This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
I’m going to assume you know what anime is. If you don’t know much besides that, I don’t know how you found this site, but I’ll do my best to help you out.
Per request.
< _ > Hey as a suggestion you could do a “Best ___” post kinda for people who want more info about where to buy/watch/download anime and other noob stuff
< _ > like an advice post or whatnot
< _ > yeah because in all actuality most people who don’t know a lot about anime just read your blog hoping for info to pop up xD
Well, let’s hope I can answer all the questions about this shit. If you’re still confused about acquiring anime, ask below in the comments section. (Even if you find this article a year after I posted it.)
If you have some questions about other aspects of “noob stuff”, lemme know and I’ll give you the details either in the comments or in an entirely new post.
Legal Streaming Venues
Do note that I’m writing this assuming you’re in the US or can access region-locked US content. There is discussion of alternate methods for people not based in the US in the comments section.
Crunchyroll.com (CR/Crunchy)
These guys used to be an illegal streaming site. Then some venture capitalists looked at them and thought “I bet if we threw millions into this company we could make quite a profit.” And so they did. But I’m not sure the profit ever came.
Crunchyroll’s financial future relies entirely on Naruto, as they’ve admitted themselves.
If you’re interested in watching series simulcasted — that is, airing at or around the same time they do in Japan, Crunchyroll is your best bet for streaming services.
Free Membership (Hell, you don’t even need to be logged in.)
Free streaming of most videos as SD with ads. New releases are exclusively for premium members for one week. After that, basic members can view them.
Wide selection.
Can access and stream content from many devices.
Premium Membership
Cost: $70 for one year OR $50 if you buy a subscription on Black Friday.
HD streaming: 480p, 720p, or 1080p options available.
Access to new releases instantly.
Wide selection.
Can access and stream content from many devices.
Worth it? Yeah. Crunchyroll has higher quality subs than any of the other companies involved in streaming and a wider selection. Guess that’s what you get by hiring former fansubbers to do your shit. Unfortunately, the streams themselves can get kind of spotty when it comes to the connections.
Daisuki.net
Daisuki has a lot smaller selection than the other streaming services, but there are quite a few exclusives on the site. Wanna watch Kill la Kill first? Better go on Daisuki.
And for now, it’s a free service. This will likely change as the site becomes more popular, but right now you don’t have to pay a dime. The subs are mediocre though, and it’s pretty impossible to watch anything with their player issues.
They also have a Youtube page with subs, if you’re inclined toward that.
Worth it? It’s free. There’s a reason for that.
Neon Alley
One day someone at Viz’s American branch thought to themselves “How retarded can I act before I get fired?” and so he proposed a streaming service that was dub-only… and only available on PC/PS3/360… and that operates on a strict schedule like a TV station.
One year later, this shit is still limping along. They recently introduced a new “service” that lets you watch a few episodes prior to whatever’s airing at the moment, but if you want to marathon, you can’t. Please don’t encourage these fuckwits.
Worth it? Not unless you really like dubs and are willing to plan your life around them.
Hulu
Hulu’s got quite a wide selection of anime, but the ads are too annoying to bother with. Sometimes Hulu has exclusive access to simulcast anime, but they don’t get enough of it to make these guys your first destination for streaming services.
Do note that this is what Funimation, Viz, and TheAnimeNetwork use for their streaming. Why not just use Hulu directly and cut out the middlemen?
Worth it? No reason to pay for a premium subscription since Hulu will still serve you ads. Hulu is absolutely the worst option to go with of all the streaming options. Wait until they’re your last resort.
Netflix / Amazon Streaming
If you want to stream older series, Netflix or Amazon have a good selection.
Worth it? Sort of… I can’t say it’s worth buying subscriptions just to watch anime. But if you’ve already bought into these services, you’ll find anime on each.
Buying Anime (you know, physical media)
Anime Companies
Funimation
The current king of the anime world in the US, their poor financial outlook reflects the realities of an inability to understand their market. They were actually spun-off by Navarre because of their shit performance and now are limping along on their own. Protip: The real money isn’t in the DVDs themselves, you fucking dipshits.
Anyway, the vast majority of anime licensed in the US comes from this company. You’ll usually get dubs & subs in their releases, but you can’t be certain until you look the release details up. Their limited editions are generally not worth the extra money, unless you get something like their Lain release.
If you’re willing to wait, Funimation tends to consistently drop prices through new versioning of old releases. The lowest budget they go is the SAVER series. MSRP starts at $25 or below for SAVER releases. During Black Friday sales, you can pick these up for $10-$15 easy.
Do not pay more than $40 for a Funimation blu-ray release unless it’s a highly regarded collectible like Lain (and even that shouldn’t run you more than $50). You will often find them for around $30. $20-$30 is not uncommon during Black Friday.
