Posts Tagged “streaming”

Drawn by TMO

This spring season features the highest amount of premiering anime being streamed legally with more than a half dozen premiering series currently “simulcast” on the Internet. Most of them are on Crunchyroll – Saki, Hayate no Gotoku!!, Natsu no Arashi, Shangri-la, Mainichi Kaa-san, and Ristorante Paradiso – while FUNimation is following up Shikabane Hime with Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood except this time, they are restricting the new episodes to their video portal.

The ball got rolling in spring 2008 when Gonzo GDH placed Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter onto YouTube, BOST, and Crunchyroll (CR); Strike Witches went onto those same three services that July. October saw CR play host to premiering series Linebarrels of Iron and FUNimation push Shikabane Hime onto YouTube, Hulu, Joost, and their newly launched video portal. Crunchyroll added Shugo Chara and Skip Beat in November; in January, they took on Gintama, Natsume Yujincho and Naruto Shippuden, the latter of which Viz also streamed through Naruto.com, Hulu, and Joost. Crunchyroll added Hitman Reborn in March.

One of the things that worries content providers about putting their video portals is whether the sites will actually generate revenue. It seems that Crunchyroll has gotten off to a good start by establishing an attractive platform for foreign content owners to get their properties global reach – a Yomiuri article about TAF 2009 relays the following figures for Crunchyroll: 4.5 million visitors who were often exposed to advertising, 1.5 millions of hours viewed monthly, and almost 15,000 paying memberships at $6.95 a month ($100,000+ of regular revenue).

On its about page, Crunchyroll says “[p]roceeds from the subscription service are shared among [their] content publishers”. It’s assumed that a portion of advertising revenue also goes toward that pool of creators. The question is whether the allocated distribution is based on a uniform rate or dependent of video views. That distinction could be be important for a studio in financial troubles like GONZO, which is undergoing restructuring.
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When I read on February 20th that Viz Media asked Hulu and Joost to disable embedding of their episodes, I wasn’t that surprised because it was part of a larger (possibly temporary) pullback by entertainment studios in general regarding how their content is streamed online.

Earlier that same week, there was a back-and-forth between CBS and Hulu following the disabling of embeds Feb. 17 on TV.com, which was part of CBS’ acquisition of CNET Networks in June 2008. (CBS content doesn’t show up on Hulu because the network hosts videos on its proper site as well as TV.com.) That was followed by Hulu pulling content off Boxee (a media center program) and explaining that it was done at the request of their content providers. TV.com came out with an iPhone/iPod Touch application (iTunes link) on Friday, increasing the sense of competition between the two sites.

Joost wrote a short message about the anime matter, saying they “hope to be able to allow you to embed and watch these shows on other sites again soon”. Just before publishing this post, I checked Joost and embed codes have returned to Viz’s shows – I was able to get self-embeds of Death Note and Naruto Shippuden from Hulu to play more often than not, so maybe Viz’s posturing has ended for now.
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Even though the news about Crunchyroll’s deal with TV Tokyo for Naruto Shippuden, Gintama, and three other unnamed series came four hours after Viz’s announcement of their streaming plan, I decided to break it out into its own entry because there are different mechanisms involved in the CR case including more places of distribution, a tiered viewing system, and ditching of what initially grew the site’s popularity.

The terms of the arrangement are that paid monthly Crunchyroll members ($3/month is the going rate) will get access to subtitled streaming episodes of Shippuden an hour after it airs in Japan while non-paying members as well as Joost and Hulu users seeing the same episodes a week later. It is not clear whether those paid CR members will be allowed to download versions of those episodes, high-quality or otherwise. The first episode to be distributed will be the one airing January 8th and should be episode 90. (See the Viz post for projected Japanese airdates.) Since Shippuden currently airs at 19:30-19:57 JST Thursday and will likely keep that timeslot, the quicksub version should appear one hour later at 3am PST/6am EST/1100 UTC that same day.

What may be the more important aspect of this story to Crunchyroll’s future is the “decisive transition” (press release) from user-submitted to professional-provided content. By the same day this new partnership launches, all user-submitted videos will have been removed from the site and many users will likely have leave for other haunts, not caring enough to stick around a place where a significant amount of fansubs of anime and Asian dramas once resided but will no longer after Jan. 8th.

