(HOT OFF THE PRESSES! [Erm... HOT OFF THE INTERWEBS?] According to a number of posts on the November 9, 2012,
Drama Beans open thread, Drama Fever is testing the water by allowing international viewers for a limited time only. If you’re not in North America, now’s your chance to see what the fuss is about! Here’s a post about the offering from
Drama Fever’s blog.)
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The Drama Fever Google TV app I’ll probably never use—it’s not as good
as the web interface, which I can access just as easily. |
There’s been a lot of talk lately
about Facebook becoming a “utility”—something as fundamental to
modern life as electricity and running water. I’m not on that bandwagon; I never even
signed up, believing my privacy to be more important than posting daily updates about my cat
or friending elementary school classmates I’ve lost touch with.
(Newsflash: If we’ve lost touch, there’s probably a reason.)
On the other hand, it’s getting
pretty darn hard to imagine life without Drama Fever. It’s the
first thing that pops up when I turn on my television, before even
the option for local or cable networks. I spend a horrifying amount
of time on the site, and am always relieved when they carry something
I want to see. The streaming competition just isn’t tenable: Viki
is buggy, Crunchyroll has a tiny selection, and the Drama Crazy
class of illegal sites are unreliable, low-res nightmares stuffed
with ads that usually cause my computer to freeze.
I’ve been a premium member of Drama
Fever for almost as long as I’ve been obsessed with Korean drama.
And while the service isn’t perfect, it’s absolutely the best
value I get for my entertainment dollar. According to
my drama list, I’ve watched 1,285
episodes over the past year and a half (!), the vast majority of
which were housed on Drama Fever. That means I’ve paid under 5
cents per hour of of television. If things stay as they are, it’s
hard to imagine that I’d ever end my membership.
My worry, though, is that things won’t
stay as they are. Drama Fever’s recent redesign was fine and gets
better every day, but two months on it’s still littered with features that don’t
work the way they should. There are little problems and big problems,
ranging from it being impossible to navigate beyond the first page of
user reviews to the inexplicable quasi-functionality of the Currently
Watching feature. Once upon a time, clicking on a show listed there
would take you right to the episode you most recently watched, but
now it drops you at the series’ first episode. (Sometimes. Other times it seems to pick a random episode in the 5 to 8 range.) In combination with the
redesign’s less-trustworthy “you’ve watched this episode”
checkmark and lack of the “watch again” screen for episodes
you’ve completed, I’m always having to hit play on multiple
episodes to find where I actually left off. And then there are the mouseover notes that have disappeared altogether—they used to be a handy way to see the other shows actors had been in without navigating away from the drama you were watching. With a slowish internet connection, that was a blessing.
Even more concerning is that Drama
Fever might just start focusing on their new Spanish-language content at
the expense of Asian shows. As a service geared toward North American
users, it’s no wonder they wanted to expand their offerings into
Latin American programing: there’s a huge population of people here
with roots in that region, many of whom are native speakers of
Spanish. Now that it’s possible to watch shows on Drama Fever
without subtitles, the site is in a prime position to market to this
group. The word of mouth potential is so enormous that it’s not hard
to imagine this material taking over the site.
I don’t have any evidence to back this up, but it’s my impression that Korean drama gets much less attention in mainstream American media than the closer-to-home Spanish-language programing. For one thing, people are familiar with telenovelas because there have been a number of American remakes, including Ugly Betty and an upcoming Sofia Vergara project. (Dear McG: How about an American Boys over Flowers? Please?) The Hispanic population in America is also about three times as big as the Asian population. Clearly, heritage doesn’t determine viewing habits, but it might just mean more press coverage, more infrastructure, and potentially more buzz.
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Nice subtitles—even if they’re blocking
Lee Min Ho’s pretty face. |
On the bright side, Drama
Fever’s new video player is pretty awesome: I love being able to
watch things in high definition, which really improves the experience
of gorgeously filmed shows like Arang and the Magistrate. The
ability to change the subtitle size is also nice. Drama Fever’s
selection of dramas is still incredible and growing every week. They even stream most of the new shows I want to see (although I’m getting a little antsy about the new Yoon Eun Hye drama, which still hasn’t appeared on their Coming Soon list).
I also find it interesting that Drama
Fever has
recently replaced their original version of Secret Garden with higher resolution
files and re-edited subtitles. I don’t have much company on this one, but
Secret Garden
is probably my least favorite
Korean drama of all time. (The only thing that might make me enjoy it
more would be cutting out all the parts that include human beings—I could actually sit through the resulting thirty minutes of pretty
scenery and interesting architecture without wanting to scratch my eyes out.) I don’t remember the Drama Fever subtitles or video quality for this show being particularly bad, though. Does this mean they’re
going to be revisiting all the popular old series and making
improvements? Because their
Coffee Prince is
grainy as all get out, and its subs aren’t particularly good (even if they are the official ones).
(Some
random facts about Coffee Prince on
Drama Fever: you can tell by the numbers in its URL that it was the
first drama they ever uploaded, and although they recently improved
its crappy descriptive copy, it now incorrectly says that Choi Han
Gyul is from a “wealthy hotelier family.” Plus, it calls him “Han
Kyul,” in contrast to the show’s subtitles.)
I’m also glad to see that new shows
are being added from Korea’s jTBC cable network. This channel aired
a slew of programs this spring that had Korean-speaking bloggers
buzzing, including
A Wife’s Credentials and
the sitcom
I Live in Cheongdam Dong,
but as of yet none of those shows have made it to Drama Fever. (As
far as I can tell, they’re only available streaming on
one legit site, and even then only partially subbed.)
Drama Fever once carried new shows aired by this network, so I was
wondering if they’d had a falling out that represented the end of
the relationship. It seems that’s not the case, though, as both
jTBC’s
Beloved and
Can We Get Married? have
been recently added. (I’m dying to watch the later, might I add.)
As conflicted as I may be about some of
Drama Fever’s practices, it’s still the website I visit most often, and probably will
continue to be. Here’s hoping, anyway.
>>Sidebar<<
Drama Fever Facts Culled
from the Internet
• It started operations in August
2009 and now has more than over 400 streaming titles, for a total of
more than 10,000 hours (
“About Us,” Drama Fever)
• Drama Fever has
“two million unique advertising-supported monthly visitors, having
added an additional half million viewers since mid-March [2012].
Seventy-five percent of current DramaFever viewers are native
English-speakers of non-Asian descent, underscoring the broadening
appeal of foreign content, which has historically been attractive to
art house and independent film fans. Traffic is doubling every six to
eight months and is up 400% since early 2011.” (
“Drama FeverCompletes $6 Million Round with Backing from Global Media Giants,”
Drama Fever press release)
