As a guest a week or so ago I watched an episode of Area 88. Today I registered and cannot get the on line player to play anything but commercials. What gives? I used Firefox before and today nothing so I used Internet Explorer and the same thing.
mrwooley wrote:
I just now tried to watch Area 88 both as a guest and as a Registered viewer and didn’t have any problems. I use IE8.
I’ll try a few other shows and see what happens. If I have problems with other shows, I’ll be sure to report it. Please tell us what version of IE you have. And some of the other shows you tried.
Thanks,
Slowhand 
I had this problem trying to watch Saiyuki yesterday. When I tried watching it logged in, it would play nothing but commercials. Once I logged out, I was able to watch. I’m currently using the most recent version of Firefox.
I’m not experiencing this issue with Firefox, but apparently a few people are. I already let the web team know about it last week, I’ll bring it up again as soon as possible.
I’m having a problem with the player too. It’s not rejecting my IP. It just wont play anything. It acts like it’s loading the video and then just hangs there. What gives?
BTW: It wont even load a commercial. I just get this pretty white spinning thing in the middle of the box.
A little more info. I finally got bored enough to just let the little white spinning thing keep going. It took a good 5 minutes but then it came up and told me it could not find the video stream. It’s almost like the streaming server is not there any more.
I’m having the same problem. Whenever I try watching a show, it starts like it’s going to load and then I get an error message. Here’s the message for Saiyuki episode 1, stream not found: shows/SY001ENGSNB_AN_640x480.flv. I got a similar message for the others shows.
I let them know of the issue today, they are looking into the problem.
dragoon wrote:
Seems to me that we see that response on here a few times. Sometimes on issues that have been pervasive for week. So pardon me while I am not thrilled by the response and rather find it to be a cop out.
Who is looking at it?
What exactly are they looking at?
What is causing the problem?
How long will it take to fix?
I could keep going. However, if I took my car to a repair shop and got “we’re looking at it” as a response, well that repair shop would not be looking at it long. When I bring my car in for a problem I want to know exactly what they are doing. Why? Because I want to know their doing something other then blowing smoke. The same applies here as well…
It’s not a cop out, it’s the reality of the situation. They’re not going to give every single detail on what could be causing the problem until they’ve found it or if they believe the users need to know about it. They, is the Programming director and the web/tech team. Private companies don’t need to disclose business or technical problems to anyone, their job is to fix it the best they can.
Anime Network Online Player is a free service, that is one distinction.
Anime licensing companies are not huge billion dollar companies, they have limited amount staffers that are stretched thin with a lot of operations in various sides of multimedia, even in the case of Anime Network… managing thousands of files per month for VOD, digital distribution, etc. It’s not an easy task.
If you’re looking for Customer service with a lot of the Anime companies of getting answers any time someone has a problem… well unfortunately the reality of that doesn’t exist in Japan or here… Services and Support in this side of the industry is limited and sometimes takes time. They do their best to fix and resolve issues though, but again there are time and man power constraints pervasive in the industry – Especially in today’s market where many anime companies are going through very difficult times.
Frankly, the purpose of this forum and even getting responses like this is unusual in the Anime industry. Other large media companies (I use the term large in context even though many other network content operators are not huge either) in many cases don’t even have forums to report problems, and in many cases those forums don’t even get responses or answers at all.
Rhade wrote:
[quote]dragoon wrote:
Seems to me that we see that response on here a few times. Sometimes on issues that have been pervasive for week. So pardon me while I am not thrilled by the response and rather find it to be a cop out.
Who is looking at it?
What exactly are they looking at?
What is causing the problem?
How long will it take to fix?
I could keep going. However, if I took my car to a repair shop and got “we’re looking at it” as a response, well that repair shop would not be looking at it long. When I bring my car in for a problem I want to know exactly what they are doing. Why? Because I want to know their doing something other then blowing smoke. The same applies here as well…[/quote]
I think the difference here is that you are not paying for the online video, unlike at the repair shop. I would infer that the “techs” are “looking at it”, trying to figure out what may be “causing the problem”, and they will “fix” it ASAP. Seriously, do they really need to go into great detail about this?
Anyway, I’m also having this problem. This has never happened on my end before.
Slick
dragoon wrote:
[quote]It’s not a cop out, it’s the reality of the situation. They’re not going to give every single detail on what could be causing the problem until they’ve found it or if they believe the users need to know about it. They, is the Programming director and the web/tech team. Private companies don’t need to disclose business or technical problems to anyone, their job is to fix it the best they can.
Anime Network Online Player is a free service, that is one distinction.
Anime licensing companies are not huge billion dollar companies, they have limited amount staffers that are stretched thin with a lot of operations in various sides of multimedia, even in the case of Anime Network… managing thousands of files per month for VOD, digital distribution, etc. It’s not an easy task.
If you’re looking for Customer service with a lot of the Anime companies of getting answers any time someone has a problem… well unfortunately the reality of that doesn’t exist in Japan or here… Services and Support in this side of the industry is limited and sometimes takes time. They do their best to fix and resolve issues though, but again there are time and man power constraints pervasive in the industry – Especially in today’s market where many anime companies are going through very difficult times.
