I Got Xam’d
It would be a cruel joke if Sony’s E3 announcement 12 hours ago was a big prank; I’d have lost some sleep and gain a lot of unbridled disdain for them. On the contrary they delivered a day-date release of the latest Bones anime over their Playstation Network. I guess it’s something to do when the All Stars game drags its feet into extra innings on a Tuesday night.
Normally I won’t be so excited about another digitally-delivered world premiere, but here are some technical details should you wonder if your $3.99 for 24-hours rental is going to be worth it:
1. The series is called Xam’d: Lost Memories. A first glance will immediate evoke two shows (or more), but one that everyone will first pick up is Eureka 7. But more sinister is how gorgeous the stuff looks with its scenic oceanside view that reminds me of this other studio. The steampunk-ish airship is toned down from E7’s gaudy green-lit magic, but when you take her facial markings and stick it on her, you get our female lead (who’s mostly silent in the first episode).
2. The HD version is a rental–after you download it you got 14 days to watch it. Once you play it you got 24 hours until it locks. To be honest that is fine by me; I watch and delete as SOP anyways. But 24 hours is a little short I think. And $4 is pretty steep.
3. The HD version of episode one was 1520mb. Gia reports the SD version is a measily 400. I was pulling on average 250kb/s so it still took a couple hours. YMMV here of course.
4. And being slotted for 26 episodes, possibly released on a weekly basis (actually I have no idea about this), it’s steep. I’m really borderline as to if I’ll continue past episode 3 (they’ve got my money at least up to episode 2–damn double-episode pilots) at $4 a pop. That’s just … a lot for a rental. Maybe if I skip lunch once a week. Or buy less Rock Band DLC.
5. It comes with hard subs (and the subs are better quality than Bosttv subs, for a point of comparison).
6. HD version comes with 5.1 Japanese and 2.0 Japanese. Haven’t hooked up my receiver to the PS3 yet so I can’t review the 5.1 track for you, but the 2.0 sounds fine. Darn those older receivers that don’t have HDMI. Maybe, just maybe tomorrowlater today.
7. According to the PS3, video bitrate is around 10 megabits, good ‘nuf for me but it’s no 5cm.
8. You can watch it while it’s being downloaded, hurrah. Because it does take a couple hours to pull 1.5gb. I timed it at around 80% for my bandwidth? I hope they work in something more intelligent about that in a upcoming PS3 patch, where it’ll tell you when to start the movie…
9. Screenshots. So I am not set up to do this with my PS3 (…how many anime bloggers could?), the next best thing is … just my phone cam.
Houko Kuwashima represent o/
I do apologize for the crap pics. It’s dark because it’s 2am, not because I’m too lazy to turn up the lights and not because I want to go to bed ASAP.
Maybe more pics soon. Maybe.
Damn, I want this so badly. Too bad I don’t have a PS3. I would happily pay the price tag if I could download it to my computer! Good going, Sony, good going.
Thanks for the information and screenshots!
Yes! Someone who actually likes what Sony’s doing. I think this is exactly how you monetize digisubs, but yeah, there’s a considerable technical and marketing hurdle. They totally dropped the ball on marketing, for example. There’s literally zero buzz about this show besides some Bones fans who were keeping tabs on MOON PHASE.
But then again it’s hard to say what can be said ahead of time if they are keeping PSN video store under wraps until E3.
I guess I should pay more attention to these things; I knew some people said Anime was on the store, but I figured it’d be like the 360’s offering and just be things I’ve already saw or bought. This is quite interesting though and I’ll certainly be grabbing the first handful of episodes. Not real sure I like the price point, it’s about inline with cable/satellite movie rentals and such, but they aren’t asking me to rent 26 of those to see the entire thing. I think it needs an iTunes model for this: give me a cheaper fee for an entire season run that I can pay to subscribe to. That would be much more appealing; perhaps we’ll see that in due time though.
Very much so Vician, I hope they make it more palatable for the fans to jump in. The rental/price combination is, like I said, at a point where it’s uncomfortable for me. But that would mean it’s out of question for many others.
I can’t say I don’t like what they’re doing, I just can’t afford the shit.
I think there’s plenty of hype for this show in Japan - there’s been Newtype spreads and some decent awareness of the title for a while now, there were trailers at TAF etc. Which is why it’s all the more mystifying that it’s US exclusive at the moment and that this came completely out of the blue - one minute we know nothing about any release plans, the next the first episode’s up on PSN announced as part of a conference that a lot of anime fans won’t know anything about.
Honestly, I’d pay for this if I had a PS3 and lived in the US; I’m a huge Bones fan and have been looking forward to it for ages. Alas, Sony think otherwise.
There’s a torrent out of the first episode anyway, but it’s a shame that I would gladly have paid £2 or whatever it is to watch this (I delete everything I watch fansub/raw anyway, most of it I have no intention of watching again and otherwise I just buy the DVDs, so the whole rental thing wouldn’t have bothered me that much). The minute you digitally distribute something it gets that much easier to digitally distribute it further…
I have a good idea why now that I’ve pieced the facts from a few places, as to its American exclusivity.
1. Bones screwed the pooch. They reneged their original airing slot, which was this past Spring. 2ch has rumors but this seems credible.
2. Being such a big title it’s almost guaranteed that we’ll see Xam’d on Japanese TV (and subsequent marketing of CDs and DVDs and whatever). Problem here is it takes advance negotiation to secure a slot, and even then the production companies have to pay the TV stations/work out a deal. Part of that deal includes exclusive airing rights or advance airing rights, and that hinges on Xam’d being unavailable in Japan right now.
3. Because of that, when the Japanese PSN video store launches, we probably won’t see X’amd unless a TV deal has been set, and only until it has aired first.
4. Sony has had a hand in the production, a co-owner. They wanted to use this to sell the PSN video store. It just happens that the American PSN video store launches first. Being a Sony title, negotiation of rights to the show was unnecessary so this is really a lucky freebie for Americans.
5. So..thanks to region lockout?
I just want to add one more thing that I glossed over. It’s 720 progressive and not 1080. Sux D:
And if the DRM runs out of time while you are watching it will stop playback on you D:
Thanks for the heads up on this one. I’d never even heard of it. I downloaded it to my computer via torrent (I don’t own a Playstation and have absolutely no use for one) and the quality wasn’t so great (video was fuzzy and the sound was off), but I enjoyed none the less. I loved the designs (I had to pause it a couple of times just to admire the school bus). I hope more of it gets posted (or better yet, a US DVD release). You forgot to mention that the opening theme has the second greatest song title ever.
PS3 is a kickass BRD player. That’s enough reason to own it.
And the designs are really good. I spent some time last night (couldn’t get 5.1 hooked up; got too much stuff to do) just going through the show a few times before it expired. Hit pause many times to just admire the artwork and designs. It’s literally movie quality stuff, and not just the art.
Beautiful, I watched it a few times til it expired as well. I checked out the torrent but it was awful :(, I’ll be following this weekly.
Capturing HD costs too much to setup.
You would need:
-HDCP stripper capture card (Black Magic’s Intensity) which cost $250 depending on model
-Fast storage setup, at least 3 large drives striped RAID 0 (because of uncompressed video)
-Powerful processor (quad core, or the newer line of intel’s EXXX)
-2GB RAM bare minimum
-Powerful GPU
Overall an expensive computer(imo) really >.<
Well, basically.