Subtitle quality is competent, but not great. Encode quality is competent, but not great. Their dubs are generally solid. Typesetting/styling/karaoke/timing are bottom of the barrel, though.
Sentai Filmworks
Sentai is a pathetic shadow of its former self — the god-emperor of the US anime market, ADV. After ADV died when the anime bubble in the States burst, Sentai became its replacement.
Sentai releases are the lowest in quality of all the animation companies and yet somehow still not the cheapest. If you want a quality release, you better hope Sentai doesn’t pick an anime you like up.
Aniplex (Aniplz)
Ahaha, oh Aniplex~ Basically, Japan looked at the US and said “Fuck you. If you want our anime, you’re gonna pay the Japanese price.” Yup, if you want to get a popular series like Fate/Zero from these guys, be prepared to pay $700-$1,000 for it.
No, I’m not joking.
If you have a lot of money sitting around, these series are worth buying. (Where else are you gonna find Madoka Magica?) But from a purely objective standpoint, they’re clearly not worth the premium price tag Aniplex is charging, unless all you care about is their awesomesauce encoding.
Too bad if you don’t like it though, because they’re targeting a niche market and that niche market has responded favorably to their tactics, meaning they’re not gonna change a thing.
Subtitle quality is slightly better than Sentai, but worse than Funimation. Not that subs matter much for something you’re buying purely for status.
NISA
Think of NISA as a mix of Funimation and Aniplex, but in a good way. Their packaging is beautiful for the LEs (more info on those a bit later).
Unfortunately, you’re not likely to get dubs with these releases. Subtitle quality is… well, I’m not sure. I’ve never actually watched anything I’ve bought from these guys. But I can tell you their shit looks good on a shelf.
Places to Buy Anime From
Rightstuf
Rightstuf is probably the number 1 place to grab anime on the ‘nets. Prices aren’t as good as they once were, but the selection is not bad at all. Most people get stuff from the Stuf, especially for preorders.
The holiday sales are decent, just make sure you’re getting a good deal before you buy. Think of them as the Newegg of anime.
NISA
You see those nice Limited Edition releases on NISA’s store? Yeah, if you want them, get them. NISA’s LEs are actually limited and once they sell out, they don’t reprint them. You will also not find the LEs going for sale very often, and NISA’s store releases come with bonuses you can’t get elsewhere. Their standard editions will drop in price, but not by much. And I can’t say the standards are worth the money unless you really like the show.
If you want the LEs and the bonuses, order from NISA. If you don’t care about the bonuses, then feel free to order from Rightstuf if Rightstuf is cheaper. Do note that after spending $100 on their site, NISA will send you a $5 gift card toward your next purchase, so that may factor into your decision.
Amazon
It’s Amazon. They have generally decent prices and some good sales. You know what you’re getting into.
DeepDiscount
Ugh. I really don’t wanna mention this site, but if you’re a supreme buyfag/really cheap, these guys aren’t a bad choice during their sales. Essentially, you can get anime for cheaper than anywhere else (because these guys get deals on closeout anime), but there’s no customer service or guarantee that you’ll actually receive what you paid for (you’ll get a refund in that case, though). It may take them a year to send you the product after you order it. So if you’re willing to risk it, this site is a good choice. If not, don’t roll the dice.
But what about importing anime?
That’s advanced level buyfagging. I’m not including that discussion here. Short answer: amiami. Long answer: I’d need an entire post to go over it.
Downloading Anime
Downloading series is another popular option.
The best downloads for a series will nearly 100% of the time be better than the more legal alternatives. However, there are quite a few releases out there that are worse than the official releases… so be careful. Make sure you’re only getting the best releases. (And guess which site is the only one that will be honest with you as to which releases are the best? Hint: you’re fucking on it.)
Torrent Sites
The following sites are torrent sites. If you don’t know what torrents are, uhh… google it?
This should be your first stop for anything new.
This should be your second stop for anything new.
This should be your first stop for anything old.
There are more sites out there, but these will take care of most of what you need.
RSS – Grabbing Torrents Automatically
You can also grab torrents via RSS. Solaristics wrote a guide if automating the process interests you. http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=727153
DDL Sites
I can’t say I’m a fan of DDL sites. They’re all sketchy as fuck. If you want anime downloaded directly and avoid any of the bullshit associated with DDLs, you’re gonna need to get on IRC.
So how do I IRC?
Follow this guide if you don’t already know: https://forum.rizon.net/showthread.php?1018-Guide-on-how-to-download-on-IRC
If that link is dead when you read this, google “irc xdcc” and you’ll get some more in-depth tutorials that will help you deal with whatever apocalypse affected Rizon’s site.
