It wasn't a long time ago when Crunchyroll was just the target of public ire. But now they're also one of the premium and legit outlet of popular TV anime on the web. Their paid-to-stream service, complementing their pay-to-download and free-to-stream services, makes a fairly attractive package. That is, if you want to get your Naruto Shippuden and Shugo Chara on...

Crunchyroll made news when it got rid of its infringing stuff and made deals with Japanese companies, promising 1-hour delayed "simulcasts" and hi-def feeds for some of the top shows. It's just that you have to pay to get it. That's fine, but is the Crunchyroll paid-for membership really worth your money? It turns out some of what you fear about Crunchyroll is probably true, but it's also surprisingly earnest in trying to deliver what it promised. Let's find out what happened for the Anime Membership users on Crunchyroll the past three weeks. Yep, a hands-on review from the trenches, in the pants of a paying customer.

This review can be somewhat technical, because face it, you kind of need a decent computer to stream high definition videos over the internet. Just an average PC will probably do, but it has to be better than your Grandmother's Pentium 3 from 2001. Also, to enjoy high-def, you need a fast internet connection. Crunchyroll lists the system requirements as these:

Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115; Version 10 or higher is strongly recommended

Broadband internet connection (e.g., cable, DSL, etc.)

Intel Pentium 4 2GHz or equivalent

256MB of system memory

The Anime Membership, CR's paid-to-stream service, launched on Jan. 8th. It coincided with the Naruto Shippuden episode 91 broadcast in Japan. Currently, the cost of membership is $6.95 a month, $19.95 for three, or $59.95 for 12. In other words, you could be paying $6.95 a month, $6.65 a month or $5 a month if you go the distance.

Putting aside the turbulent launch week in which people had all kinds of difficulties and some can't even watch some of the stuff because it was lagging so bad, one thing that was impressive was that CR got really hands-on. They would be tweaking the site on a daily basis and it made a first-impression review difficult. I could write it and it'll be obsolete the next day. Nonetheless, it was rough. The lag and the web-based video player gave me all kinds of problems. After a few days of that, though, the site was mostly tolerable aside from the occasional player disconnect or playback reset. I was able to enjoy shows like the second season of Tower of Druaga and Natsume Yuujincho with just some small inconveniences.

Moving on from the service difficulties, there were two other problems CR had to deal with. One was that they communicated poorly with the Anime Members who were the early-adopters, buying into the service before launch. People didn't know about the system requirements or the changes to the video player they made for their service launch. While that was hammered out days after launch, it just seemed a little amateurish to me. The second one was much more serious--the 480 and 720 feeds looked, well, pretty terrible. Actually they looked worse than the H264 feeds sometimes as the video looked a little over-compressed and the colors were off. This problem persisted for two weeks and they were just fixed this week. (Thanks, Matthew!)

I tried out the cleaned-up 720 feed of Naruto Shippuden episode 93 this week, and it looked actually pretty good for streaming media. My PC (a low-end Intel Core 2 Duo) handled it mostly smoothly, and besides one time that the connection to the video seemed to just died, I have no major complaints. Well, there were other blunders, such as a gap of subtitles missing at the end omake bit, but it doesn't kill the deal.

While I didn't sample every show and every episode that are exclusively available to Anime Membership users, the general quality of translation was passable. The subtitling jobs are simple and sufficient, but don't expect any fancy fansub shenanigans and karaoke lyrics. In fact, the OP/EDs are usually not subtitled at all.

For many of the shows and streams now on CR, the subtitles are soft subs, meaning you can toggle them on or off. It's a great way to make some screen caps! In fact, you can check out the screen caps from this week's Shippuden here, here and here. There's an example of how the subtitles look like, and also the appearing-disappearing watermarking.

If Naruto or Shugo Chara is not your cup of tea, Anime Membership users also get to see the 480 feed for many of their other "simulcast" titles. Generally they do look notably better than the H264 stream. Beyond just watching anime, the Anime Membership also gives you bonuses like skipping ads (not a big deal) and Crunchyroll points which lets you doodle around using their Gaia-online-like social networking system. I didn't really care for that; I'm just here to do business!

So, in the end, there are still a lot of problem surrounding Crunchyroll's switchover. That's not to mention the legal black hole they are still trying to climb out of. However, they now do provide a real service, with proceeds going back to the industry, and it is priced reasonably for the fans who want the latest. If you are curious and on the verge of springing for it, conventional wisdom will probably recommend you to wait until they straighten out all the wrinkles, as there are a ways to go. The bright side is that they are visibly reducing the number of wrinkles. For that matter, if CR would give all of us early adopters a bonus month of subscription for putting up with their sub-par launch experience, that would really win them kudos...

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reviewed by Jeff Chuang