Forum - View topicNEWS: Bost Announces Global Anime Video-on-Demand from Japan
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rankothefiremage
 Posts: 523 Location: Michigan |
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"The company says the service will support "the major computing platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, and is compatible with major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari)."
EPIC WIN goinga have to use this service just to support them a bit |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10468 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Egan and I are trying to figure out how the hell they intend to do this, with 20 employees and $49,000
I suspected it was a translation mistake, but two separate sources both say 490万円 (actually, one says 500万円, but that's not much of a difference), which is 4.9 million yen, or roughly $49,000. If they really have 20 employees, and that's really their start-up capital, then they don't have enough cash on hand to pay two months of salaries, let alone other business expenses. -t |
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bayoab
Posts: 831 |
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There is something wrong here. You know what they say about things sounding too good to be true? Also, it doesn't mention anything about it being translated to any language so I don't know how an international audience can even watch this.
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psipsy
Posts: 54 |
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Between the low startup capital and high expectations of being able to port to major operating systems and browsers, I don't know how well this is going to fly.
But if they can pull this off (and I'd love to see that happen), more power to them. This is definitely a step in the right direction. |
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Clodus
 Posts: 497 Location: Kansas |
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they will possibly hope to get more investments to help out their budget after seeing how successful it is after a few months. this is an interesting concept. i hope things work out
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edzieba
Posts: 704 |
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Looks like someone finally gets how to do online distribution: cheap, DRM free and global. If they can get new shows as well as old, they're going to make piles of money. Even if these are only raws, then all fansub groups have to do is release .ass files, et voilà! Japanese licensors get the money they want for their episiodes, and anime fans get their anime faster (than DVD releases) and legally.
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Terrestrial_Cel
 Posts: 99 Location: SF Bay Area |
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Knew it was coming sooner or later
Although, cross-browser and cross-OS support isn't an epic achievement in video downloads. It's pretty much required these days. |
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psipsy
Posts: 54 |
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If things go well and they're feeling particularly industrious, they might branch out and offer fully translated episodes, with add-on subtitle streams in popular languages. Some fansub groups are claiming turnaround times of less than a day per episode; if fans doing this part-time can accomplish that starting from scratch, I would imagine a business could get the original scripts ahead of time and use that to crank out a speedsub of their own. Whether they're sold as raw or translated, either way I like where this is going. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1043 |
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Wow... hope this works out. I don't know the series mentioned, but the ANN ratings for two of them are pretty good, and I'd be willing to invest some money just to try to make this a success, so other companies might take note. Things could go wrong yet, though... for example, they might charge a trillion yen per episode
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Also, though the Windows/Mac/Linux thing does make it sound as if there's no DRM, maybe it'll all turn out to be streamed in Flash Video, YouTube style... or you'll have to use their proprietary Java media player .
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Mysticmidnightmaiden
Posts: 123 Location: California (Bay Area) |
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Well, after Jason's enlightening editorial, I'm ready to give this a try (not to mention I can use my Mac OS and Linux OS when browsing)..
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Asrialys
 Posts: 1164 |
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HanTsuki and Shinigami no Ballad are pretty good anime. Maybe I'll check this out.
Keitai Shoujo is...why in the world are they showing that? lol |
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Rosyna
Posts: 40 |
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This looks insanely promising. However, their examples (trailers) "suck". Namely, they show nothing of their subtitling or translation skills. Even though they are just trailers, they should at least have the songs they use have subtitles.
I'd pay $500/year for this if they had a few more episodes/series. (I have over 1200 anime DVDs, so I spend quite a bit monthly on anime DVDs...) It's flash based. But this means it inherits all the flaws of the flash plugin (such as preventing the screen from dimming in full screen mode). But it also means it'll play on just about any platform, just like Adult Swim's online video player dealie. In fact, this is almost exactly like Adult Swim. Except the video is much, much higher quality on Bost and you'd have to log in before you can get the URL to the video. The URLs expire later than Adult Swim too. (1 week for Adult Swim, 2 weeks for Bost). Well, at least according to these PRs, their site, and the trailers I viewed on their internets website. Edit: The $500/year figure was based on the idea this would become like the iTunes store, selection wise, proportionally, to the total anime market. |
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cloud1989
 Posts: 274 |
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I like what they are doing, but it would be nice if they offered a site subscription instead of pay per episode, espically if the start taking 26, 50+ episode series, thats some serious money for those who want to watch it yet are not satisfied with downloads as a final product for them and will spend money on DVD's when released.
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g*ni
Posts: 30 |
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The announcement alone is already a great step forward in correcting many issue associated with foreign distribution such as world wide availability and multi-platform support. But such an ambitious and fledgling service it is not without its growing pains. The current geographic licensing restrictions and the inflexible rent only licensing schemes hamper consumer uptake; while lack of start up capital, personnel, and a small selection of launch titles make the venture volatile and virtually untenable to potential investors.
I am not making these statements as a point of discouragement. My argument is simply that they are in dire need of support in the form of active subscribers. They need our support to grow into a service with less restrictive licenses, increased content, and greater geographic availability. If you believe direct-from-source is a candidate savior for anime in the new media market then you should support them. I know I will. My statement also comes with a rather large rhetorical question. When will they be able to secure the rights to sell us copies? $1.99 to rent per episode is rather unattractive IMHO and is no competition to the likes of iTunes where the same price will buy you a perm license or to streaming services like Jetstream where online viewing is gratis with the acceptance of advertisements. |
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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Wow, they actually have stuff up on their front page within a week of announcing the site- this is a pretty good sign.
The store option makes me wonder if we'll see them offering either merchandise, downloads or on-demand [or mass produced] DVD's in addition to streaming anime episodes. The entirely English content of the website makes subtitles sound like a given. The starting capital makes it sound like they've gotten enough just to kick this thing off the ground, and are probably hoping that it'll start generating income ASAP. From now on, whenever someone asks for this material, please direct people to their site rather then some bootlegging site. It'd benefit fandom as a whole if we promote this, so that if it's successful, we'll see more series brought to us this way. |
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