Groups to download from
Lemme break down the entire naming scheme:
[GroupName]_Anime_Name_-_EpisodeNumber_[WhatResolutionTheAnimeIsEncodedAt][CRC32].EncodeFormat
As an example: [Whine-Subs]_The_Unlimited_-_Hyobu_Kyosuke_-_08_[1280×720][8934DS4A].mkv
CRC32 is just a way for you to check if the file you downloaded got downloaded correctly. Essentially, each release has a somewhat unique number associated with its data, so by comparing the CRC values (using a CRC checker), you can determine if the release you’ve got ended up corrupted or something. This isn’t something you need to worry about unless a release doesn’t play correctly, and then you can determine if corruption is the issue.
Back to the groups bit… group name is a handy distinguisher for the kind of quality you can expect from a given release. However, group quality varies… quite a bit between releases. That’s one of the reasons why Crymore exists — to help you determine which release is the best. (I highly suggest this link if you don’t check the site daily; it summarizes everything: http://www.crymore.net/review_summary/)
Rip groups
Some groups out there primarily focus on taking content you can find on Crunchyroll or other sites and making it available for download. The most common of these is [HorribleSubs].
You’ll see these called “Crunchyrips” or “Fanrips” occasionally. These groups tend to encode in 8-bit, which means there won’t be much of a problem if you wanted to watch their releases on mobile devices.
How to watch anime on my computer?
CCCP if you’re on a PC.
MPlayer if you’re on a MAC.
What if I want to watch anime on my mobile devices?
The fansubbing powers that be have determined that you can fuck off, because fansubbers suck and are intent on fading into obscurity via irrelevancy.
Sorry, you’ll find anything labeled 10-bit or hi10p does not play nicely with mobile devices. There’s a long explanation behind why fansubbers made their releases this way, but ultimately the reasoning is that they traded compatibility for quality. Grab MP4 re-encodes or 8-bit releases if this is the primary way you consume your anime. If you don’t know whether a release is 8-bit or not, assume it’s 10-bit until labeled otherwise. You can also check this site’s reviews, where this value will be listed. Alternatively you could ask the groups themselves or download the releases and check the video properties.
Here are your options:
thecowgoesmoo indicates you can buy apps for your iPad to play 10-bit video if you have an iPad 4 or better. iPhone 5 or better is also acceptable. Use S/W mode instead of H/W mode.
MX Player is good for Android (newer devices are better for it). Turn on S/W mode, though. H/W mode will not allow 10-bit to play.
You can stream video to your mobile TV/player from your desktop if you have a streaming app. begna recommends Plex.
Re-encode the releases to something compatible. Use HandBrake or whatever your preferred encoding tool is. If you don’t know what you’re doing, just convert to MP4.
If all that sounds like a lot of effort or you don’t see an option listed that works for you, just grab the [Deadfish] releases. You won’t have a choice in terms of the subtitles used for those releases (Deadfish is a group that re-encodes fansub releases to MP4), but you’ll at least be able to watch them. If your device still can’t play that shit, it’s time to get a job.
.
And now you know how to get animes. Again, any questions, just throw ’em into the comments.
Thanks for the insight, I have always been the downloader, as I love to collect anime. I prefer Fansubs, these guys work so hard to bring us awesome anime, and I am always grateful.
More a question to any Germans reading this than to Dark_Sage, but would XDCC be a risky method of downloading under the anti-piracy watch? Or BakaBT with their policy of not taking licensed stuff?
Anti-piracy watch? I’ll ask a dumb question, but what is that about? Your country has people checking if you are/aren’t downloading illegal movies and fansubbed anime?
I guess he means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
@Anon Not more than watching a stream online. There’s always a chance they find you out, but the chances for winning the lottery are probably the same.
I usually use xdcc over torrents because xdcc is generally harder to track (you’re only downloading, as opposed to downloading and uploading automatically) – plus, I know that the European courts have been making noise about torrents for a while now, in a bid to safeguard copyright laws.
I guess no particular way is guaranteed to be “safe” though.
Technically, in Germany every(!) unlawful download is chargeable – it does not matter, if you are using Torrent, XDCC or DDL. But downloading isn’t charged (for now) because charging the uploader/provider is more profitable.
XDCC is only “safer” because you are not uploading anything – uploading (providing) stuff, which is copyrighted, without the permission of the holder(s) of the copyright is way riskier, than simply downloading (or streaming).
So, if an anime is licensed in Germany, I would not use Torrent to download it. The licensee might take action.
(That happened at least one time: A german leecher “torrented” Blood-C and got charged by Animaze.)
If an anime isn’t licensed in Germany you still could use Torrent since no copyright holder (= japanese companies) is taking action (for now).