Frankly, the purpose of this forum and even getting responses like this is unusual in the Anime industry. Other large companies in many cases don’t even have forums to report problems.[/quote]
It is a cop out. It doesn’t matter what your financial issues are. That is irrelevant. The size of the company is irrelevant. Whet matters is serving your customers. The customer pay your bills. If you do not take care of them in a timely manner, your customers go to someone who will )a situation that Central Park Media is now dealing with. They used a lot of credit, but they annoyed their customer base who decreased their spending. Then when the economy turned bad, the customers decreased their spending more. This resulted in CPM becoming nonviable and filing chapter 7). So, with things as they are, you must put forth EXTRA effort to take care of your customers. This includes making sure services you CLAIM to provide are available to the customer. In short, don’t cop out and say "we’re looking at it:. You fix the problems in the time the customer is willing to tolerate. Now, after seeing some issues going on for weeks, I would call that unacceptable. Sure every company has it’s glitches, but even the online video player not functioning for more then 24 hours is unreasonable. Fix the problem and problem and let people know what your doing to fix the problem. That’s calll GOOD customer service. It is what is expected in every industry, not just the anime industry, and it is what I am telling you I expect.
Oh, and while we’re at it. How wrong you are about the unusual nature of this form. ADV has a customer service number for fans to get immediate feed back. FUNimation has it’s own forums and a customer service number. Animego, same. So, this is not unusal. You speak like your a production company and your not. You are no more then a distributor just like the others I have listed. So please, don’t try the high and mighty “we’re special” with me. I know better.
slickwolfie wrote:
[quote]Rhade wrote:
Seems to me that we see that response on here a few times. Sometimes on issues that have been pervasive for week. So pardon me while I am not thrilled by the response and rather find it to be a cop out.
Who is looking at it?
What exactly are they looking at?
What is causing the problem?
How long will it take to fix?
I could keep going. However, if I took my car to a repair shop and got “we’re looking at it” as a response, well that repair shop would not be looking at it long. When I bring my car in for a problem I want to know exactly what they are doing. Why? Because I want to know their doing something other then blowing smoke. The same applies here as well…
I think the difference here is that you are not paying for the online video, unlike at the repair shop. I would infer that the “techs” are “looking at it”, trying to figure out what may be “causing the problem”, and they will “fix” it ASAP. Seriously, do they really need to go into great detail about this?
Anyway, I’m also having this problem. This has never happened on my end before.
Slick[/quote]
Oh but how wrong you are. I am a cable subscriber. I use the VOD service and I pay my bill. When I pay my bill, my cable company uses that money to pay you. In short, without my money out here, your company would not exist there. So, with that said, I pay your bills (as to the many others who choose to use your service) and therefore expect the same level (if not better) from any other customer service company I have to deal with. You can try and paint that as being as unreasonable as you like. However, it doesn’t change the reality. If you don’t provide outstanding customer service, another company will. In the end, that puts you out of business. It’s the law of any capitalistic economy. So, again, I expect more then a “I’ll get around to it when I feel like it” response and that’s all the “we’re looking into it” response are.
Rhade wrote:
[quote]
Oh, and while we’re at it. How wrong you are about the unusual nature of this form. ADV has a customer service number for fans to get immediate feed back. FUNimation has it’s own forums and a customer service number. Animego, same. So, this is not unusal. You speak like your a production company and your not. You are no more then a distributor just like the others I have listed. So please, don’t try the high and mighty “we’re special” with me. I know better.[/quote]
I know you’re upset and disappointed with the issues you’re experiencing but knock off the attitude and don’t over read into things. Calm down.
I wasn’t talking about customer service numbers, but rather the overall scope. Yes they do have a customer service number but again it’s limited. Have you ever dealt with customer service and trying to get issues fixed instantly with bad DVDs etc? I have and others have for years. Things take time. When one of the largest companies had an issue with discs and mono problems it was never really fixed. That’s the way it is sometimes in the industry.
ADV is very much a production company, and in this case of the discussion Anime Network handles a lot of production aspects in the digital side of things. That is a case of semantics though. But it handles content like other companies. When was the last time you were able to contact and get a response from Cartoon Network? Thousands of fans have tried for years, and got nowhere.
My point is whether you like it or not, at least this forum exists to act to get issues heard and get responded to.
You can demand and make your wishes heard with regards to improvement and they will certainly listen to issues as they are now, but again it’s a game of expectations. If your expectations are too high, you’ll just be disappointed.
They are doing their best, but again it comes down to limitations… that’s the reality of it.
I’m having a similar problem with Firefox on my XP system. I keep getting commercials but never the actual program. I had to start up IE to watch episodes via the online player.
I’m connecting via Road Runner from Huntington Beach, CA 92646.
They were working on some back end stuff, it should be working now. I just tested it and everything I tried worked without problems. If there are continuing problems… read below.
We don’t need a million threads of these when we have one: AN Online Player Discussion/Issues thread
. I will be closing this thread, please post in the above linked thread.