Forum - View topicANNCast - That's FUNi, You're FUNi
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Hardly high praise. Crunchyroll's player is so frustrating and difficult that I refuse to use it. I'd rather download a 480p Crunchyrip or fansub than watch a free 480p episode on Crunchyroll's player. Edit: removed redundant wording. Last edited by dtm42 on Sun Jun 09, 2013 9:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I didn't say it was perfect. I've had issues with it myself, but it was far better than the players on Nico's and Funi's sites. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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^
I have only used NicoNico a couple of times but I didn't find it to be worse than Crunchyroll's player. FUNimation's player on the other hand is notoriously bad and deserves its negative reputation. I'm glad it's being upgraded. |
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noblesse oblige
 Posts: 280 Location: Florida |
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I am twenty three and have seen Coming to America at least ten times. And I STILL can't hold it together when Eddie Murphy tells his soup joke during the credits.
Good to hear about the enduring success of Funimation. It's encouraging that they seem to have adopted a strategy of quality over quantity. What would be the best way to keep up to date with the titles Funimation is planning to release on DVD/BR? |
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getchman
 He started itPosts: 9130 Location: New Hampshire |
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the retail forum. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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I've never once had a problem with it. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18362 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I've had lots of problems with it, though. Despite a system and connection that's well over specs for what CR recommends for watching even 1080 streams, it will stutter on me anywhere from mildly to horribly if I try to watch anything above SD quality at certain times of day. (Presumably their heaviest load times? Evenings between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. EST and broader swaths of time on weekends seem to be the worst.) Letting it sit on pause to buffer a bit helps, but at its worst I'll get a 2+:1 ratio of pause-time-to-watch-time, and heaven forefend if you leave it paused more than about 5 minutes! The connection will drop about a minute and a half later when you restart. This can turn an attempt to view a 24-minute episode into an hour-long chore. Funi's current player also sometimes has this problem during commercials, but never during the episode play time. (Although the episodes only being available at lower resolutions doubtless helps on this.) Now, when CR's player isn't doing what I described above then it's the best one out there, as you can smoothly get high resolutions, full-screens, and can even easily flip the subtitles off if you want to take a screenshot without them. CR reps insist that the problem I described isn't on their end, and that they have plenty enough server power to handle their load, but given how commonly this complaint seems to come up in their own forums and how it's specific time-sensitive, I don't buy that. As further evidence, about a half-hour ago (i.e.,around 11:15 p.m. my time) I finally managed to finish an Oreimo episode that I started watching around 10:20. Last edited by Key on Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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noblesse oblige
Posts: 280 Location: Florida |
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Thank you, getchman. I will check the retail forums.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I have slow internet speed (New Zealand's internet infrastructure is pretty poor), and so I must buffer even 480p videos. My experience with Crunchyroll's player is that it hates buffering; it hates pausing, and it has trouble resuming. Fullscreening and scanning (jumping from one time point to another) are also problematic. I encounter similar issues with YouTube's player but they are infrequent enough that it's tolerable.
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I've had some buffering issues with Crunchy, but not any worse than I've experienced with other players. My biggest issue with CR's player has ben strange glitches, like the subs turning off on their own and refusing to come back on, or the sound cutting out.
I have a high speed FiOS connection, and the only sites I routinely have trouble streaming from are Funimation and YouTube. YouTube, I sometimes have to reload the page for it to play at all, and sometimes have to let it buffer for several seconds before playing, so the video doesn't catch up and stall. Funi, and also NicoNico's, I sometimes can't even get to load. I also tend to get a lot of Flash crashes with them. It's been bad enough, that I've pretty much completely given up on both of them. In all honesty, I reay don't use CR's player that much anymore either. Everything I want to stream on their site is available on Anime Network at some point or another, which I already to subscribe to. I don't have many issues with their player, except when the Amazon servers act up, so why watch commercials on CR or pay for another streaming subscription? Plus, they show dubs for the shows that have them available as well. It is good to see that I'm not the only person that has trouble with the CR player. In the past, I've been attacked on other forums for mentioning it. |
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504NOSON2
 Subscriber Posts: 647 Location: Body:Santa Barbara, CA ~ Heart:New Orleans, LA |
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Crunchyroll doesn't buffer longer than a few minutes at a time. So, you can pause it and let it load while you go sky diving, bungee jumping, catch an opera, party all night, and enjoy a beautiful sunrise... it's still going to only load for a few minutes in advance, apparently for legal reasons. That's why a very fast network connection is required for the loading to stay ahead of the curve. I generally don't have trouble with 480p. But, usually, 720p will be just outright appalling.
