Crunchyroll aims to license all new anime. Good news or bad news?

[-KarumA-]

As long as Crunchyroll doesn't moan and groan when another company is trying to fetch a license then it is alright. As long as the DVD releases are available to buy =)

I don't do crunchyroll though (I like my fansubs and not stream crap thank you), if a show is good enough I'll buy the merchandise cause I don't believe in the $7 or whatever is enough for the anime industry cause a lot of companies put money in their own pockets. In this age I don't believe anything I am hearing about finances

[bigsocce]

My suggestion to Crunchyroll

CR should allow all users, not just subscribers, to view videos in 480p (720p if available).

Subscribers get: 1 hour after air simulcast, no ad
Free users get: 7 days delay, with ads

This way, the picture quality would be a lot better for everyone. Those already subscribe, they will continue to subscribe because they get to watch it 7 days earlier than free users and they get no ads interruption. It's only $0.20 a day.

[Daiz]

...Isn't that what CR already does, except that subscribers get the episode instantly after it has finished airing in Japan?

[bigsocce]

Originally Posted by Daiz

...Isn't that what CR already does, except that subscribers get the episode instantly after it has finished airing in Japan?

No. Free users can't watch anime in 480p or 720p.

Currently,

Subscribers get: 1 hour after finished airing simulcast, no ad, 480p or 720p defintion
Free users get: 7 days delay, with ads, Standard Definition

My suggestion is to allow free users to watch it in 480p/720p. Ads generate good money for CR too. Better picture quality will mean more viewers.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-p...spend-to-hulu/

Publicis Shifts ‘Several Million’ In Broadcast Ad Spend To Hulu

The spending commitment by Publicis to buy ad space on Hulu puts further pressure on Google’s YouTube, which has not been able to match the kind of premium ad buys Hulu, which charges roughly $30 CPMs, has racked up the past few month

$30 CPMs = $0.03 per viewer per 30 second ad.

So if an anime has 3 ads on hulu, the revenue is $0.09 per viewer.
100,000 viewers = $9,000

[Ash Falls Town]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

My suggestion is to allow free users to watch it in 480p/720p. Ads generate good money for CR too. Better picture quality will mean more viewers.

Why would most people care about better picture quality? It's already better than the illegal (streaming) alternatives.
Plus the ads can't generate as much money for CrunchyRoll because
1) People don't want to advertise to anime fans with no money
2) and advertising revenue from outside America is extremely limited.
There is only so much money you can get from free MMORPGs.

[Pocari_Sweat]

Interesting arguments for both sides.

Unfortunately though Crunchyroll does bugger all for me because I live in Australia (Region 4) and the whole region locking thing prevents me from using a lot of their streams. That is my #1 concern for Crunchyroll. If fansubbers run a policy not subbing CR subbed anime, and the region-lock bull still continues, then I'm pretty much screwed.

I'm also not fond with the idea of having to be connected to the internet whilst watching anime. Streaming is really a bandwidth hog, and if I wanted to say watch the episode again, I will have to "re-stream" it.

I'm wondering if it would work better if CR took a I-tunes or Steam approach where you simply buy the right to the use the item and then you can download + view it at your leisure. For example, I've been using Steam as virtually my only means of buying PC games. Buy the license to the game, embed it onto my Steam account, download it overnight then play it the next day. I can't honestly remember the last time I went to a games store to purchase a PC game because I been using Steam exclusively for it. The only time I go to a games store is to purchase console games (As PSN is unreliable atm).

Not Crunchyroll/stream related but I was wondering how the anime industry would work if they introduced a "K-drama" approach to things. Basically with K-dramas you can go to your local Korean groceries/wholesale store and you can legally purchase DVDs of recently aired K-drama episodes (within 1-2 weeks) for 50 cents each per episode (even cheaper for slightly older series). Some stores even just give you the CD, and most stores do deals if you spend a certain amount on their goods. Effectively its legalized "bootlegs" that are of TV stream quality . Cheap alternative if you can't afford satellite TV. Some series (particularily the more popular ones) even have English/Japanese/Chinese subtitles on them. Personally for me though, it doesn't matter since I'm Korean and can speak/write it decently so I watch all my K-dramas raw .

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

My suggestion is to allow free users to watch it in 480p/720p. Ads generate good money for CR too.

No, they don't. CR said at AX that they get less money from the ads than it costs to stream a 720p stream. Only hulu gets $30CPM because they are hulu. Nobody else gets that much.

