Chinese TV Shows: Reliable source for Downloading

[Sinofaze]

Can anyone help me find a simple reliable source for downloading Chinese TV shows with English subs?

 

The idea is to download Chinese TV shows with English subs, preferably iparment or scarlet heart, for language-learning and to pass on to younger family who are themselves embracing the language.

 

I've tried Youtube and have been successful in downloading some 1st season Scarlet Heart but the rest has been taken off before I could could collect them all.

 

Other TV shows on Youtube are extremely low-quality (pixalated, mashed-up subs, ect.) and not worth downloading.

 

I've tried Youku, IQIYI and other Chinese sites but my low-language abilities make it difficult for me to navigate the sites.

 

I've been trying for two years now to find such material and have only just a few random episodes to show for it.

 

 

Just to be clear- I need shows to subbed in both Chinese AND English. Cheers

Edited February 22, 2015 at 11:02 AM by Sinofaze

[abhoriel]

I use asiatorrents.me

it's a torrent site and you need to maintain a positive ratio but it's got some great series on with English subs. You can often get HD downloads too.

Not everything will have both chinese and English subs but you should be able to find plenty of material

[Sinofaze]

Yeh, cheers. but this a fail.

 

The site is "invite only" and is therefore closed. It's not really forthcoming in how I can ask to join. soooooo..........

[imron]

The folks in this thread might be able to help you out.

[abhoriel]

normally its not invite only. If you're interested, PM me your email address and I'll send you an invite.

[ZhuFei]

http://viki.com/

[XiaoXi]

iPartment is on Yabla with both Chinese and English subtitles which you can enable and disable as you please.

[Sinofaze]

Yabla is a pay-site, which makes it impossible for me to access.

 

Viki.com do not have any episodes, even though they advertise it on their front menus.

 

I found whole seasons on Youtube but the guy overlays the English subtitles (big, $%@#-off neon-blue) over the Chinese (tiny-teeny little hanzi), which makes it impossible to engage.

 

My preference is for torrents rather than streaming, considering my current location. I've searched extensively for torrents but can't find any with English subtitles.

 

This one-sided cultural-exchange is very frustrating. Anywere on China's websites (Baidu, Youku,etc), you will find any and all Western movies & shows, translated in full and all available for free, literally ripped within minutes of release. But can't bloody find the only genuine cultural example from China that is as riliable or entertaining.

 

#PolitBlocked

[Sinofaze]

@abhoriel

 

 

I use asiatorrents.me
it's a torrent site and you need to maintain a positive ratio but it's got some great series on with English subs. You can often get HD downloads too.

Not everything will have both chinese and English subs but you should be able to find plenty of material

 

 

I tried that site and found it's collection in the specific show to be sporadic. Pretty much all the episodes were without English subs and all were over-GiGed. Why is it necessary to have to download a 3-10Gb file????

 

Maybe there are some new, better collections but I can't log back into Asiatorrents again for some reason.

 

fail, fail, fail.

[imron]

Anywere on China's websites (Baidu, Youku,etc), you will find any and all Western movies & shows, translated in full and all available for free, literally ripped within minutes of release. But can't bloody find the only genuine cultural example from China that is as riliable or entertaining.

This is just your typical supply/demand problem.

 

There is a far greater demand of western TV shows and a far greater supply of Chinese who know English and who are willing to translate and subtitle the shows.  On the flipside, there is very little demand in the west for Chinese shows, and very little supply of English speakers with Chinese good enough to do the translating and subtitling.

 

Bear in mind also that although western shows are quick to have Chinese subtitles, many of those subtitles are complete rubbish, full of mistranslations and errors.

[Angelina]

There is very little demand in the west for Chinese shows, and very little supply of English speakers with Chinese good enough to do the translating and subtitling.

 

We can change that 

[XiaoXi]

I found whole seasons on Youtube but the guy overlays the English subtitles (big, $%@#-off neon-blue) over the Chinese (tiny-teeny little hanzi), which makes it impossible to engage.

 

My preference is for torrents rather than streaming, considering my current location. I've searched extensively for torrents but can't find any with English subtitles.

 

I thought you didn't want English subtitles? I don't see why you would anyway, as long as they are there you won't be able to engage.

[c_redman]

Chinese video sites like YouKu are the most consistent place to have tv shows available. A browser plugin like Video DownloadHelper (a Firefox plugin) is advertised as useful for Youtube, but it has worked fine for me on Chinese sites among many other sites with embedded video. The plugin gives you multiple choices of file format and quality, depending on what the website and particular video offers. The quality isn't that great but it's usually watchable.

[Jan Finster]

I wonder if anyone has used Xunlei for Chinese torrents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xunlei)?

Any opinion? 

[jannesan]

I used 12bt.net recently for 2 current TV shows. Big file sizes, but was good quality.

[大块头]

2 hours ago, jannesan said:

I used 12bt.net recently for 2 current TV shows. Big file sizes, but was good quality.

 

Thanks for sharing this. Note that (at least for the show I was looking for) installing Xunlei wasn't necessary. The .torrent files can be used with a standard BitTorrent client.

[MTH123]

Each of the websites listed below has hundreds of Chinese dramas that can be downloaded for free. Each of them has most of the most popular Chinese dramas (based on the ratings of a huge number of users at the English website https://mydramalist.com/). I haven’t looked into torrent sites, because the websites below already have so much available.

 

https://chauthanh.info/

https://minidrama.net/

https://mkvdrama.com/

 

The videos never have hard-embedded English subtitles. Most of the time, they don’t have hard-embedded Chinese subtitles either. These websites are geared towards English-speaking people. If they don’t provide English subtitle files directly on their websites, then they probably direct you or expect you to go to https://subscene.com for them. There should be a set of English subtitle files there that matches the timing of their videos. Back to the topic of Chinese subtitles, both hard-embedded and soft-embedded on these websites are hit or miss.

 

Tip: For MkvDrama, it’s best to check the comments section first to see if there are missing episodes, because there are frequently missing episodes. This is unlike ChauThanh.Info and MiniDrama, in which there are never missing episodes. If an entire drama is no longer downloadable, then it’s stated up front.

 

Tip: The download speed for ChauThanh.Info is very slow. In Firefox, I use the free add-on Free Download Manager to get up to 4 times the speed. An alternative is to pay to get very fast download speeds that are similar to MiniDrama and MkvDrama. It also makes more dramas downloadable. It doesn’t cost much.

[biou]

necroposting: strange that nobody mentioned iq.com — they have quite a few movies and tv series in both english (simp+trad) and english subtitles