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.
Is Embedding of Full Episodes A Necessary Feature?
February 27, 2009 in Commentary by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 2 comments
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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Tags: Anime, funimation, hulu, joost, streaming, viz media