Wow, the grammar on that post title really sucks. I’ll refrain from making “BOST Of Me” puns.

IrishNinja informed me (well, his friendslist in general) about BOST TV, and I had a look at what purports to be a site dedicated to streaming subbed anime, because “We want to bring you anime more quickly than before and titles that see little chance of a DVD release“. The article on ANN adds… not much more detail, come to think of it.

As far as I can tell, yes, this is legit, in the sense that they actually did licence the series they offer.

I shall try to summarize what I see to be the salient points which doubtless everyone is agog to know. Knowing myself, this will probably take longer than simply going to the site and checking it out oneself.

First of all, the entire thing is subs only. No dubs, and hardsubbed. The subs are pretty competent, as far as I can tell, although obviously I’m not an expert in this.

Each episode is priced at… well, it’s complicated, but in short, if you ignore all the little niggly and yet quite important details, you get to watch an episode for US$1.99. Payment is done through Paypal, which I have yet to really test out, mainly because I’m not sure what shape my Paypal account is in, so on that you’re pretty much on your own. Also, and this may be important to know, you cannot quite buy one episode and leave it at that. Well, technically you can, but you’ll be wasting money. BOST TV works on a system of “BOST points”, and one episode is worth 100 points, and 100 points is worth US$1.99. However, you can only buy these points (according to their FAQ) in batches of 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000. For the math-impaired, that’s payments of $9.95, $19.90, $39.80, and $99.50.

And you won’t be owning the episodes either. Instead, you “rent” them for 14 days (at least, for two of the three series currently on offer: more on that later), during which time you can keep watching them as often as you like, provided you don’t mind having to stream them all over again. There is currently no (official) way to download the episodes to your hard disk, although with the Internet being what it is, I’m sure someone will come up with a way to do so and possibly turn it into a Firefox plugin or something. (Note: actually doing so and downloading the episodes may not be entirely legal.)

The videos are streamed in Flash, specifically requiring Adobe Flash Player 8. (Hush, Kalium.) Surprisingly, they’re not bad in quality, although obviously not DVD quality (or, to be precise, what is supposed to be DVD quality). The basic video area is… well, I can’t really tell, but it seems to be around 640×360 (based on a quick comparison and guesstimation with one of my old AMVs), with letterboxing for the 4:3 release(s). You can full-screen it with the obvious quality downgrade. I imagine that without fullscreen and on a casual watch, the image is crisp enough to not make much of a difference.

Streaming speed is commendably quick. I’m not sure if this applies for everyone, but for comparison’s sake, Youtube, Veoh, Revver, and Nico Nico Douga load pretty slowly for me, although in Youtube’s case it’s inconsistent.

Now, anime selection. Ah, this would be complicated. Currently BOST is offering HanTsuki, Keitai Shoujo, and Shinigami no Ballad, in various stages of series completion. Of these, the only one I’ve really watched before is Keitai Shoujo, and coincidentally, this is the only one available to me.

BOST divides its anime offerings between regions. Currently I’ve seen regions for North America, Australia and New Zealand (apparently counted as one region), and Oceania. By process of elimination, Singapore is considered part of Oceania, since the only series of the three available there (well, here) is the only one I can access. I’m not sure if they decide where a user is from based on IP or the information provided when registering, or perhaps both; I answered honestly, and I’m not really keen on finding out what happens if one claims to be from a region one is not, since there’s the usual clause about “honest information only plz” in their rather boilerplate Terms of Service.

Keitai Shoujo is available in all three regions. HanTsuki and Shinigami no Ballad are only available in Australia and New Zealand. I suspect that this may be due to the nature of Keitai Shoujo, which is a six-episode series (well, five episodes and one bonus) with each episode running maybe six to seven minutes, including the minute-plus-each opening and ending themes. I also suspect that this may be part of the reason why Keitai Shoujo is priced at zero BOST points, meaning free, with the rental expiry being the 26th of February 2008, rather than a straight two weeks. HanTsuki and Shinigami no Ballad, as mentioned earlier, are priced at 100 BOST points per episode.

