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Post by ajk on Oct 17, 2018 2:41:48 GMT -5
Yes the all-caps are appropriate for once. Checked the newsfeed on my phone before I went to sleep (they tell you never to do that cause you won't sleep well, and now I've learned my lesson) and found out that Warner Bros. is shutting down DramaFever effective immediately.
Warner bought DF in 2016 from Softbank, the Asian company. They're claiming that the market for streaming rights to TV series has gotten tougher and tougher recently thanks to big hitters like Amazon and Netflix moving in. At least that's what they say...
...but at its heart it looks like this was driven by the AT&T/Time Warner merger. Apparently there's a plan for them to start a new streaming service run by HBO. Which may or may not include the DramaFever stuff, who knows. If it does, you can be darned sure it will cost more to subscribe--isn't that the way it always is after a merger. Less competition, fewer options, higher prices.
Well isn't that just great.
I have no idea what to do right now about Geunchogo. I'll take a couple of days and approach this calmly. Have always discouraged people from watching things on unlicensed sites but at this point I'm so tired of these media companies pulling the plug out in the middle of a series, I just don't care any more. Even if you have good business reason to discontinue carrying a series, to do it with no advance warning when people are in the middle of watching something they've invested many hours of time into, that is absolute garbage. Total disrespect for paying customers. But I'm preaching to the choir so I'll stop.
For now.
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Post by ajk on Oct 17, 2018 2:53:39 GMT -5
MTR and bird, my apologies I didn't see your posts until after I posted this. I always check the recent posts first thing but this time I was too pissed to do anything but get on and rant.
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Post by MTR on Oct 17, 2018 13:41:00 GMT -5
AKJ i checked all the non-legit sites, like Dramacool and a few others, so Guenchogo could continue, sadly it seems they all used the DF source, so when DF shut up shop yesterday, so did the feeds on the other sites .
They could have given a warning of 30 days at least, pure greed at its best .
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Post by ajk on Oct 17, 2018 15:20:04 GMT -5
A few more points:
--We’re being told that this was driven by rising costs of rights fees to acquire series. But the subscriber fees were never increased, like every other business does when their costs go up and they have to charge more for their product. So that clearly is a load of nonsense. The DramaFever subscribers are passionate about this stuff and most of them would have had no problem with a price increase if that’s what was necessary to keep the service going.
--The CEO behind all of this is a guy named John Stankey. He says they’re going to start the new HBO-led streaming service in the fourth quarter of next year and that it’s going to cost more than regular HBO does because you have to buy it on top of regular HBO. Isn’t that nice? He also said it won’t be a “warehouse” of content but will be more selective—which sounds pretty clearly like K-dramas aren’t going to be a priority.
--Warner bought DF in the first place because of the technology skills it had developed as a large-scale streaming service. Apparently they’ve used the DF model for their own streaming content since then, whatever content that is.
So the bottom line is, DF was bought for its tech expertise and now the content side has been tossed out like garbage. Wonderful.
Fortunately most of its employees will keep their jobs in some form. News reports are saying they have 110 employees and only 20% aren’t being kept. Still it’s horrible that a couple of dozen people who were helping keep the K-drama market alive won’t be doing that any more.
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As far as Geunchogo, I was just now able to watch the first few minutes of episode 23 on DramaCool, and hopefully the series is stable there so that’s how we’ll have to finish it. Have never watched DramaCool but it's been around for quite a while. MTR you’re right, a lot of the other sites that were offering Geunchogo were doing it through DF so those are no longer options.
I don’t know if DramaCool pays licensing fees; looking at the site it looks like probably they don't. But right now, who cares. It’s bad enough when a company yanks a series you’ve invested a lot of time into, like KBS did with Iron Empress, but when you PAY a company for the right to see a series and they yank it before you can finish it, that’s a new low. So we’ll finish Geunchogo on DramaCool unless a better option emerges, and if Mr. Stankey or KBS has a problem with that they can come and get me.
