Forum - View topicNEWS: Funimation Discontinues Download-to-Own Service
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1893 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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As long as statements like this can be made about a company's download-to-own media, many consumers can be expected to shun it in favor of DVD and Blu-ray. |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3994 |
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Well said.
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Sea Lion
 Posts: 307 |
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This. This is what I dreaded when everyone started talking about downloads killing off DVDs and Blu-Rays. It seems like the entertainment biz is trying to make it so every time we want to see a certain property, we'll have to pay for it, and ownership of any show or movie will be virtually impossible through legal means.
Don't get me wrong. There are many shows/movies I'll watch once and that'll be good enough for me. However, there are certain titles I'll watch again and again, and I don't want to have to pay to see them every time I want to see them. |
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Rukiia
 Posts: 1897 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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And this is why I stick to buying DVD's and Blu-rays (and paying a monthly subscription for Crunchyroll and Anime Network's streams) only. Crap like this could spontaneously happen with digital downloads.
Home releases FTW! |
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Panon
Posts: 242 |
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Download to own until you don't really own it anymore.
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LagannImpact
 Posts: 574 |
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This is a really bizarre move by Funimation, when you consider that they currently offer full runs of many of their dubbed properties streaming on services like YouTube and Hulu for FREE. They may even be streaming in this fashion on their own site, but I don't really know. Getting back to the DTO thing, the one reason I can think of is it's too much bandwidth to host the episodes, and by splitting their market between their site and iTunes, they were losing money by having them on iTunes. Since iTunes has more customers and better compatibility, they've just gone ahead and switched all their DTO's to iTunes. Correct me if I'm wrong...
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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I am sure Funimation had their reasons, but unless the reasons were really serious, I don't think we'll ever find out the "true" reason why this service was discontinued.
But I like Funimation and never bothered to take part in this service at all. I had a feeling it would eventually be discontinued and it would be a hassle to deal with when it came time to dealing with this event. Although I've heard for the most part Funimation's download to own service was pretty good, I heard other companies doing this were not nearly as good. In some cases, if the download stopped/didn't work for what ever reason, you'd have to buy the episode again, even if you had proof of purchase. It's been years since I heard that, so maybe polices have generally changed. |
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Racheldoublemm
 Posts: 112 Location: San Francisco |
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I've never really seen or heard anyone using the service.
If it's not making enough to support it, it's only reasonable to end the program. From what I remember, Funi promoted their downloads pretty well and the deals were goods. |
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Guren Alchemist4
 Posts: 347 |
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I learned my lesson of not buy digital copies back when I lost access to the episodes of Basilisk I purchased on Xbox live. DVD's and blu-ray's only ever since
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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I do not share this statement. I had kept my fingers crossed FUNimation would announce their DTO would be DRM free, considering these episode already exist online. Instead, it's another path of legal alternatives closed to those who want to buy, but can not. This is a very stupid decision. |
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androvsky
Posts: 20 |
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The movie and anime industries aren't going to drop DRM completely any time soon. The best we can hope for is Funimation getting on board with Ultraviolet, which allows you to download files from virtually any provider (minus iTunes and Amazon), and play on a bunch of different devices (you can buy a movie off of XBox live and play it on a PS3, for example).
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7584 Location: Wales |
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There have been two companies to offer DRM-free DTO for anime. One (BOST) disappeared seemingly overnight, the other (Crunchyroll) cancelled it since no-one was using it (although the system dated back to before they started doing HD streams and it showed).
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domino
 Posts: 373 |
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And this, folks, is why Download-to-Own is a terrible idea.
I feel sorry for anyone scammed into paying to download episodes of anything. I'd never invest in something so expensive unless I have a physical copy of it. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I'm not surprised Download-to-Own failed miserably. There's not enough people that would pay for downloads when instead they could just download it for free elsewhere. And that's before getting to DRM (which is the only thing that makes DTO feasible and yet alienates customers). The current method at least will never work.
So that said, DVD/BD releases ftw 
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Rukiia
Posts: 1897 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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I'm sorry to hear. But to each their own. I personally don't want to risk having BS like this happening to me so home releases are the safer, and in this case cheaper, option. Plus I much prefer to watch my Anime on my big screen TV via Blu-ray player.
Amen. |
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