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Crunchyroll Lowers Video Bitrates For Shows After Release Day
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Apparently, CR rolled out an overhaul to its video format that lowered bit rate, even for paying subscribers. This resulted in lower video quality overall. :disappointed:
They then backtracked claiming it was a mistake, but then apparently only restored video quality for day 1 new release videos, with it dropping back after that. It's unclear if this lower bit rate is the new normal, or again a "mistake", but it's certainly concerning.
Here's a decent opinion article on the matter currently.
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Just to set the record straight:
J-Novel club promises to never lower our translation and grammar quality after the fact.
In fact, if anything we will make improvements!
Also we use h265 and stream in 4K at 10mb/s for ALL our video content.
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I personally cancelled cause I'm just so sick of CR after all these years. The video player is garbage and has always given me issues no matter what internet connection I'm on or what device. The manga reader has always been garbage and even the new one isn't really that much better. Tey really just don't listen to reports about serious issues as I've sent in reports about stuff that should have been fixed immediately, then to go months without any attention. (A newly released chapter for a manga had the pages obviously out of order. I haven't even checked if it has been fixed after the first 3 months.)
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Wow that's straight-up bull, paid users getting lower quality than pirates.
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Crunchy released a new statement on the matter.
"Going forward, you will see that we have updated the video experience for simulcasts and new episodes within the new infrastructure. As the transition to this new infrastructure is complete, we will re-encode all of our catalog with this higher quality.
Please know that it will never be Crunchyroll's intention to lessen the viewing experience. In cases like this we're grateful users reached out to us and provided feedback about the issue. We appreciate the patience with our efforts and will continue working to bring an improved viewing experience across Crunchyroll."
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@Terrence It's just PR. It wasn't a new issue, it's just that their greed has gotten so bad that it was affecting the simulcast viewers more obviously. They've been lowering the quality of their library for over a year.
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@Aruseus493 said in Crunchyroll Lowers Video Bitrates For Shows After Release Day:
It's just PR. It wasn't a new issue, it's just that their greed has gotten so bad that it was affecting the simulcast viewers more obviously.
There were some comments from CR suggesting that it's not the case and you should probably wait (unsubscribing meanwhile would be justifiable too) for technical details. Dunno if you're supposed to fell better about that but apparently most of that regression was result of lots of technical mistakes rather than cost/quality decisions.
In case you find it unplausible, let me remind you that funimation serves 64kbps audio regardless of video bitrate which goes up to 10Mbps (i.e. in 1080p case they are "saving" 10MB per 1.6GB episode by making audio sound really bad), this audio was the only option for watching in UK and watching via apps for almost a year and it was already reported last summer.