Originally Posted by acejem

Basically with K-dramas you can go to your local Korean groceries/wholesale store and you can legally purchase DVDs of recently aired K-drama episodes (within 1-2 weeks) for 50 cents each per episode (even cheaper for slightly older series). Some stores even just give you the CD, and most stores do deals if you spend a certain amount on their goods. Effectively its legalized "bootlegs" that are of TV stream quality

It actually isn't legal, but nobody is going to enforce it. The same thing happens for Japanese shows at many Japanese supermarkets except it's usually rental and a DVD.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by bayoab

No, they don't. CR said at AX that they get less money from the ads than it costs to stream a 720p stream. Only hulu gets $30CPM because they are hulu. Nobody else gets that much.

That's unfortunate because it would probably solve the quality complaints. CR's 480p h.264 encode comes in at 150+MB while their 720p is ~280MB.

Myself Yourself - CR vs fansub DVD ver:



Time of Eve:


Erin 720p:


Hyakko 720p:


Cut from broadcast, in SD on R2 DVD, in HD on CR:

Spoiler for pantsu:

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

CR should allow all users, not just subscribers, to view videos in 480p (720p if available).

I'm curious what Crunchyroll's definition of "SD" is. (A quick search of the site fails to answer this question.) Is it 360 "lines" vertical and appropriately adjusted horizontal resolution (e.g., 480x360 for 4:3 aspect shows and 640x360 for 16:9)? Even fewer than 360 lines?

How can anyone these days not consider 480p as "standard" definition when ordinary tube TVs show DVDs in that resolution correctly and have for years? Most fansubs from the pre-HD era are in 480p (e.g,. 640x480x24fps progressive); shouldn't that be what's considered "standard" definition?

[Daiz]

Well, considering that CR lists their SD and HD versions as 480p and 720p it doesn't really leave much room for doubt.

[chikorita157]

My suggestion is to allow free users to watch it in 480p/720p. Ads generate good money for CR too. Better picture quality will mean more viewers.

It won't happen. Streaming in a higher resolution and higher quality requires more bandwidth and bandwidth although it looks unlimited does not since they need to pay for bandwidth consumed by streaming, which is a lot.

What they should do is have a alternative that allows people to buy each episode at a low cost (say like $2-4 per episode) on iTunes or some place so that people don't have to use up all their bandwidth if they have caps and also be able to play it without needing a internet connection. This will benefit people who don't watch alot of anime of CR to justify a $7 dollar per month subscription since the cost will end up to be $84 dollars which can easily buy 2 licensed DVDs with only subs or 1 boxset.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

That's unfortunate because it would probably solve the quality complaints. CR's 480p h.264 encode comes in at 150+MB while their 720p is ~280MB.

My big question would be how much blocking/banding/etc. their encodes have in dark scenes. I imagine it might depend on how good the masters they encode from are, since I've always suspected that the reason many fansubs suffer from this is due to poor raw quality.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

My big question would be how much blocking/banding/etc. their encodes have in dark scenes. I imagine it might depend on how good the masters they encode from are, since I've always suspected that the reason many fansubs suffer from this is due to poor raw quality.

The quality of CR's video sources vary wildly from each different Japanese publisher.

They've gotten everything from raw uncompressed RGB32 to ~300 MB SD files as sources...
E.g. just because one show on CR looks like crap doesn't mean they all do, and vica verca.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I'm curious what Crunchyroll's definition of "SD" is. (A quick search of the site fails to answer this question.) Is it 360 "lines" vertical and appropriately adjusted horizontal resolution (e.g., 480x360 for 4:3 aspect shows and 640x360 for 16:9)? Even fewer than 360 lines?

How can anyone these days not consider 480p as "standard" definition when ordinary tube TVs show DVDs in that resolution correctly and have for years? Most fansubs from the pre-HD era are in 480p (e.g,. 640x480x24fps progressive); shouldn't that be what's considered "standard" definition?

There seems to be two versions of "SD" when it comes to widescreen content: 640x360 and 720x480 anamorphic = 853x480.

360p is what free CR users get, what Funimation uses, and the default size on Youtube.

You'd also get 640x360 from "letterboxed" version DVDs (are these still sold?) meant to display the full widescreen content on non-WS TVs with black bars top and bottom, back before HDTV when CRTs still existed.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

The quality of CR's video sources vary wildly from each different Japanese publisher.