Torrent’s are also easy to track. Who’s downloading what and the relevant IP are visible to everyone. There are law firms in Germany which use software to monitor torrents automatically and sue people afterwards. They mostly work for the music and film industry.
Downloading anime via torrent is generally safe because German law firms and Japanese anime companies do not cooperate – but once the anime gets licensed in Germany, it will become risky to download it.
As you’ve mentioned, there was this one case where a guy torrented Blood-C and got charged afterwards. You can find informations on it here: http://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/80494291
@Anon
As long as you aren’t downloading stuff that has been licensed in Germany, torrents are safe. If you want to grab something that has been licensed, looking for a XDCC download opportunity is what I’d recommend. It’s very safe, just as OCH and similar ways to download stuff.
>Sorry, you’ll find anything labeled 10-bit or hi10p will likely not play on mobile devices just yet.
This isn’t true and hasn’t been for months now, at least on iOS*. A number of apps (such as** PowerPlayer and HD Player Pro***) support Hi10P, with the following caveats:
1) Your battery life will take a beating. That is because there aren’t any Hi10P hardware decoders, so all the work will be done by the CPU. Think 10% or more of your battery life per episode. But hey, it’s not like you’re going to be marathoning One Piece on your phone.
2) Speaking of CPU, it’s recommended that you have an A6 chip or better (iPhone 5/5C/5S, iPad 4) at your disposal. The A5x chip in the iPad 3 kinda works okay. Anything older than that? Forget it.
3) Don’t even bother trying play a 1080p Hi10P file. Leave that to the real computers. And seriously, why are you watching a 1080p file on something with a 4-inch screen?
All that being said, it’s possible and it’s decent. You can put this old claim to bed.
*I don’t own anything Android at the moment, but I’ve heard good things about MX Player.
**Not an endorsement of any particular app. If you pay for it and don’t like it, it’s not my fault.
***HD Player Pro appears to have been taken down from the US iTunes store. However, the same developer has a free version (HD Player, natch) still available that has an In-App Purchase which supplies additional codecs and should theoretically get you the same results… maybe. I don’t know. Caveat emptor.
Oh, so it works on newer tablets? Unless something changed it doesn’t even work on an S4, but I’ll update it with your points.
Not just the newest iPad but also any series-5 iPhone (5, 5C, 5S).
As for Android, people have been saying that anything with a Snapdragon 800 or better should finally work reliably. Only a few phones and tablets have that chip at this point, so I don’t know how they figure that. I imagine that the extra processing load from the TouchWiz UI isn’t doing your phone’s processor any favors.
my brother have a Nexus 4 and it runs 720p 10-bit efficiently.
Yeah, just realized I had to switch certain settings to play the video properly. Updated the guide to note my findings. (>_O)b
Also for MX Player on Android, be sure you have “use speedup tricks” enabled for 10-bit; it helps a lot.
While playing video: menu key -> Play -> use speedup tricks
Good tip :)
1080 10 bit isn’t worth it unless you are on a 10in tablet or the Nexus 7 (2013).
H/W+ doesn’t work as well in MX Player compared to S/W.
Don’t expect KFX to play nicely . CPU isn’t powerful enough to. I think typesetting lags a bit too unless the tablet CPU is powerful enough.
Here in Germany, the situation is way worse. All we get are 3-4 episode volumes at ~40 bucks each (recalculated into dollars).Almosrt nothing gets licensed and 80-90 % of the dubs are the same quality as the English Higurashi dub. I usually import my anime from the US, the UK or in case of the second Higurashi season from Australia since I don’t want to support the business model the companies over here use.
A note to any Australian proto-buyfags: http://www.madman.com.au/ and http://www.sirenvisual.com.au/ are the two main specialist distributors.
The only thing I need help with and can’t find a good guide so far that Bother TO Explain EVERYTHING is IRC
aside from it I find but thanks D_S :3
P.S I still mad at you for not being at home around 2 months ago when I changed my name and took a flight to US just to meet you
all these flights were for nothing (屮ﾟДﾟ)屮
IRC is an entire guide by itself. I’ll make an article on it today.
Seriously? o_o
a good guide that Bother TO Explain EVERYTHING?
even how the app effect your pc and what the best app to use and how to crack it? :D
Well, not everything, but everything that I care about. I mean, I’m not gonna tell you how to write ridiculous scripts or how to get a BNC or anything, but I will throw out the basics.
I see
thanks
I already know most of this stuff (at least the part that’s relevant to me as a European), but I really appreciate you putting this up. It looks like it’ll be very helpful for less experienced anime fans.
DS, at least recommend people KCP (Kawaii Codec Pack) or the guide over at MAL. CCCP is bad in comparison.
Based on what criteria?
