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Hey, Answerman! - ANTI-PIRACY HYSTERIA

Actually yes. Yes it does. To take a very comparable niche market to anime just take British Television programming, especially BBC stuff. Generally the prices are roughly in line with anime prices, both of which are a little higher than domestic releases but not by much.

You also see the same thing in gaming. The niche Japanese titles from Atlus and NIS sell for the same price as the CODs and Halos.

agila61 wrote:

Only to generate another Whaaa-fest ~ "its a day before they see it in Nogoya but over twelve hours after they see it in Tokyo!!" ~ "its only available in 480p / 720p / the 1080p is bit-rate limited!" ~ "two series I wanted to see did not get a streaming license!1!". .

Some of those are legitimate complaints, and if streaming services want to draw people away from fansubs, they need to compete on two levels: Quality and Speed.

And for better or for worse, speed really is the most important one.

[Answering in reverse order ...

(2) You must mean "draw people almost entirely away from fansubs". From hits on bootlegs of licensed versus unlicensed series, clearly streaming services are drawing a large portion of the audience away from fansubs, even when they are {shock, horror!!!} eighteen or thirty six whole hours after the debut free to air premiere.

And (1) no, when the simulcast is a day or two after the lead free to air broadcast, and well before all the regional free to air broadcasts have been completed, let alone when it hits BS-11 or similar ... then the speed is certainly not a "legitimate" complaint: its one of those entitled spoiled brat complaints.

The reason that those brats will eventually be pandered,

When it comes to delaycasts, I see little reason waiting a couple days for Crunchy to put a show up when I can watch it with alternative methods. Call me an "entitled brat" if you want, ...

agila61 wrote:

Sunday Silence wrote: Except that when compared to domestic releases of TV shows and the like, it's still expensive. It's called pricing for market conditions. Are you sure that holds true for all domestic US DVD releases that are as niche as anime? Or are you comparing mainstream market to niche market and discovering {shock! horror!!} that pricing for different market conditions in the US (niche and mainstream) is different!

Actually yes. Yes it does.

To take a very comparable niche market to anime just take British Television programming, especially BBC stuff. Generally the prices are roughly in line with anime prices, both of which are a little higher than domestic releases but not by much.

... Especially as a paying customer, you need to demand the best service, and just accepting delaycasts and giving them hits anyway is just detrimental to the service.

For some speed is not the only nor the main reason when choosing where / how to watch animes. "Best service" does not have to mean "fastest", but can also include things like best translation ("speed translations" can be pretty bad), quality and, obviously, legality (respect / authorization of the original creators etc). What you attach importance to completely depends on the person.

What you attach importance to completely depends on the person.

I'm not seeing your point.

Simulcasts are competing against a free (though illegal) competitor that is far more entrenched in the zeitgeist and still seen as the "best" way to watch anime by more than a few people.

The best way for simulcasts to compete is speed, because unlike fansubs they literally can be SIMULTANEOUS with the JP airing. Even the fastest fansubs will take at least a few hours to come out, and very few shows reliably get subs that fast.

Since at this point the video quality is basically identical, speed is the main and best determining factor.

Quote:

And (1) no, when the simulcast is a day or two after the lead free to air broadcast, and well before all the regional free to air broadcasts have been completed, let alone when it hits BS-11 or similar ... then the speed is certainly not a "legitimate" complaint: its one of those entitled spoiled brat complaints.

Meaningless blather.

Those "brats" are the target audience.

You cannot just ignore fansubs and blithely dismiss their effect by calling the people who use them "brats"

If its struggling against something that is "entrenched in the zeitgeist" and still seen as the "best" way to watch anime by a sufficiently large share of the prospective audience to hamper its growth ... we have no indication that its showing it as of yet.

How can you say it is the "best" way without comparing with the other ways streaming can compete with bootlegs? You are jumping from "one way to", straight to "the best way to", without actually bothering to compare it to the other ways that it can compete.

Device support is one. Convenience is one. Speed is one. Another is freedom to advertise in places that pirate sites can not get a look in

Speed can't possibly be the one and only thing, since Crunchyroll still gets free ad-streaming views. even though the free ad-streaming views are from those who typically do not get access to the series until a week after the paying members.

As a universal claim, that's absurd.

There's two contradictory examples, when one is sufficient to debunk claim to universality.

However, if they can blankly just assert their ethical system, I can equally well assert mine, and under mine, the moral rights of the creator of an original work is superior to the moral rights of a passive consumer of that work. Under my ethical system, an inability to wait a mere two days seems more like the break down of impulse control that happens in teenage boys before they learn how to cope with a flood of testosterone than what passes muster as a legitimate complaint.

Meaningless blather.

I'll mention here that In Japan, all animations of any kind and from anywhere, is called anime.