EDIT: Further checking may mean that Singapore is not actually part of Oceania, since the Shinigami no Ballad creditless OP offered as an “extra” and thus at zero BOST points, is technically only available in Australia and New Zealand, but I managed to add it to my library as well. In other words, it’s possible that I got in on Keitai Shoujo only because it’s free, not that it’s actually open to my region.

Also uniquely for Keitai Shoujo (being technically a harem anime, in the technical senses of both “harem” and “anime”), there’s a user poll on which girl we would like to see “win”, with the prize alluded to be the sixth bonus episode focusing on that girl (twelve minutes long: first half a recap of the girl’s episode, second half the romantic resolution). I doubt anyone really cares about spoilers in this case, so I’ll just reveal that in the “original” run of the series, the winner based on the Japanese poll was Sayo Tomoe (second episode, the quiet sleepy-eyed one who would look good in gothloli fashion). From the BOST president’s post on the forums, I get the impression that we’ll be seeing a new episode if a different girl wins this poll.

Personally I’m rooting for Miya Gotou, the straightforward genki girl who happens to be the one in the top image for this post. But then I think she looks the cutest, so I’m biased, pretty much by definition. Also, Kana Ueda.

The site itself is kind of unintuitive to navigate, but nothing too serious. There’s a worrying lack of information about the whole business, though, with vague general press-release-type statements taking the place of the burning questions, such as What Happens If It All Goes Pear-Shaped.

So. Is this the viable substitute to fansubs people have been clamouring for? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. Props have to be given for the effort, if nothing else, of providing subtitled episodes in a reasonably crisp and efficient manner. Pricing and availability are the sticking point, I believe: unlike fansubbers, licencers have to follow the rules, illogical and self-destructive as those rules may be. The whole “rental” scheme for two US dollars per episode would probably satisfy those who watch fansubs for the “preview”, but I have to wonder about the effectiveness of this when the stated mission is to release anime which are not likely to see a DVD release in the first place, thus making the “preview” the only (legal) source we have. And availability would depend on licencing negotiations, which, to my knowledge, are thorny issues involving large amounts of cash, both from the property owners as well as companies worried about being able to sell their physical media in the face of online competition.

I get the feeling that the success of this endeavour depends on fan participation, letting BOST know which shows they want to watch, so that BOST can go to the licencing negotiation table with a fistful of proof that yes, there is a viable audience waiting for the anime, if they could only release it. This is based on no more than an admittedly illogical impression, borne perhaps from wishful thinking. But, all in all, I think that with all the recent “The Death Of Anime” doom and gloom, this may be a chance to change the way the whole thing works. Not a certainty, not a sure bet; just a chance. A better chance, perhaps, than letting things continue as they are.

If nothing else, hey, free Keitai Shoujo. It’s not the best anime I’ve watched, and I’d hesitate to even classify it as “good”, but it’s definitely easy on the eyes. Flash video quality notwithstanding.

UPDATE: I’m checking out the forums attached to the site right now, and while I won’t be tirelessly copy-and-pasting everything from everyone in authority, being that this post is wordy enough as it is (besides, I’ve run out of random pictures to break up the Walls Of Text), I figure some of you might be interested in this:

I can assure you our programmer is hard at work on the next version of the player. You’ll see a few improvements when that is ready included turning off the controls in fullscreen.

Regarding “keep forever” items, we’d actually like to do that, however it’s difficult getting the content holders to agree to that. It’s definitely something we’re working on long term. In the meantime, all our extra content are “keep forever”. And we’ll be adding more as time goes on.

Also:

As we are a startup, the content holders are monitoring us closely to gauge what kind of reaction to the service there is before opening up other options to us. I urge everyone to use the feedback form as the information collected there is part of what we present to the content holders.

Fistful of proof indeed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 7:58 pm and is filed under anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.