They've gotten everything from raw uncompressed RGB32 to ~300 MB SD files as sources...
E.g. just because one show on CR looks like crap doesn't mean they all do, and vica verca.

Toei's is the worst of the worst btw. I don't know why they're so terrible.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

There seems to be two versions of "SD" when it comes to widescreen content: 640x360 and 720x480 anamorphic = 853x480.

360p is what free CR users get, what Funimation uses, and the default size on Youtube.

Thanks. That's what I thought. I noticed once that 360p was also Funimation's format for download-to-own files. If that wasn't enough to deter me from buying episodes online, using Windows-only DRM sealed their fate.

Originally Posted by Daiz

Well, considering that CR lists their SD and HD versions as 480p and 720p it doesn't really leave much room for doubt.

No, 480p requires a subscription. As npcomplete describes, it's definitely not what CR considers SD.

[synaesthetic]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Not fond of Funimation's site either (do web designers all get certificates from the School of Dumb Ass Moron's Shiny Web Design now?) but they're far ahead on this matter.

I'm not terribly fond of Funimation's site myself, but at least it functions. Crunchyroll doesn't function at all on my eeePC, and it had severe issues functioning on my Athlon 64 desktop.

Hopefully though some of these things will change; Adobe just released information today that Flash 10.1 should enable .flv decoding using DXVA and similar (CUDA perhaps?) methods of offloading some of that from the CPU.

Adobe seems to have aimed the update squarely at low-power netbooks, UMPCs and smartphones, all of which have trouble with Flash video content.

This is really good news for those of us who like tiny computers. ^^;

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by einhorn303

There does actually exist people who don't watch fansubs because they're illegal (like me). Yes, you might say that's irrational, but putting up the 2nd season and not the 1st is rather frustrating for such people.

Now that is perfectly fair. If that had been the point that was being made in the first place, I would have agreed. It is a bit of a problem for that group of viewers, and doesn't do them very much good unless they're willing to just jump in half-way through (which, for this show, is probably pretty possible, actually -- the plot is pretty well laid-out in this first episode here). I did notice that they posted Asura Cryin' 1 in a big batch recently, so maybe there's still a chance they'll batch all of the first season of this show as well.

And incidentally, I don't think that choosing to not view fansubs is in any way irrational, and do understand your frustration in this case. But if Crunchyroll does end up failing to meet its objectives, I don't personally believe this will be one of the major contributing causes (because I suspect that their target audience consists in large part of people who might otherwise be fansub viewers, hence wouldn't require the "all or nothing" approach proposed). I don't think the people who'd be willing to watch anime online, but just haven't been doing it so far due to legality alone, is enough to form a new market.

[Baka-man]

I honestly don't like how crunchyroll is basically claiming to most of the Fall lineup. Leave some out so that people in the anime industry can actually earn a profit. And the anime fans won't be pleased in general unless they are willing to pay $5 per month when most of these kids are only around 12-15 years old.

[bigsocce]

Originally Posted by Baka-man

I honestly don't like how crunchyroll is basically claiming to most of the Fall lineup. Leave some out so that people in the anime industry can actually earn a profit. And the anime fans won't be pleased in general unless they are willing to pay $5 per month when most of these kids are only around 12-15 years old.

The anime industry is earning more money from giving crunchyroll the stream license as oppose to doing nothing (fansubs). That's why you see the emergence of so many anime streaming legally in the past year. 2 years ago, this didn't exist.

p.s. Crunchyroll is not buying the DVD license, just internet stream license.

Here's an real life example. Your anime company owns Cross Game (one of my fav anime this year). However, it will not get DVD licensed in North America. Therefore, it's on fansubs and I as well as many others have been watching the fansubs. Which will earn you more money? Do nothing and get nothing from fansubs or licensed it to crunchyroll and get some ad/subscription money?

[Baka-man]

Originally Posted by bigsocce

The anime industry is earning more money from giving crunchyroll the stream license as oppose to doing nothing (fansubs).

Crunchyroll is not buying the DVD license, just internet stream license.

Oh right. I forgot that crunchyroll earns money like that. Wow, where have I been? But honestly, it is basically bad news for all the anime viewers who are short on cash. We know not a lot of people actually buy the DVDs or rights to watch than just watch it streamed or torrented out of the sea of otakus.