Links to the Two World Wide GONZO Shows--Made Just a Little Easier...

[Chris Beveridge]

Since the press releases were rather vauge as to where one can go specifically to watch the two GONZO shows set to debut worldwide on the web next week, I decided to create a short listing of where to look for them on YouTube and BOST TV (already covered in another thread, but repeated here just for convenience).
The Tower of DRUAGA -the Aegis of URUK-
Japanese Site
English Site
YouTube
BOST TV
BLASSREITER
Japanese Site
English Site
YouTube
BOST TV
Other Links
BOST TV's Special GONZO page

...Happy Watchings!

[Mafty Allegro]

Originally Posted by Chris Beveridge

Since the press releases were rather vauge as to where one can go specifically to watch the two GONZO shows set to debut worldwide on the web next week, I decided to create a short listing of where to look for them on YouTube and BOST TV (already covered in another thread, but repeated here just for convenience).
The Tower of DRUAGA -the Aegis of URUK-
Japanese Site
English Site
YouTube
BOST TV
BLASSREITER
Japanese Site
English Site
YouTube
BOST TV
Other Links
BOST TV's Special GONZO page

...Happy Watchings!

To add to the migrated post I made on the old forum:

-There has been no official word on any DVD release, though downloadable video will be available for both. Both shows will be provided in Japanese with English subtitles.

-Judging from the information from BOST's season pass news, DRUAGA will be 12 episodes long and BLASSREITER will be 24 episodes long.

[something]

BOST is down right now so I can't check there, and if I've asked this before I don't know where the answer was posted.

So BOST sent me their email with a promo code to get the free eps. I have no interest in watching either show but I do have an interest in seeing what their non-DRM downloads look like.

Hearing that the resolution is pitifully low worries me but I want to at least try it before confirming it's crap. I'm not going to pay to do so, however. So does this free trial promo code include just the streaming rental or can I also try out the download for ep 1 with it?

[hikaru004]

Well it looks like GyaO got to air it (Druaga) first at 25:15. YouTube Japan, CR and BOST TV don't have it yet. CR's count down says that it's over an hour (1 hour 46 min) to showtime.

The free promotion was for the DRM free download of ep. 1 in addition to the rental. It couldn't hurt to give it a try.

Edit: That would put the broadcast time according to CR at 27:00, just 1/2 hour before TVHokkaido.

[something]

Originally Posted by hikaru004

The free promotion was for the DRM free download of ep. 1 in addition to the rental. It couldn't hurt to give it a try.

Ok, good. This will decide if I completely ignore the BOST concept or at least keep my eye on it. Site is still down at the moment though.

[leongsh]

Originally Posted by hikaru004

Well it looks like GyaO got to air it (Druaga) first at 25:15. YouTube Japan, CR and BOST TV don't have it yet.

Currently watching The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of URUK over at YouTube. Crappy video aside (well, that's expected), the English subtitles are really quite decent.

If you can ignore the crappy quality of the video, it's very serviceable.

[something]

Originally Posted by leongsh

If you can ignore the crappy quality of the video, it's very serviceable.

It looks like BOST has the episode up too. I tried Druaga epsiode 1. Blassreiter still says "Coming Soon".

Video:
- Stream, regular size: Loads without delays or buffering. Video quality is better than YouTube, but the window is far too small. [-]
- Stream, fullscreen: Loads without delays or buffering. Not quite full screen (menu at bottom takes space). Video quality very poor, odd jerkiness to animation. [-]
- Download, PSP: 97.24MB .mp4, downloaded in 1m4s (dl speed well over 1MB/s). Video quality very poor, odd jerkiness to animation. [-]
- Download, iPod: 102.57MB .mp4, downloaded in 0m46s (dl speed almost 2MB/s). Video quality very, very poor, odd jerkiness to animation. [-]

Subtitles:
Font is good. [+]
Position is too low. [-]
They read smoothly from my spot checks. [+]
I think I saw at least some honorifics maintained. [+]
OP and ED themes were not translated at all (kanji, romanji or english). I don't like karaoke, so I'm not asking for that, just a translation of some sort. [-]
I don't think I saw any traditional full Japanese names mentioned, so I don't know if they're maintaining original naming order or Westernizing the names. [/]

Miscellaneous:
- Watermark in the top right. I'm not quite seeing where that would make anyone think twice about distributing it illegally, especially when it's free to view on YouTube for people who don't care about quality, and those that do wouldn't want to watch the poor video contained in the download. And presumably they'd want to C&D any unauthorized distro of these episodes, whether it had the watermark or not, so what's the distinction for? Watermarking just feels like something someone in upper management was told was "necessary" by a drunk man on the street, and they accepted it without ever asking why or giving it a second thought. I can watch things with watermarks if I have no alternative, but I don't like it, especially if I'm paying for it. [-]
- The video jerkiness was strange. It wasn't a result of my computer's processing speed, that much is certain. It wasn't the typical desync/stuttering I get when I try to play something too demanding, like a high def 1080p encode. Instead it's like the animation just skipped a bunch of frames here and there whenever there was motion. Or like a really, really, really bad case of interlacing on a DVD. Someone more technically inclined might have a better way to word it. [-]
- The show was really bad from what I managed to watch, but that's not BOST's fault. [/]
- Their servers provide fantastic download speeds. [+]
- NO DRM!! [+]

Verdict:
BOST needs to offer higher quality versions of their downloads, ones meant for actual full screen PC viewing, not just for portable devices. I'm not even a video quality whore at all, but when played on a computer monitor, these look markedly inferior to a mediocre xvid/avi fansub encoder's work.

There are a number of things they need to do before I can see myself actually paying for these episodes. I still think it's really awesome that there's no DRM, but I don't want to watch the files as they are now (even ignoring the quality of the show) so that only goes so far. If the only reason they're eschewing DRM is because they know they're not offering something most people want, that's not much of a step at all.

[chouchoun.fan]

Originally Posted by something

OP and ED themes were not translated at all (kanji, romanji or english). I don't like karaoke, so I'm not asking for that, just a translation of some sort. [b][-]

As mentioned in the "BOST Notes" (which is the place where we place translation notes), this is a licensing issue - we are currently not allowed to put a translation/romanji of the song lyrics on the video (yes you read that correctly). The people at GDH was getting this sorted out with the people at Avex (the music rights holder) but sadly it wasn't cleared by the time the episode goes on air.

As for the other comments, we will reflect upon those. There are points that we've already discussed with the licensors here before but didn't get through. I'm sure you've read it a lot of times from R1 companies already - changes on the Japan side of things happens rather slowly, I think it is a little unrealistic to expect everything to happen in one giant step, when you know that such changes had never really happened before.

[something]

Originally Posted by chouchoun.fan

As mentioned in the "BOST Notes" (which is the place where we place translation notes), this is a licensing issue - we are currently not allowed to put a translation/romanji of the song lyrics on the video (yes you read that correctly).

Truly Japanese licensor holder stupidity know no bounds. I hope Gonzo is able to clear that up for you eventually.

[Suwako Moriya]

Originally Posted by leongsh

If you can ignore the crappy quality of the video, it's very serviceable.

I ended up watching episode 01 on youtube just recently. Yeah the quality is definitely weak, but at least it still gave me an idea as to what Druaga is like. Right now I'm skimming the BOST version.