I wouldn’t recommend KCP to most people. It’s unlikely, but there could be problems as most groups recommend and target CCCP in their releases. If there’s something that doesn’t work because they used KCP, most people wouldn’t be able to troubleshoot. CCCP, for better or for worse, is just the standard we’re stuck with.
>KCP is bad compared to CCCP
Daily reminder that KCP’s settings are just CCCP because Daiz told them to.
The quality is slightly better, but ~99% wouldn’t see the difference or care for it anyway.
KCP is “let’s use the latest stuff because it’s obviously better!”
That’s the entire point of it. It includes madVR, which is nice, but CCCP is a much better choice overall.
how i wach on leenux
Looks like a troll question – but anyways; since version 2.0, VLC has been working fine for any fansubs I’ve been throwing at it. Haven’t seen any problems with video decoding, but there’s still room for improvement: During the last season, VLC crashed on me twice when somewhat complex subbed signs were moving through the picture.
As for mobile devices, I just use HandBrake (http://handbrake.fr/) to convert anything down to a usable format on a fast PC.
Eh, doesn’t even matter if he wasn’t being serious. It was a question that was bound to come up. Thanks for answering it.
HandBrake added to the post.
Yeah, it was a joke. I use XBMC under Ubuntu on my media center and it works perfectly. Even with 10-bit content (version 12+ supports it).
On my laptop, I use gnome-mplayer. It’s stupid easy to use and it’s reliable.
Can we please never recommend VLC? It’s always been a great tech demo and never been a stable video player.
The answer should be the same as OS X (mplayer). A good gui would be smplayer.
A better gui would be gnome-mplayer. Or MPlayerX on OSX.
VLC is fine if you’re into GUIs but mpv [1] should be the best regarding quality and performance. It’s the same for Macs: mpv is your choice for maximum quality, but since most Mac users are not into text based stuff Mplayer OSX Extended [2] (with the mplayer2 binary!) is your next best choice (third is VLC).
[1] http://mpv.io/
[2] http://www.mplayerosx.ch/#downloads
The problem using mplayer2 with MPlayer OSX Extended is that nobody cares about compiling new versions for OSX so you run into old libass bugs. I posted a fix for that here a few months ago.
Well, of course you’re right but nevertheless I’d say: a not-up-to-date mplayer2 is better than VLC, though this might come from personal preferences.
But both of them are better than Mplayer(1) suggested in the article.
Imo it’s like
mpv >>> mplayer2 > older mplayer2 with GUI ≥ VLC > Mplayer(1)
but I guess “older mplayer2 with GUI” and VLC are interchangeable.
What do mplayer2 and vlc have over mplayer? It’s certainly not stability. My understanding is that there are some features, like something around chapters, that most leechers who are asking which video player to use don’t care about.
Other than [1] it’s especially the opengl mode which mplayer can’t match in terms of quality (and speed?). That’s for OSX, I don’t know about Linux.
[1] https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/man/en/changes.rst
Yup, the higher-quality opengl renderer is for Linux too.
MPlayer2 and MPV are both largely about cleaning up old bad code that takes more invasive changes, so it is always advised to build them yourself because you get the most stable that way, rather than complaining about old bugs. You can expect them to work better and more reliably than MPlayer that way. That’s why it’s also harder to find recent builds of them. They’re easy to compile (even on a Mac, if you use homebrew) but unlike options like CCCP, it might not already have all of the best defaults set up for you.
Just use MPlayerX. It’s not in the App Store anymore, but it’s still available from the guy’s site and it’s maintained. AND it works really really well. And it’s pretty.
Seriously, for OSX, I don’t see why anyone would bother with anything else besides MPlayerX
In case anyone’s lazy: http://mplayerx.org/
MplayerX’s using a pretty old mplayer binary with even older dependencies (hi libass bugs) as well as wrong colors. The suggested Mplayer OSX Extended with mplayer2 binary is way ahead of this.
I should have checked before posting. Looks like the last update was a bit over a year ago. Not sure what happened, but it looks like the project is cold.
Either way, since this is kind of designed as a noob guide anyway, I’d still suggest MPlayerX. If someone’s reading this blog post to figure out how to watch anime, chances are they aren’t horribly concerned with color accuracy.
MPlayerX still has the best interface of any media player I’ve come across, and it’s the easiest to use. For a beginner, it’s pretty much perfect.
Because it’s doubtful that anyone else will give the full linux situation (not that anyone actually cares):
Short answer:
VLC or MPlayer2. There are minor problems, but it’ll work and isn’t any trouble to set up.
Long answer:
MPV, built from git, preferably the lua_experiment branch because then you get a nice gui with it. This is the best situation you can have because with the “ass-vsfilter-color-compat=full” option, the colors are actually correct.