Co-founder Vu Nguyen remarked in his keynote address at Anime Expo this year that the amount of illegal downloads of Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter dropped by a significant amount as they legally premiered online in conjunction with GDH and that they will strive to find a balance between the desires of their audience and advertisers’ requirements while aiming to become an interactive experience built around content, not merely a venue for anime or other videos. An community thrives based on the quality and strength of its users and while the company may feel better about itself for assuming a no tolerance stance on user uploads (by disabling them entirely), their good intentions will, and may have already, leave many of their frequent, yet infringing users with a misplaced feeling of betrayal and abandonment and only time will tell if Crunchyroll will recoup its lost user numbers. High profile series like Naruto Shippuden and Gintama will certainly help them in offsetting an expected dropoff.

Viz’s announcement to stream quicksubs of Naruto Shippuden builds on the momentum of Gonzo’s same-day releases back in March and July and Funimation’s “just a few weeks behind” arrangement last month. I did some back-of-an-envelope projections of how all the parts might work when this plan gets implemented in January.

First let’s look at the “within a week of broadcast” component: Viz said in its release that “beginning January 15th the latest episode…will be available for free viewing…within days of its original airdate in Japan” with subsequent quicksubs appearing on a Thursday schedule. As of this posting, 84 episodes of Shippuden have aired so far in Japan, the latest premiere occurring on Nov. 13th. Taking into account that the regular schedule may take a break for Christmas and New Years’ Day, as those holidays fall on Thursdays this year, episode 90 would likely be the ‘latest episode’ once the 15th rolls around unless the translations for #91 are already ready in time of compete against raw viewership (and Crunchyroll’s base of paid subscribers).

(Projected Japanese Shippuden airdates:
11/13 – #84; 11/20 – #85; 11/27 – #86; 12/4 – #87; 12/11 – #88; 12/18 – #89; 1/8 – #90; 1/15 – #91)

The other half of this budding online initiative is a batch availability of eight subtitled episodes each Friday beginning on Jan. 2nd “until the series eventually catches up to the current third [sic] season”. (Shippuden is currently in its fourth twenty-six episode season but who’s counting?) That eight episodes a week rate means that the batch containing #89 through #96 would debut online on March 20th. The use of the word ‘until’ implies that the batch uploads would halt after the catch has been completed so I hope Viz keeps their more advanced episodes online all along, meaning that the first 109 episodes will be online by then (#99 would’ve been posted the day before on Mar. 19th).

I figured I would track when the regular series might finish its initial run on American TV. This past Saturday, November 15th, saw the airing of episode 203 out of 220 on Cartoon Network so if the pace of one episode per week continues, episode 220 would air on March 14th, 2009. The accelerated “11 volumes in three months” manga release schedule laid out by Viz confirms what was suspected a few weeks ago based on Simon & Schuster and Amazon listings.

There is no question that this is a smart move by Viz in order to divert views and traffic away from Dattebayo and scanlation sites in order, as ICv2 described, “to garner the promotional and advertising benefit of distributing new episodes on its own site, rather than ceding it to pirate third party sites” as well as to stave off any ill effects from scan-hosting sites by tightening the gap between Japanese and American manga volume releases.

[Update 11/21: Dattebayo has said they would stop fansubbing Naruto once the freely available, legally subtitled episodes begin appearing online on January 15th out of respect that "Viz and Crunchyroll have gotten their acts together and are trying something new". They will still continue to work on Bleach.]

It is pretty clear that FUNimation’s roll out of their new license Shikabane Hime onto streaming video websites on Friday trumped what little bit of buzz ADV planned to generate with its Monday license revelations, not only because the title debuted only three weeks ago on Japanese television but also because of the strings and behavior involved in what will be the company’s most ambitious venture into digital distribution yet.

Let me make this clear before I proceed: I will not intentionally imply or assert that FUNimation has any ill intentions despite what the title of this editorial might suggest through subtle reference to contemporary politics; I simply wish to flesh out the many promises and concerns I have about their influence on how the handling of Japanese animation in North America will evolve in the near future. I will give them respect when due but I will also not hold back on expressing any pertinent criticisms.
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Earlier this week, both Hulu and Joost announced the launch of anime channels on their respective sites. While some people joked about the sliver of revenue publishers get from Hulu or complained about watermarking (get over it, it’s FREE content), I think these efforts as well as any similar future ones are beneficial for the licensing companies in terms of increasing reach and awareness.

