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NEWS: Viewster Closes Omakase Subscription Box Service


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DangerMouse



Joined: 25 Mar 2009
Posts: 3984
PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 9:42 pm Reply with quote
That was fast.

AnimeLordLuis wrote:
Well that's a shame they had some pretty cool boxes my favorite being the KLK box oh well I didn't think that the mystery box would ever catch on anyway it's all just a fad that probably won't last much longer. Rolling Eyes


Yeah. I took a shot for the neat KLK box with the copy of the manga and was going to keep going for the Vocaloid one since it looked nice.

Aside from not catching on, I'm not surprised there might not have been much crossover between the box and the streaming as not only was their streaming pretty limited, but it was also inconsistent with what they might have in dub or sub. And most importantly their streams, or atleast the ones I tried, were not HD, they were SD streams. So if I had to watch subbed (since I prefer dub when good and available, like GITS SAC) there was usually another choice for better video.

I'm not too surprised though since we've all got too many subscriptions as it is. I don't even have that many but I've already got Amazon and Funimation to go with all the anime and games I fully buy, and will probably have Crunchyroll eventually.
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Usagi-kun



Joined: 03 Jul 2013
Posts: 877
Location: Nashville, TN
PostPosted: Wed Mar 16, 2016 11:43 pm Reply with quote
I think this would have been better scaled back a decade or so. It simply has just become much easier to access and acquire anime-related merchandise on sites like Crunchyroll or CDjapan. There are tutorials online for Amazon.jp too. I don't get the surprise factor they were going for. 'Surprise' is not the same thing as 'exclusive'.
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 12:20 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:

The latter is the reason why I prefer watching TV normally over streaming: Sometimes, I don't know what the next show coming up will be, so I stick around to watch to get a sampe of it. To my knowledge, no streaming service as of yet has a "watch random single episode of random show" function. Perhaps that's why there's so little overlap between Viewster subscriptions and Omakase subscriptions: The former is meant for people who want to know exactly what they'll get, and the latter is for people who'd rather not know what they'll get.


Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but Crunchyroll does have an option to go to a random episode. It might just be for Premium Members or something, but it shows up right next to the "Queue" button. Just push the button and it plays a random episode from anything in their catalog.
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GeorgH



Joined: 15 Mar 2016
Posts: 63
PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:15 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
GeorgH wrote:
Viewster offered other shows several years before - but at least I never noticed them before they started showing Animes.

Today they aren't even in the Top10 of streaming providers - as they mostly focus on older B- and C-Movies (which they bought for very little money) and most of their "exclusive" content isn't even subbed in local languages (only english dub or sub).


All right then. It has no exclusive programming, not even TV shows from continental Europe?

I can access about 130 Animes in their library (each season counts seperately), but only about 25% are subbed in local languages. Some of them are avaiable at Crunchyroll too - but besides some highlights that have been simulcasted it looks like they only got shows anyone else wanted (ok, that's a bit too hart).
They started to offer Naruto Shippiden Ep 394+ in April 2015, but already lost this licence.
Their Simulcast-Highlights were Arslan, Seraph 1+2, Rin-Ne, Your Lie in April, Danmachi, Samurai Warriors and Log Horizon 2 - they may be other Highlights in other european countries.

They also offer about 40 Korean Dramas (they started with Korean Dramas before Animes)

TV-Shows from Europe?
I only found a couple of documentaries - that's all.
They also licenced "Highlander: The Series", some Classic Cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s and a few dozen series I never heard of (from US, CA, AU and other countries).
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Thu Mar 17, 2016 5:49 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but Crunchyroll does have an option to go to a random episode. It might just be for Premium Members or something, but it shows up right next to the "Queue" button. Just push the button and it plays a random episode from anything in their catalog.


Heh, that'd be something I'd like to try out sometime. Won't work quite as well for anime, which is mostly serialized, as what I had in mind, which are the more episodic American programming. But it'd still be interesting anyway.

GeorgH wrote:
TV-Shows from Europe?
I only found a couple of documentaries - that's all.
They also licenced "Highlander: The Series", some Classic Cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s and a few dozen series I never heard of (from US, CA, AU and other countries).


So Viewster is, first and foremost, an anime streaming service? I had the impression it was a general programming service, like Hulu or Netflix.
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GeorgH



Joined: 15 Mar 2016
Posts: 63
PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 3:38 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
GeorgH wrote:
TV-Shows from Europe?
I only found a couple of documentaries - that's all.
They also licenced "Highlander: The Series", some Classic Cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s and a few dozen series I never heard of (from US, CA, AU and other countries).


So Viewster is, first and foremost, an anime streaming service? I had the impression it was a general programming service, like Hulu or Netflix.

They changed over time: A few years ago they focused on pay-per-view movies - but they never offered a subscription service here (only US + UK).
They tried to be a general service, but they kept 100 times smaller than the big US-services (and at least 10 times smaller than their european competitors). So they tried to get attention with exclusive content - first with Korean Dramas and later with Animes.

You may compare their latest Blog postings to their oldest:
http://blog.viewster.com

http://viewster.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/4000009317-why-are-there-no-blockbusters-available-on-viewster-
http://viewster.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/4000009312-i-can-t-find-a-movie-i-would-like-to-see-
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2016 8:52 pm Reply with quote
Ah, thank you very much. So Viewster's always been a pretty small company.

It must be hard to be a start-up media streaming service.
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