But since that’s not a viable route for everyone, mplayer2 works the best, and you can still get the colors to be right by passing “-vf ass” as a command line argument, which will take up a little more cpu because it’s doing the composition of the subs onto the video in software and not in hardware. SMPlayer and Gnome-MPlayer are good frontends.
VLC will always get the colors slightly wrong and you can’t fix that. It is otherwise a solid player.
Sidenote: Softsubbed 10-bit 720p video works with MX Player for me on my HTC DNA with only the occassional stutter.
No need for the experiment branch, the OSC is merged into master.
:D It seems like I’m a little behind. Nice to see that someone else is paying attention.
I interested in understanding the issues (or main issue) of VLC (nowadays).
Are the only issues related to rendering?
* lower quality render
* inaccurate colors
* lower quality scaler?
or what?
I’m not sure what people’s beef with VLC is. It uses LibAV, which is a fork of FFMpeg, which is basically exactly what CCCP uses. There’s really very little difference as far as the code base is concerned.
The only thing CCCP gives you is the ability to use other media players since it does demuxing. But really, why would anyone bother? CCCP is a clusterfuck. There’s a reason why it’s only on Windows (answer: every other platform figured out how to do things the right way).
Either way, people claim VLC is unreliable, but honestly, since it’s supported 10-bit, I’ve never had any problems with it. I just use gnome-mplayer because I prefer the keyboard controls and interface.
Right answer: gnome-mplayer
Mobile devices: Plex! which is also good for streaming to appletv, roku, etc. It uses a live encode via FFmpeg and subtitles actually look decent because its essentially just burning in the subs via libass. /however/ it often uses default fonts and occasionally, signs that have been covered over with clips will not be properly position shifted.
Regardless, if you are dead set on watching on a mobile device or streaming to a TV, Plex is a great option.
forgot to mention, because its a streaming media server, you can even watch over 3G/LTE/Rremote Wifi
Updated. Thanks.
I would like to add to this. The very popular steaming app “ps3 media server”, which actually works with more than just ps3, is another great option for playback of anime on your tv or any other DLNA-compliant device. It transcodes video to a compatible format for your device in real time if it needs to so it can play 10 bit files no problem.
http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/about/
A fork of PS3 media server called “Universal Media Server” is even better. It works great with anime and supports full karaoke and subtitles effects.
http://www.universalmediaserver.com/about/
This is my preferred streaming app and it allows me to play directly from my LG smart TV.
Both of these applications can be a bit confusing for beginners. It is also recommended to have a fast computer and a very fast wireless connection or a gigabit Ethernet connection to prevent any playback lag or stuttering on 720p and up files.
Here is a comparison chart for universal media server, ps3 media server, plex, etc…
http://www.universalmediaserver.com/comparison/
For some reason I always assumed Tokyo-Tosho was raw only, and so I never even looked at it.
It’s a good thing I never claim to be smart.
nyaa is better than tt in my opinion… it’s always been the best and first choice.
Yeah, banning groups that Nyaa doesn’t like is what makes Nyaatorrents the best. TT has no such drama, and therefore is not good.
So here the gist of it. Whatever is on Nyaa is usually on TT. TT is basically an indexing site for torrents (They don’t host the actual .torrent files) so the torrents have to be uploaded somewhere like Nyaa or AnimeIndex first before being submitted to Tokyotosho manually.
Sometimes people on Nyaa just don’t bother submitting to TT as well so you do have to look at both places. I generally prefer going to TT cause they have the most submissions.
What about anime conventions?
Sometimes you find pretty cheap and/or old stuff you won’t easily find in shops.
But that could also be because I don’t live in US.
Anime conventions in the US are a bad bargain for anime. They tend to be priced higher than Amazon or Rightstuf no matter what.
>You’ll these called “Crunchyrips” or “Fanrips” occasionally.
>You’ll call these called “Crunchyrips” or “Fanrips” occasionally.
This still doesn’t sound right.
Goddammit fuck me
I think it wouldn’t hurt to go into encoding groups a bit. BakaBT often prefers the highest quality (or highest file size) release for 1080p, which is often Coalgirls, which is often Bloatgirls, which is often not what you want.
>prefers
Bakabt would offer fucking Hadena if someone posted snapshots showing that their encode “looked better” in some unnoticable way.
Yeah. bakabt is for complete anime not weekly episodes so it won’t be a choice except for finished stuff.
their recommendations are not good in sometimes as you explained. Nyaa’s recom. are better, they use blue color for A+ quality release for an example.
Thanks for the guide, I haven’t really been torrenting lately because my apartment internet prevents it, so I IRC pretty much everything I can, then Torrent when I leech school internet.
>MX Player is good for Android, but at least as far as phones go (last I checked with my Galaxy S4), 10-bit is still beyond its grasp.