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Post by bird11 on Oct 17, 2018 21:11:31 GMT -5
I don't know what to say, first I had to deal with BigBang going into the military and not having a lot of new music..... and now this!?!??! I actually got an email from DramaFever saying "So sad to see you go" and it says I cancelled my premium subscription! I almost laughed --- they're sad to see me go? I think it is the other way around I am SO SAD to see them go...... sorry to say there is nothing more that I can type......thanks for the information, can't wait to see what we need to pay to see our dramas now..... Guess I will head over to KOWCOWA to see if I can at least finish my drama with So Ji Sub Well, that lasted a whole 30 seconds -- all of the episodes for the drama I was watching are "locked" meaning you can't watch them unless you are a paid subscriber... which at this point I may just do......  |
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Post by ajk on Oct 18, 2018 1:09:35 GMT -5
Sorry to hear that, bird--didn't know you were in the middle of something yourself. Yeah I got that same email; obviously it's just a form that they used to send out for people who ask to cancel. They should have made a new email...but if my company was getting trashed like this I'm not sure I'd want to make a new one.
What's the name of the series you were watching? Maybe DramaCool has it.
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Post by sageuk on Oct 18, 2018 9:49:56 GMT -5
Well this feels almost surreal, even though I don't use it very much
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Post by ajk on Oct 18, 2018 15:25:30 GMT -5
Yeah doesn't it? I'm still stunned. A popular business with millions of viewers and overnight it's gone.
I will say, the selection of historicals they were offering had gotten smaller and less appealing over the last few years. But a lot of that is the networks' fault for sitting on so many good historicals in their libraries and not making them available to anybody at all. These big companies can make sooooo much money from this stuff and it seems like they're trying as hard as they can to not make it!
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Post by Knov1 on Oct 18, 2018 17:35:55 GMT -5
I believe bird is referring to Terius Behind Me (My Secret, Terrius on Kocowa). It's available on free sites (from same source) but eng subs only up to ep 7.
Kocowa is really limited for free users. They want you to pay to use the site.
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Post by bird11 on Oct 18, 2018 18:20:43 GMT -5
Ah, Knov-- you know me so well, That is exactly the drama I was watching.
Paying for Kocowa is one of the reason I didnt jump on the site right away. With DramaFever you could watch anything and just suffer thru the commercials if you didn't want to pay. With Kocowa I have to wait weeks and weeks to watch things like
"Return of Superman" or "2Days 1Night" -- it wouldn't be bad to wait one or two weeks, but it is much longer. There are currently 3 episodes of "Superman" that I can not watch.
I am on episode 12 of Terius Behind me and NONE of the episodes are watchable.
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Post by MTR on Oct 18, 2018 20:34:09 GMT -5
Glad Dramacool worked out AKJ, they actually have a decent selection of historical dramas .
I have no interest in Warner's new money grabbing service, no wonder people torrent(not me actually .
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Post by ajk on Oct 18, 2018 20:46:33 GMT -5
Yeah they do have quite a few, which is something Kocowa doesn't have. Kocowa has only 28 and nearly all of them are the teenage-romance silly ones. And this is supposed to be the big KBS/MBC/SBS powerhouse joint venture. What a joke.
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Post by sageuk on Oct 18, 2018 21:26:48 GMT -5
So much stories about huge entertainment companies taking things over. 20th Century Fox being bought by Disney is an example
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Post by ajk on Oct 19, 2018 20:18:56 GMT -5
So there's been a development, sort of. At least some of the DF content is still available on a site called VRV. Had never heard of VRV before but it's a streaming service run by a subsidiary of the AT&T/Time Warner conglomerate. It's sort of a meta-site that offers content from a bunch of specialty streaming sites all in the same place. (Presumably all of the specialty sites are owned by the conglomerate, although I haven't researched that.)
You can't just show up there and watch; you have to open an account. And after a free trial they charge $10 per month. That's three times what my DF subscription cost. Good grief. And frankly there's no guarantee that the DF stuff will be there for much longer. They may very well just let the rights to everything expire and move on, who knows.
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Post by MTR on Oct 19, 2018 21:42:08 GMT -5
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