After an all-nighter, I hopped on my Xbox to kill some time before others in my house awoke. On my home screen, I saw an advert for anime, "Free with Gold", so it said. It installed Crackle, and opened to an anime, ready to stream. I wasn't interested in the anime it opened, but I decided to browse their library. I decided to watch something that caught my attention, Blue Exorcist. I write this as I watch the first episode. The anime is epic, with teenagers and demons, but that's not the point. How the service works is well. I just selected an episode or movie, watched an advert or two, and the show/movie began. All works quite well, and I can watch my show, but...
The quality isn't great, seems to be regular 480i/p. It's free, so I don't expect much, but it still lacks on my 1440x900 display. (I use Microsoft's VGA adapter to connect to a $5 monitor I got from Goodwill. It's nice, when things are fullHD.)
Advertisement breaks are frequent. Normally, Japanese anime shows have their episodes split into two parts, for a convenient commercial break in between. Crackle does their advertising american style, with frequent breaks every so often, usually after a plot hook, some gripper thing that makes you say "Dammit! Now what's going to happen to Rin?" Then again, this IS a free app and service, so again, I don't really have room to complain.
My only major flaw with this service is their lack of content. Their catalog is alright, they have some good shows, but it's nowhere near the size of comparable services, i.e. Hulu or Netflix. I'd love to stream that obscure anime called Fullmetal Alchemist, but they don't have it in their catalog. Oh, one thing I should note is that they DO have regular TV shows in their catalog, such as Dilbert and Seinfeld, but Anime dominates the TV show listing. The movie catalog is populous, with 178 items as of 23/3/14. Unfortunately, most of those are older movies, such as American Psycho or Insanitarium. There's also 8 different movies with Godzilla in the title.
All in all, I'd like to recommend Crackle. I have a feeling that if they can get more licenses to view more shows or movies, then this service could be incredible. It could even beat Netflix, if enough people putting in ad revenue started to use the service. Then again, will the public use this service? It's up to you.
The quality isn't great, seems to be regular 480i/p. It's free, so I don't expect much, but it still lacks on my 1440x900 display. (I use Microsoft's VGA adapter to connect to a $5 monitor I got from Goodwill. It's nice, when things are fullHD.)
Advertisement breaks are frequent. Normally, Japanese anime shows have their episodes split into two parts, for a convenient commercial break in between. Crackle does their advertising american style, with frequent breaks every so often, usually after a plot hook, some gripper thing that makes you say "Dammit! Now what's going to happen to Rin?" Then again, this IS a free app and service, so again, I don't really have room to complain.
My only major flaw with this service is their lack of content. Their catalog is alright, they have some good shows, but it's nowhere near the size of comparable services, i.e. Hulu or Netflix. I'd love to stream that obscure anime called Fullmetal Alchemist, but they don't have it in their catalog. Oh, one thing I should note is that they DO have regular TV shows in their catalog, such as Dilbert and Seinfeld, but Anime dominates the TV show listing. The movie catalog is populous, with 178 items as of 23/3/14. Unfortunately, most of those are older movies, such as American Psycho or Insanitarium. There's also 8 different movies with Godzilla in the title.
All in all, I'd like to recommend Crackle. I have a feeling that if they can get more licenses to view more shows or movies, then this service could be incredible. It could even beat Netflix, if enough people putting in ad revenue started to use the service. Then again, will the public use this service? It's up to you.
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