The shows Funimation, Viz and others are providing to streaming sites have very likely already made most of the gross revenue they will ever produce. I doubt Slayers, Blue Dragon, and Astro Boy are generating any significant scratch for their rights holders compared to the bigger franchises (e.g. Bleach, Naruto) so why not let online users see half or all of a series they may not have known existed and might never buy on DVD. The more recent fare like the entire Death Note series, uncut and subtitled, has the potential of cannibalizing Viz’s sales of digital downloads through Direct2Drive, Xbox/Zune Marketplace, and the iTunes store along with physical DVD sales.
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As you may have heard, ADV announced on Thursday a deal with CrunchyRoll to stream dubbed episodes of the Gonzo comedy anime Welcome to the NHK! in a promotional partnership. I didn’t have any particular response to the news at first because ADV has traditionally tried to get their dubs as much exposure as possible and because it was an official partnership between the companies, with Best Buy running a short sale ad at the beginning of the first one.

However, while checking out the partnership on CR, I saw High School Girls under the “Others Also Liked…” sidebar and recognized it as the same series that Media Blasters was releasing as Girl’s High. Episode 2’s list of three pseudo-recommendations contained Hand Maid May, a Geneon title that is barely available to buy but is still, I believe, under license by the company. A perusal of CR’s anime index revealed more than twenty other anime available for streaming that are still being sold on region 1 DVD and many of them are Geneon and Media Blasters titles.
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I recently watched the premiere episodes of The Tower of DRUAGA -the aegis of URUK- and BLASSREITER on BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube to compare the visual quality and the placement of subtitles and also to see if they were shows worth following after the first two episodes. I decided to formulate two separate posts for each series so the next one will be about Blassreiter and will likely have the same technical results. (Links: BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube.)

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For months, various industry commentators have said Japanese publishers had to change their strategies to combat wide fansub profileration and GDH has stepped up to the plate by announcing that two GONZO titles, The Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter, will be put on three different streaming video sites (Crunchyroll, YouTube, and BOST TV) at the same time as their premieres next month. In my 2008 predictions post, I posited that a Japanese studio would release English-subbed episodes near simultaneously with its original airing  – a statement I qualified at the time as a possible “crazy failure” but I’ll take wins however I can get ‘em.

The question now is how this will be implemented on each service. The highest free quality out of the three websites would seem to come from BOST but YouTube has a boatload more traffic and reach than the other two, mainly due to its embedding option. Crunchyroll is buddy-buddy with select publishers but pretty much everyone else hates them. I’m pretty sure the subtitle text will be the same across the uploads and hopefully someone fluent in Japanese (i.e. not me) will critique its accuracy compared to fansubbed efforts. I will likely check out episodes on each service when this rolls out in a couple weeks but you can react to this right now in my first poll in a while. Anyway, this is a great step in trying to get more official eyeballs that will hopefully convert into sales and I hope that it succeeds so other studios will do something similar.

Today Netflix announced that all subscribers, except for those on the bare minimum 2-discs-a-month plan ($4.99/mo), will have no restrictions on how many hours they can utilize the company’s instant watching feature, a move the company likely made to counter the expected announcement of iTunes movie rentals at Macworld tomorrow. Last month, I signed up for the lowest unlimited discs per month plan ($8.99) and thus had eight hours of instant watching per month so now I can see more movies aside from returning a disc and waiting a couple days for the next one to arrive. This news also allows for a more convenient way to watch some anime series in their entirety or at least a healthy dose of episodes. [UPDATE (1/15): Forgot to mention that instant watching still requires IE6 or higher and Windows XP/Vista. Thanks, Scott, for reminding me about the Mac crowd still being shut out from streaming movies on Netflix.]

In a cursory click-through of their listings, one can watch entire series including Mezzo, GitS: Stand Alone Complex, Gilgamesh, Comic Party Revolution TV, Jinki: Extend, and Chance Pop Session as well as large portions of series such as AIR TV (8 out of 13), Air Gear (21 out of 25), Pani Poni Dash (14 of out 26), Saiyuki (25 out of 50), Utawarerumono (14 out of 26 episodes), and Xenosaga (8 out of 12). [It seems that many of these are ADV titles but that may just be a coincidence.] Also some feature films that are available to be watched online include Perfect Blue, Blood The Last Vampire, and Ninja Scroll.

The obvious caveat is that these will be dubbed versions but for those who don’t mind that much, such as myself, this could be a good way to check some series for free if you are already a customer. However, I’m more inclined to use my now-unlimited streaming for movies and TV shows (30 Rock Season 1) since the anime selection is very limited and watching my physical library is a higher priority.