Uh…well that’s weird. I used to watch 10bit with my Galaxy S2 with MX, and except for when there were action scenes with fast-moving frames, it worked fine.
Now I have an S3 and it works perfectly, since when I watched the last episode of SnK on it, which is the most actiony thing I’ve seen on my phone, it didn’t have any problems. And yes, it was 10bit 720p.
The fuck? Hold on, let’s test this out.
I just put Vivid’s Kamisama Inai Nichiyoubi on my S4. Audio plays, but video doesn’t.
Hey Stushi and DS, do you guys have an American S3/S4 or an international one? The American variants use a different chipset because of LTE support; I wonder if that’s the reason for the difference.
I’m using the gimped American version.
Mine’s probably international, but I think the problem was because of that S/W H/W thing so it doesn’t really matter :P
Of course you’re using SW mode? Cos’ HW can’t handle a ton of stuff.
I… had no idea that was a thing. Let me update the post.
Oh, that’s important for iOS apps too. Some of them do default to H/W decoding by default, which will result in poor/no video playback.
I am damn happy I was asked to write this article. I’m learning all sort of goodness. Thanks man.
Yup, forgot to mention that.
Oh and also, most Deadfish videos don’t work on older Androids without using MXP, even the .mp4’s.
For reals? That shows me for expecting quality from re-enc groups.
I’ve found that my Nexus 10 can play anything I throw at it if I change the color settings in mxplayer to 16 bit. I get that this is an egregious sin to many people, but I personally can’t tell much of a difference. It might be worth a shot.
[Whine-Subs]_The_Unlimited_-_Hyobu_Kyosuke_-_08_[1280×720][8934DS4A].mkv,
when? still waiting :)
Your list of legal streaming venues is quite small. What about funimation.com, vizanime.com, daisuki.net and theanimenetwork.com? There are probably more, but being in the UK I can only use Crunchyroll and Daisuki anyway (and Anime on Demand, I guess, but they were never that good and seem to be dead now).
Oh, Daisuki still exists? Let me add that in.
As for Funi, Viz, and TAN, guess what they use for streaming? Hint: It’s Hulu.
Daisuki actually has an official Youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/user/DAISUKI
Basically, it’s Gundam and Shaft in HD for free.
Huh. Let me throw that in too.
Why didn’t you mention Daisuki ( http://www.daisuki.net/ ) in streaming section?
I was too slow.
It’s the thought that counts <3
D_S pls stop spoonfeeding.
>streaming
D_S plz.
How could you forget to mention the best anime licensor of all time: http://www.media-blasters.com/
On a serious note though: You also left out Nozomi/Lucky Penny/RightStuf’s licensing department. They mostly license older or more obscure shows that have kind of a cult following. So unless they rescue the license of a show that already HAS a dub, it’s probably gonna be sub only.
I don’t know if you omitted these purposefully because they’re not as active as the other companies or what, but I figured I would leave this here just in case anyway.
You’re right, I intentionally kept it high level on that front. Can’t hurt to post about it in the comments though. The primary audience of this article is people who are rather green about this stuff, so I thought I’d focus on the most common options. I had also considered including dead companies (because you can still buy those materials) but if I included everything, that’d need to be spun off into an article of its own.
Should also make a guide for:
>How to be lazy, by using RSS feeds for downloading anime.
I’ve never actually done this. If it’s really useful, I’ll study up and article it like this.
I already have a guide myself I made on MAL, but basically, it downloads anime for you without you having to constantly refresh over and over for the anime you want to DL.
http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=727153 I wrote this after being so lazy to fresh. (I use Nyaa as my RSS feeding)
Oh cool, I don’t even need to make a post then. I’ll just edit it in to this one~
Fuck. Those lollipops are amazing.
In honor of Kyoukai no Kanata, this is lollipop week on Crymore. Except more sucker sexiness in the upcoming IRC article.
This better be set to auto play over the site/article.
Alternatively: this?
Those are aight, but what about this one?
Why not all three at the same time? 3x the sucker is 3x the sexiness.
I like it.
Really? No animesols.com? Quarkboy’s gonna has a sad.
If he wants to crowdsource newer anime, I don’t mind talking about it here, but old shit is not my passion and likely not the passion of people who need this guide.
Thanks for that. You’d think by now someone would have made this fucking post already but, this would be my first time seeing it.
I do know most of this stuff now, but it would have helped tremendously when I was a newbie
Actually, I was wondering why you prefer Tokyo Toshokan over Nyaa? I hadn’t heard of the former till now.
It has more content. You’ll find groups outside the regular fansub circlejerk on Tokyo-Tosho that you won’t find on Nyaa.
http://www.crymore.net/2013/04/10/drama-in-nyaaland
( ¬‿¬)
>groups
Don’t you mean “Doki”? As we established last time, NT has more groups posting releases than TT does. You might as well replace your site recommendations with “use NT as your primary target, then visit Doki’s website if you’re interested in their releases”.