FUNimation's player is Hulu, the same as ANN, which requires constant streaming from a fast connection, after the initial buffer. But, I hardly have trouble with that, since its quality doesn't exceed 480p. The Anime Network's player doesn't buffer at all; it's completely been disabled. I cried watching Clannad, and it wasn't for the touching scenes. So, I barely visit, even though I'm a premium subscriber. |
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lem
 Posts: 734 Location: Land of trying to figure sht out |
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Same here. But that's only because I live in a remote area with craptastic internet service. I'm quite happy to simply be able to catch most of an entire episode in SD without having to do a page reload. It's rare but it happens! I would have thought New Zealand would have better infrastructure for high speed internet. That's kinda sad. To think that below the tree line there are even worst internet connections and even more frustrated fans. damn. As for the others, I gave up on Hulu. ANN's doesn't work for me either. Subscriber or not it's an utter waste of time. And YouTube? that's hit and miss. Funimation I haven't tried and probably won't since someone just mentioned that they use Hulu. oh well. At least I have one legal source to turn to for the latest greatest. My CR will never be at 1080, but at least I don't have to miss what is currently airing. I also quite like how it has influenced my buying choices. Totally worth it just for that. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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Actually, the last several times I've used TAN's player, it did buffer. It seems to suffer the same time limitation as CR's but it did allow for some buffering. TAN's free videos also utilize Hulu, unless you subscribe, because they can't disable ads from them. As for Funi, I've never subscribed to their site, but I always assumed that their EVS videos utilized a different player. Most video streaming sites allow you to bypass commercials, but if Funi forces you to sit through Hulu commercials for everything, then I don't see much point in subscribing. I was always under the impression that their site used two different players, depending on the video, as I was usually able to play their free Hulu streams. But the videos were always hit and miss, so I usually just watched their shows on Hulu. Funi's videos almost never worked for me, so I pretty much just stopped trying. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2476 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I've been wondering about so much Sentai stuff being available on Crunchy -- even coming to Crunchy after its physical release, like Angel Beats! and ef did -- given that Sentai seemingly has such a close relationship with The Anime Network, both being products of the ADV implosion. And yet it's not all on Crunchy. For example, the only legal stream of Chuunibyo is on TAN. I had figured that the post-physical-release availability of some Crunchy titles was a product of Japanese licensors, and that that might explain why NIS stuff like anohana and Toradora! showed up there too. But I assume you know more than I do, Zac, and that somehow this has to involve Sentai (and NIS), not just Crunchy and Japan. |
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invalidname
Contributor Posts: 2476 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Regarding the problems with Crunchyroll (and other streaming players), is everyone talking about PC/Mac viewing, or on devices?
I stream pretty much exclusively on iPad and Roku, which means I'm getting the HTTP Live Streaming version, which has its own quirks. Last year, I noticed that pausing a Crunchyroll video frequently meant getting a segment out-of-order right at the end of the program (like you'd restart the episode instead of seeing the credits or next episode preview), though this seems to have been fixed. Right now, Crunchy seems really solid on iOS and Roku. The other fun thing with HLS is if you move around and get your wifi to drop a bar, you can see the variant playlist kick in and drop you to a lower quality stream on the next 10-second increment. Or, if you have good wifi, you'll start each episode with mediocre quality and then it'll suddenly sharpen. OTOH, I think Theron is right about server load in the N. American evening. I couldn't get the Funimation app to load the full episode list for Steins;Gate a few nights back, even though it could get other shows (oh great, Shuffle!) so I flipped to Crunchy and watched My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU instead (insert your own joke here). |
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