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Valve have done another push towards video content with Steam now partnering with Crunchyroll to offer certain series of Anime for purchase. They also have a bunch of Anime classed games on sale.

I think this is pretty awesome, but I always like to have my shows available on the move, so until you can play Steam video content on mobile devices, I likely won't buy from it. Although, considering the terrible selection Google Play has for Anime, I might actually consider buying from Steam in future.

We also have to think about SteamOS itself, the more video content it has available to get right away, the better. Still, a simple Netflix application would be nice.

Shows you can now find on Steam:

See the full list of anime here.

Anime styled games on sale that support Linux:
See the full list of Anime games on sale here. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Anime, Steam, Video
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27 comments
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ziabice Mar 31, 2017
Very interesting, they are also cheap.

Do you know if is streaming only or I can also download the episodes?
rkfg Mar 31, 2017
I saw a negative review of some anime title among these, it said that quality is really subpar and it's not worth it. Is that true? I mean, 720p of TV quality is good enough but if it's blurry/blocky 480p that's bad even for free.

EDIT: Seems that it's true as @Rugaliz said. Meh. Why do they show it on TV for free in superior quality compared to the paid version, that's ridiculous.


Last edited by rkfg on 31 March 2017 at 8:53 am UTC
Liam Dawe Mar 31, 2017
Quoting: GuestFriendly reminder that Crunchyroll has terrible video quality even on the highest setting...i suppose one can buy from there just to show support for the show however...
It would also be nice if we could have DRM free content. Maybe someday GOG will also have anime.
Really? I actually sub to crunchyroll and their 1080p option has amazing quality for me.
Liam Dawe Mar 31, 2017
Quoting: ziabiceVery interesting, they are also cheap.

Do you know if is streaming only or I can also download the episodes?
Pretty sure it's streaming only.
qptain Nemo Mar 31, 2017
This is great! 91 days, Joker Game, Ace Attorney and Bungo Stray Dogs are a lot of fun.
Guppy Mar 31, 2017
Now if only one could cromecast it from the steam app
fractal Mar 31, 2017
Never used Crunchyroll, but I did hear a lot of negative opinions.

As for the games, I can easily recommend Danganronpa and VA-11 Hall-A. I have yet to play Disgaea, but I heard it's quite popular.
qptain Nemo Mar 31, 2017
Yes, it's streaming only.

And well, the quality seems fine to me. Here you can check out the image quality and see the bitrates:


Btw, despite what it says the audio track is thankfully Japanese.

Admittedly, 200 kbps for audio does seem a bit low, unless it is vorbis or an equally good codec.


Last edited by qptain Nemo on 31 March 2017 at 9:27 am UTC
lucifertdark Mar 31, 2017
My Sons will be happy to see this stuff as they enjoy a bit of Anime, I can take or leave it as I peaked at Akira & Legend of the Overfiend.
Masush5 Mar 31, 2017
Quoting: GuestUm don't know how your standards are but for comparison as some people have pointed out, regular TV stream (even at lower resolutions) has better video quality. This is due to Crunchyroll using low bitrate witch results in compression artefacts and also an old codec (seeing as they still use flash) that has poor quality colour. Not to mention the audio quality is also kinda poor with only 200 something Kbits bitrate (and we dont know what the codec is but i doubt it's vorbis).
You can use youtube-dl to download from crunchyroll so it is possible to see exactly what codecs and encoding options they use. They recently made a switch to cloud based streaming and changed their encode settings, so for newly released shows the use x264 core 142 (which is still a pretty old release of x264) and AAC (LC) 44100 Hz audio with a combined bitrate of ~6000 kb/s. Here is an example mediainfo output.

One other thing to note is, that in the past they used to switch out videos one week after their initial release with very low bitrate encodes (about 1300 kb/s) and a lot of their catalog is still only available in this encode. They claim to plan to reencode their entire catalog with the new higher bitrate encode, but so far I cannot confirm this has happened for any older show. Here is an expample of the garbage you get for older shows.

edit: wrong link


Last edited by Masush5 on 31 March 2017 at 9:53 am UTC
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