I need to correct your misunderstanding. Rakuten DID pay the owners of Viki US$200,000,000 to buy the company. The money went directly to the owners which included some venture capital investors. The money DID NOT go into the company itself. That is where you were mislead by some of the earlier PR releases. What they meant was that they were confident that Rakuten would strengthen its investment in Viki, but obviously they had no authority to speak for Rakuten’s business plans for Viki. Sorry, but you were mislead by the former owners of Viki who did not want to appear like they took advantage of all the Viki volunteers.
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I’ll be honest: even YouTube with its 7~8 ads looks better than Viki right now.
I just came back from my last attempt at using this site, because before even starting to watch something, I had to watch to 3 Viki non-skippable ads + 2 normal ads + 1 Watch Ad-free ad. ONE AFTER ANOTHER!
And the worst part: this repeats every 10 minutes.
Sensentv is also a good site for dramas!! They upload fast and you don’t have to worry about countless ads. Every once in a while I will get an ad if I play a video but most of the time I don’t.
What I am seeing with the vast majority of the complainers is an overwhelming sense of self entitlement. They feel that they “deserve” to watch for free, in HD, with no ads - why? - well because they are going to throw a tantrum and go to that “other” site if they don’t get their way. I pay my $4 a month, and I actually think that is too cheap - nearly all other sites charge from $6 to $9 - and on Hulu you get ads even if you DO pay for the sub.
I am not sure why so many people think that they have a “right” to watch when they essentially contribute nothing, in fact they are a drain on resources because someone has to pay for things like servers and bandwidth. And for the complainers that think that GoodDrama will stay like it is where adblock works, you might be shocked here in a another couple of months…
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So without either ads or sub fees, how do you propose that Viki pay for itself?
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well, it’s your choice.
I have started to watch Asian dramas on mysoju from 2009 until this year when the site was closed . After that, I discovered good drama and Viki (a few months ago). The ads are annoying, but not enough to make me leave this community.
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I have no problem paying for what ever program that show drama. I am a member of both. Starting off with viki I had no problem viewing, but now having problem with the streaming on viki.
Well, I guess they all know the expression about not letting the door hit you in the…
Hulu does have some of their dramas and movies, but Hulu has way too many ads even if you pay for their subscription. Thus, I don’t subscribe to Hulu anymore. I do subscribe to Viki even though I have done more than 3000 edits, Dramafever, and Netflix… It’s cheaper than the American Cable companies. Plus, they have more shows that I like to watch!
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Let’s say, I am allright with everyhing , even I dislike the change and that viki doesn’t have anymore an unique appearance.
Maybe just those who are like me, QC’s and those who feel like home on viki while working on shows (working with pleasure) will understand and stand the facts as they are. When they released the surveys to ask if we would pay for viki pass, I said yes, I would.
How many filled the survey? And how many said YES?! I remember that there were two surveys with the same topic, not in the same time of course. I completed both and I guess viki choosed the options that most users accepted/suggested.
Finaly, nobody force you to stay here. I was so surprised that as a QC I received the viki pass for free… didn’t expected. Even this was done like this I would have paid for it just because particulary, I like to contribute/work on here…and to watch shows.
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Agree, chingu! Great words!
How many complains from users that never ever bothered to do one single subtitle… what viki means to some will not mean the same to all.
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LOL “we all hate that place” LOLOLOL ROTFL
I agree that Viki has changed too much but still will not watch Dramafever. Maybe a third site will come along soon.
try d r a m a f i r e . c o m… without the spaces. it has all with subs, just like another s i t e. i guess were not allowed to speak of other places.
Well I have been with viki since I first found it in 2008. I liked it then, and when I needed it again to catch up on kdramas it was here for me. Truth be told with all the new add-on’s for firefox or chrome or whatever internet you use there will always be a way to get around the ads or the closed for your region. Truth be told viki is the only place I seen that has it done fast (thanks to the volunteers) and has a community that makes you feel like home. I wont change it even if people say go to dramafever, dramacrazy, dramafire, mysoju, hulu, netflix, or even youtube. Viki has to get its funding from someplace. So the fee was going to come sooner or later. Just be thankful. And truthly patience is the ultimate answer.
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Dramafever (which I was under the impression licenses only for the US market), pays for translation. Apparently they don’t pay for editing though because I have tried to watch two shows there this year and the subtitles were so bad that I stopped. I even complained to DF and they just blew me off. Of course, the two were among the free ones, not the pay ones. I would not be willing to pay anyone for the kind of quality they provide.
