youku/tudou + iku/itudou = find and watch tv series really easily

[onebir]

I've always been put off watching TV series etc on youku/tudou because I thought

a) it would be hard to track down all the episodes, or worse, parts of episodes &

B) downloading & naming the parts would be fiddly (interrupted downloads, fishing around in the cache folder to find the right bits etc)

c) I might have to reencode them to watch them

Recently I had to download some material from youku, & so I had to use iku - something I'd resisted due to an intense dislike of QQ, 360 hushi etc. But iku actually makes the process of snaffling whole TV series very simple. It includes:

- a search function (not advanced search, AFAIKT, but in conjunction with the advanced search on youku, it seems easy enough to find things)

- a downloader that handles queuing and interrupted downloads

- a perfectly adequate video player

- a reencoder (preset to the most common formats & resolutions etc)

So far I've noticed only these three flaws:

1) it only works with windows (AFAIK)

2) to read the chinese in the iku dialog boxes etc you need to run it with applocale

3) the video files aren't stored as FLVs in a folder, but hidden inside in a preallocated space (minimum 1GB) called ikudisk; you can only get them out by reencoding them.

In spite of these does make watching tv series very easy - probably easier than looking for & using the DVDs...

itudou, seems very similar.

EDIT - I don't seem to be able to reencode. Interesting to hear if others also have this problem. But as long as you don't mind watching things in iku, it doesn't matter too much...

Edited May 29, 2009 at 08:26 AM by onebir

[BrandeX]

it's simpler/higher quality to use torrents imo.

[renzhe]

Are there good torrents for Chinese TV shows?

I was under the impression that most of the stuff is on eMule.

[awela]

There is an active website, on which many fansub team are working on some good asian dramas, including Chinese dramas. The teams have presented quite a lot good dramas with english subtitle. The website is D-addicts.

And on the other hand, there is another website where everyone can take part in the translation work of any video from any country. People can request video translation and such. There are not very many Chinese mainland dramas at the moment, at least some. But it indeed has a lot Taiwan dramas. This website belongs to viikii project.

Both sites can be searched by keywords.(Well, since I'm not sure if can post website address here)

[renzhe]

Yeah, they are doing a great job.

They seem to have a strong bias towards teenager and idol shows, though.

[roddy]

There are torrents out there - the problem I've struck is finding a reliable, easy to navigate tracker site that isn't pimped out with bouncing ads, doesn't have numerous duplicate entries, etc. China's eztv.it? I could quite happily dump emule, but what's the alternative to verycd.com?

[onebir]

it's simpler/higher quality to use torrents imo.

for someone watching things on a 14 in laptop like me, most torrents are unnecessarily high quality. that said, if a series comes with small-size embedded subtitles, they can be unclear.

i'm also hoping if i have questions about what people are saying, i'll be able to post here & link to the youku video to ask. it'd be much fiddlier to do that with a torrent i think...

[imron]

What I like about youku is that (in China at least) it is instant. You can decide you want to watch a show, and for the most part you can watch it straight away without needing to pause or wait. Quality is not the best but instant availability makes up for that.

[mjklin]

My wife (from China) watches whole miniseries from China by using PPLive, Chinese version (which is more current than the English version) from her computer here in the US. She says it makes it easy to watch the series in sequence. I haven't tried it myself, but I'd imagine you have to know the Chinese names of the series in order to look them up (some she's watched: 双面胶， 奋斗，北京人在纽约).

[chrix]

a question: is this iku thing spyware-free? I'd rather watch it directly, but the connection is so damn slow, at least from the US. Anyone have a suggestion to speed up things particularly on youku?

[renzhe]

You can always use clipnabber.com for youku videos, bu it will be split into 7-minute chunks.

[BrandeX]

www.asiandvdclub.org(use gladder)

http://www.avistaz.com

http://www.d-addicts.com

http://www.verycd.com(if you don't need eng subs)

[chrix]

renzhe thanks for the tip. I tried it, and it downloaded a single .flv file, it didn't look like it was in 7 min increments?

Brandex, thanks as well, will try those later.

[renzhe]

I tried it, and it downloaded a single .flv file, it didn't look like it was in 7 min increments?

Maybe they improved the software? Even better.

Personally, I use an eMule-like client with verycd, and find it to be great, as long as you can live with Chinese language + Chinese subtitles.

[chrix]

yeah, that's great too. I've been enjoying watching some Japanese cartoons, either dubbed in Mandarin, or just with Mandarin subtitles