Doki’s a bigger player than any Nyaa exclusives. You really gonna tell people to check individual groups’ sites? No. That’s a waste of time. There’s no reason for people to avoid one of the biggest players in the BD scene just because you and your friends are mad at Doki for screwing with you a few years ago.
I will always recommend people go to the biggest library first, and that’s Tokyo-Tosho.
oh Daiz, I’ve lost counts on how many times all my torrents have been deleted from nyaa.eu. And I’m not talking about doki.co stuff. So your hypocrisy is well received <3
Let’s not forget about Oyatsu.
And that other CR ripping group that was stealing potential donation money from Horriblesubs.
I don’t know if I look like an idiot posting this but when it comes to buyfagging I use this guide. https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Y1U5YDGrvgFW-5H_cBnDoHwCfWjPDaQ6p05-HJMcVh4#id.oludk9udp264
Hopefully this is useful.
Oh, the 4chan guide? Yeah, it’s not a bad start for learning about imports.
I don’t import but that is indeed informative.
NISA’s subtitle quality is laughable. Definitely not Hadena-tier, but you’re not gonna enjoy the time you spend watching the show.
The best way I can explain NISA’s localization is to point to their localization of the PS2 game Ar tonelico 2. When they localized it, they introduced a game-breaking bug that pretty much made the game impossible to play after a certain point: freezing during a storyline boss battle if you don’t beat it by the third turn. How do you manage that just by translating Japanese to English?
Probably in the same way that Ghostlight screwed up the Devil Survivor localisation for EU, making the game crash when you tried to fuse demons (essential to getting anywhere). The moral? Bad translations makes games mutiny.
I haven’t played any of the games they’ve translated, but I enjoyed their Katanagatari release. It’s not perfect, but I definitely do not regret buying it. Just wish the subtitles could be turned off on the Blu-ray version.
>Dark_Sage in charge of writing his own articles
Wow thank you very much for answering this question! Kinda surprised it was even picked though xD
Bookmarking this for future reference.
Unfortunate situation here. How do I manage to download my weekly anime (in this case, Kanata no Kyoukai) on a university network? Supposedly torrenting is not okay (I heard that if you’re caught, your internet access gets taken away and you have to sign a written statement not to do it again… And then if you get caught again, byebye internet… That being said, I haven’t the necessary risks to know what actually happens).
I’ve been getting by via DDL, but it’s so shit slow and my downloads don’t resume if I ever computer to sleep. Is IRC the way to go, then?
IRC would be great for you. Depending on what uni you’re at, there might be a DC++ hub for p2p.
You could also go a more expensive route if you’re bleeding money and get a seedbox. Essentially what that is is a computer somewhere else does the torrenting for you and then you can access the files via FTP.
But in general, XDCC would be your best bet.
Should be noted that IRC may not work. The college I went to whitelisted ports, and typical IRC ports were not on that list. You can get on through stuff like Mibbit, but I doubt that supports XDCC.
Not all colleges are terrible like that, but if they’re strict on stuff like torrents, they may also implement such a system.
Oh yeah, good point. I actually had to use putty to grab some of my files when I was back in college. They don’t make it particularly easy.
Real men convert to rmvb and relive the glory days.
no, real men convert to vivo and animated gifs with audio.
My ears cook listening to those cook audio files in those rmvbs.
That pic under the IRC section looks a hell of a lot like LeBlanc from LoL
Am I boss or what?
>Wanna watch Kill la Kill first? Better go on Daisuki.
this can only come from someone who hasn’t experienced their eyecancerish video, async audio and generally abysmal site performance.
I’m glad you said something. I thought it was just me yesterday. Got so bad I had to stop watching.
Updated.
Now how do I acquire manga?
To buyfag it I just order it from my local book-store. You can use the English publisher’s site to get the all important ISBN.
For my leeching I generally use Manga Traders nowadays. I used to use a combo of Manga Updates, IRC and the websites of the various groups.
Batoto?
I would also recommend USENET as a downloading option. USENET usually has a service fee of 5-10$ a month tops but is well worth it IMO. It is a direct download service that is fed to you from dedicated servers. I have never had my connection/bandwidth not maxed out when downloading from usenet.
The best USENET indexer for anime is http://fanzub.com. This index is similar to torrent trackers in a way in that you download a small couple kb .nzb file (just like a .torrent) that is loaded into your USENET client and instructs it to download the actual content.
Will Neon Alley become a good site yet?
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-02-11/neon-alley-to-offer-free-on-demand-streaming
Wonder if it’s almost time for an update on this.
Uguu