The original Dramacrazy site had lots of shows. They would claim that nothing was from their site but somehow you could watch the shows with En subtitles. Often when working on shows on Viki I would check out the same show on Dramacrazy. They would usually run a day or two later than Viki. What I found was that most of the time, their subs were identical to those which our volunteers had just produced. On two occassions, I modified some subs to something completely unrelated to the original translation. Each time those incorrect subtitles showed up on the dramacrazy show. Of course I then went back to ours and corrected them . Another thing, and probably what bothered me most, was that they removed all of the credit lines for the Viki team who did the work. When the subs were not exact copies of what came from Viki, I found that they matched Dramafever subs. They turned out to be on episodes where Viki was later to produce the subs for the particular episode. DF subs were much easier to identify given the numerous grammatical errors.
When the Dramacrazy site shut down, it reappeared as a .eu site. Same style but don’t appear to have come up with the major advertisers yet like the previous site had.
I had never been to Dramafire until a few minutes ago since I figured they were just another pirate site. I watched the first approximately 10 minutes of a drama there and concurrently on Viki. The subs were identical as I expected they would be. This happening accidentally by two different translators is impossible with Korean to English. The segments being cut in the same places is also not going to happen in real life. The very first thing that came up there was, guess what, an ad. My adblocker took care of it though. Once I cleared the empty ad box and after a while of buffering, the ad tried to come back. Every time I paused the video the ad tried to come back. While the credit for the Viki volunteers is gone, the very first thing that appeared in the subtitle area was DRAMAFIRE.COM. This really offends me, not to mention that they are selling advertising on the backs of Viki volunteers. You couldn’t pay me to watch a video on their site and I will report them to authorities just as I have for dramacrazy.
There are other sites that do the same thing. It is difficult to determine where the videos originate or who copied the subs from Viki but I am not going to waste my time with them. Unfortunately it is too easy to copy the subs from Viki and I guess this will continue. It is certain though that the reason it exists is because of an easy way to make money, at least they think so until which ever government agency catches up to them. It aggrevates me that so many people will support them and then complain when Viki needs to be able to generate revenue to operate. The licenses for shows have to be paid for and that comes either from advertiser fees or subscriber fees. Nothing is ever free for long.
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Urgh. That’s definitely what bothers me the most. I don’t know if I’m in the minority when I say that I don’t mind sites reposting the subs, but I get really frustrated when they take out the credits. I’m sure it’s more about evading copyright notices than anything else, but hey, if they’re going to slap their name all over the video -.-
There is no doubt that any free site posting dramas with English subs are ripping the subs from Viki and/or Dramafever. And I think it’s silly that all these people are complaining about leaving Viki and watching on those sites. Like I’ve said before, without Viki and DF, those other sites would have next to nothing.
…I do wonder about how they rip the subs, though I’ve heard some things here and there, I don’t think I really get it. I do know that it was only a few months ago that Viki fixed a “bug”? Because for a while there, it was pretty easy to get a copy of the sub .srt file (which essentially stores the timing and translations, which lots of video players can read, etc). Regardless, people who rip the subs have ways around it anyway.
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There are so many ways. If you know how to decode sites you can so copy and even hack a site. its easy as hacking into another persons email or even computer. If they can do that they can hack sites. And they other sites that I was speaking about Almost everyone knows about mysoju, once I came upon a video and oops they forgot to delete the credits and boom it was from viki. But its all good people can do whatever they want. we wont rope em and put them on a leash and say" you cant go to another site you NEED to be only with viki." no everyone is free. I just think that in my opinion seeing the work being done and how its all done, its awesome and amazing, its great quality and you can truthfully thank the people knowing who the people are and what they did for that video, other sites don’t compare to viki. that’s the thing. Well they can leave or not its up to them,
Another thing people talk about ads and ads and no license and they cant see dramas…
Google tips to get around it 1. Ad blockers 2. Proxy disguise 3. Contribute in the right way, (not subbing incorrectly or segmenting without reading how to segment.) 4. if anything doesnt work Pay its only 5 dollars. cheaper then the internet bill period. It’s like giving a tip to a waiter in the restaurant.
You are willing to watch the subs ripped off from Drama Fever though it seems.
That’s the same to me, what it bothers me is that they remove our credits…should we add more segments for the credits then…I know they will delete them but at least will make it longer to edit or delete our credits, there must be a way or… do the ugly in some subs… add the credits in some important phrase… I don’t know, but it bothers me that they just delete our work credit.