Back in March, I wrote about Anime on Demand, a program built on the .NET framework that allowed you to watch streaming fansubs outside a browser. I didn’t particularly use it much after writing that post except for saving my ass once during an anime club showing. (Never screw up Ouran when there are fangirls. Ever.)

Anyway, lunarising89 left a comment yesterday saying that none of the streams worked anymore and I checked myself to find that to be pretty much true save for a handful of titles like Battle Programmer Shirase. For most, a drawing of a ball-and-chain prisoner with a message of removal appeared for about 10 seconds. So I e-mailed the developer and webmaster Rathlar this afternoon to find out what was going on. His reply is after the jump.

Thank you for your concern for the AoDTV project. It is indeed finished for now. The reasoning behind it going down has quite a few factors. Firstly, the lack of financial help did take a toll. It wasn’t easy supporting the project which used so much bandwidth with so few donators. I was determined to keep it free but lack of backing hurt. There was also some pressure from licensing companies (ADV being the only one I publicly announced) and it was risky offering licensed titles which was to be expected given what I tried to do. But the biggest problem in the end was not enough staff and real life issues such as my father passing away. I kind of disappeared after his death and have yet to make a full resurgence to the anime world. Also, I’ll note that streaming can be just as dangerous as direct downloads depending on the popularity of the site in question. AoD gained popularity VERY quickly which is why it caught the attention of various licensing companies.

I was also a fansubber for a couple groups and part of a DVD rip group. Oddly enough, there was no pressure from the fansubbing community. Downloaders actually seemed rather refreshed now that they could stream the shows they loved instead of having to wait a few hours due to slower connection speeds. Many also like to just watch the episode and delete it, so this was another great alternative for them. I love anime and always will(despite my fast approach to being 30) but at this point and time, I have only really had time to watch it instead of helping to redistribute it to the community.

Personally I would love to see the project revived and would be more than willing to show someone how to make the program. It’s incredibly easy to make and can be finished in an hour or 2 save the graphical design end of it. The problem lies in the server costs for all the streaming to be done. Lastly my reason for having licensed titles was for the donations. People are more willing to donate if there are harder to find series available.

I know I have not updated the site since my disappearance but that was due to my hopes of it getting revived by me or someone else if they were willing to take it over. I was working on some new enhancements to the application before things happened that sadly never came to fruition. So for now, this is the end of AoDTV until financial backing can be found or until someone approaches me about taking the project over. If you know anyone who would be interested in taking over the project or backing it, I would be very interested. Seeing something like this go to waste is a shame. I’m also willing to show someone how to duplicate the program if any particular site is interested.

So, that is where the project stands as of right now, waiting for someone or some group with enough resources and dedication to take on the current structure or create their own version with willing assistance. If you are interested in reviving this idea in some form, you can contact Rathlar at the email address on the AOD TV website.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Anime, News, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.