These are nice suggestions. The “Continue watching” was available years ago, and from a certain point they ruined it. It even remembered if you had left an episode unfinished and brought you to the exact same point.
About the reasons why Chinese content is overwhelming nowadays, it’s not entirely Viki’s responsibility. Read here: Lack of New Korean dramas on Viki - #58 by christina_
In short, the main reasons are:
The 3 Korean networks created a streaming platform called Kocowa. Viki tried to get a few of those dramas by making a deal with them, and these few are available on Viki for those who pay more (Vikipass plus), but only in America and I think the UK.
The popularity of Korean dramas has made other big streaming companies like NF or the company with the mouse (cannot be named) producing their own dramas with popular actors. Of course they usually don’t share with Viki, or if they do, it is months later.
Again because of popularity, the licenses for Korean dramas have become very high, so it’s a cutthroat competition on who is going to get them.
Whereas Chinese dramas used to suck until very recently, so they were cheaper. Now they have become much better, but still the good ones are a rare minority, most are the cookie-cutter variety with the cold heartless CEO who is inwardly a softie with mommy issues and childhood traumas. Just about when a significant number of Korean dramas had slowly started to get rid of those tropes. Sigh.
As for Japanese content, it’s a trickle. And if this wasn’t enough aggravation, they don’t choose the good ones, but mostly the tropey romantic comedies. Double sigh. Need more JAPANESE licensed dramas and movies
ANOTHER suggestion:
Many other sites that also host Kdramas and other content and they have a setting that lets you speed up or slow down the drama. I found that very helpful as I got used to using subtitles. Now when I want to revisit a drama I like the option of speeding things up to get to the parts I love best. Also to speed up and get past stressful or parts of a new drama I might not be fully enjoying to see if I want to spend more time with it etc.
It seems to me the “big three” for Korea, SBS, KBS, and MBC often don’t provide streaming rights to Viki but sell those rights to viki competitors in the US. TvN produces a lot of great K drama but from the very beginning, viki didn’t get many of them until viki’s early competitor ■■■■■■■■■■ went under. But when companies like NF and H**u started streaming K- drama, they got a lot of the recent A-list TvN dramas and now collaborate in production of K drama.
It is a shame that viki doesn’t have a stellar role in streaming J drama as viki’s owner is Rakuten, the so-called “■■■■■■ of Japan”.
I know that Viki has been showing fewer Asian dramas lately because of its rivals, but I hope that in the future they can show french or turkish series there.
Personally after watching material from all sources I have found Korean material done the best. I live in the USA, born here and English speaking… to say that the Korean material is better is saying quite alot. When material is politically or socially biased they really do lower their value. Here in the US I just got fed up with it regardless of the platform… thus looking at other venues. The Korean materials, I have noticed in some areas, have taken a hit as far as good writing etc.
It might be just me but I have come to enjoy re-watching material because I ENJOYED IT.
A drama that does NOT overly stress out the viewer (we have enough of that everyday ha ha) has occasional light comedic moments and good triumphing over evil or adversity… duh that is just the basic of MOST award winning TV or Movies. Lately I find myself stop watching something because it misses the above mentioned OR overdose one of them. Does anyone but me think this way???
Suggestion: Please open a conversation topic about the project finder. As I’m new here, I was searching for where to write this, but I couldn’t find any space about that topic.
From my point of view, the project finder has two improvement opportunities:
First, there shouldn’t be appearing projects that are already finished. Maybe the language moderator responsible for the project can take care of it, or you can implement an automatic start and finish dates for the publishing to be active…
Second, it would be useful to have a filter so the contributor can organize the projects by the number of episodes (maybe from shorter to larger), so if you are interested in participating in a specific number of episodes, it would be easy to find them instead of looking them randomly.
Thank you for reading this, I hope it will be useful.
