’s certainly not going to keep the industry alive on its own. But I also think that it’s not meant for that. It’s solely an additional revenue source, and it’s a legitimizing force. And I don’t think it should be discounted as a signalling channel.
I’d like to see more karaoke lyrics (hard or softsubbed) on CR’s streams, and as far as I’m concerned they can be in Japanese (ha ha!). The encoding is definitely an issue at times on CR, due to bitrate starvation. The jerky scenery pans are the worst evidence of that. But if you download HorribleSubs, you’re going to get that same issue.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I was off on the high side, yeah, but I got the point across. I feel the CR is giving me more than the industry gets. It’s like SHAFT is saying, “hey thanks for that nickle”. As a legit source that is fine, in conversation you’d be surprised how many people on the non geek side don’t even know what torrenting is.
I don’t get HS. I usually stick to a good sub group for “archiving” or watching later. I hit CR up cause it’s coming out first these days. Amazing I have time to watch shows twice…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Even at 30 shows this season, I’ve got time to watch quite a few twice just for watching, plus 2-3 runs through for each show I’m blogging.
I’m firmly convinced that the huge majority of people want to be ‘legit’. Much of the problem is, and I tried to mention it, is that too often there isn’t a ‘legit’ channel to get things, which I honestly find embarrassing for the content owners. So when there is a legit channel, that will get used, especially as it gets to an equivalent quality.
One thing that might be confusing us with the whole anime industry is that we need to acknowledge that it’s tremendously recursive: the reason that the shows are put on television is to sell discs. So you make a show that you want to sell on a disc (and hopefully other related products and services), and to promote the show, you broadcast it to everyone for ‘free’, even buying the time yourself. It’s different from the television broadcast model we’re more used to. But given that model, any revenue stream is going to be helpful.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Oh, yeah, Jrow! I can tell you enjoy streaming. Whenever you sign in on PSN, most of the time I’d see Crunchyroll just beneath your name.
For me, I’m more inclined to downloading an episode of an anime that I’m watching once it’s available because the idea of streaming and watching it there loses its interest once you start thinking about the buffering or the video suddenly cuts off for whatever reason. That and you want to be able to get to a particular episode quickly if you feel like seeing it again without said buffering process. Also, there wouldn’t be any need to have, like, multiple tabs open to watch a couple of series that came out on the same day because that would need a strong internet connection to pull it off.
When I’m watching something, I want to do so right away because if things get exciting, you don’t want anything to distract you, you don’t want any inopportune stalling. That’s why I’d rather go to the site I usually visit and download the episode there even if it arrives just a few hours after the initial airing. Like Strike the Blood would air Friday afternoon but by sometime later that day or Saturday morning, it will be there and up for grabs. The files are considerably small and in mp4 format with 720p, varying between 80 and 85 MB, depending on what anime you are watching. After that, I’d copy them onto a USB flash drive and watch them on my tv through my PS3 or just simply on my laptop.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
A little bit of thread resurrection to say that CrunchyRoll is running a Black Friday Weekend special, with an all-access subscription for a year at 69.99 with 15 dollars of store credit. That’s cheaper than a year of anime-only at 3-months or monthly. If you’re interested in a subscription, this is probably the time to buy.