Crunchyroll announced this week that it will begin testing the use of its new Java-based video player for streaming all site content. The announcement came in response to concerns from users regarding the performance of the site’s current Flash-based video player. With web standards moving away from proprietary formats such as Flash and the plug-ins due to relatively inefficient browser performance, Crunchyroll has begun to look into alternatives in order to improve user experience.

“I remember when I was back in college, I kept hearing about how Java was all the rage,” a Crunchyroll developer told Anime Maru. “We’ve received complaints from many users about poor performance in our Flash video player so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give our users something they have always asked for. It’s even named after coffee, how cool is that!”

Crunchyroll cited the success of popular online role-playing game Runescape, whose game engine was constructed in Java; millions of players logged into the game during its peak. Crunchyroll stated that with such a history it figures having a Java video player handle a few thousand weebs should be no problem at all. Crunchyroll added that initial testing on Dan’s Alienware laptop in the breakroom had already gone very well. The project has since been handed off to Crunchyroll interns with an expected completion time of a few weeks.

Crunchyroll expects its viewership to rise with the announcement and has begun website infrastructure upgrades in anticipation. Website hosting will be moved from the Compaq laptop balanced at the end of the company’s coffee table to an iPad one of the marketing guys left charging in the meeting room. Crunchyroll stated that the infrastructure upgrades should allow them to hypothetically serve “literally dozens of viewers before the site locks up.”

Crunchyroll will begin allowing its premium members to participate in beta testing the Java player in approximately two weeks. After which, the player will become the default for all visitors on the site. In order to begin using the new player, users are asked to make sure that they have updated Java on their computers to Version 8 Update 526.

Share this: Facebook

Reddit

Twitter

Email

