“Anime on Demand”: It’s Browserless Streaming!

I don’t exactly remember how I came upon their site but Anime On Demand offers streaming fansubs outside a web browser and it works pretty smoothly. How does it work? Well, you first have to download a program from their website and then you should be good to go, provided you have a Windows 98 or newer system, .NET Framework 2.0 (the installer should include this if you don’t already have it), and Windows Media Player 9. If everything has gone to plan, it should look like this.

There are a variety of series to choose from and the list of series and episodes is being added to frequently. I tried it with Ouran, Geass, and Haruhi and the episodes played with little buffering downtime while watching. That is, when I had good bandwidth speeds on my local network. Streaming the entire episode at an estimated resolution of 378×283 is easier than loading up three different pages on YouTube and is definitely much faster than downloading the fansubs themselves. It’s also crisper than YouTube videos because it’s been re-encoded for that size. I’m still going to download shows that want to watch offline but this is a good alternative if I want to catch up on a series and be instantly gratified without launching a browser.

Another added functionality that I almost forgot to write about was chat. You can enter whatever name you want and you’re in there. There’s only the list of room members and a box to type messages into but you CAN scroll up and see much of the conversation (or lack of when I tried it) that happened before you entered the room, something that you can’t do in IRC channels.

Now, before I finish, I feel obligated to note that some of the offered shows have been licensed in the United States. However, since the service is streaming and the videos are neither downloadable nor linked to on the website, they have a better defense than some uploader on YouTube does. Also the service is free, meaning the providers are relying on donations (I chipped in $5) and in-app ads to pay for server costs.