Halo Halo House has just aired last weekend on PTV, and I was able to watch the first episode. Days before the premiere, I was at the Dusit Thani Manila as part of AniZone’s delegation to witness its presentation to travel agents and media.
In this post, I will describe the challenges in watching the series as well as what I think on how this show can get more eyeballs in a time where most people watch either online or on mobile.
PTV’s reception
I was supposed to watch the said show on PTV’s digital transmission, but it is not working prior to the time slot. Considering that most (if not all) digital transmission are running on test broadcasts, anything can happen; and so I resort to watching on the current analog transmission.
It must be in the wrong time that PTV’s digital transmission (which is much, much clearer) was not working well. The last time I noticed that it was working, I was able to watch an episode of “Bara Bara! Anything Goes” with Leo Martinez and Kel Fabie among others.
As an advocate of digital television transmission, this is a point of concern for me. I really hope that PTV gets this fixed.
Content on Demand
Another challenge is that the show’s airing on terrestrial television is restricted to its time slot of 5:00pm to 5:30pm. I wasn’t able to watch its second episode last Sunday as I was on a three-place trip, which is definitely bad because I was told that they showed cosplayers there.
We can easily suggest that they put the content online, but knowing Japan, they have the likes of Eiga Dorobo implying to us not to obtain shows through illegal means. In this country where a number of us do care about obtaining content through legal means, so this will pose another challenge to them.
If they put it on YouTube, we can cache the content through the mobile YouTube app — but we can also download it using numerous online and offline video download software available.
If they put it on Facebook, they can share the content the way News5’s Kontrabando does it — but like YouTube, we can get the MP4 file through any means.
One more thing —I will share this video describing how YouTube videos are being spread on Facebook without any consent or gain:
Content creators — even the likes of producer Nippon TV — want to ensure that they will gain back what they have invested in making shows. That’s definitely not a bad thing — it’s business.
To give a more concrete example of this, here’s Ahotaku39‘s take on the 2014 Miku Expo, which is the reason why I got introduced to him and KAORI Nusantara:
I suggest a solution: Look at how TV5 does it with their videos-on-demand — they use the F4F format. This is way too technical, but I will try my best to describe this method:
Once a video plays, it tells the server “We’re playing the video. Send in the fragments.” They can either get this through a playlist (XML), as far as I’ve observed.
Here’s a more detailed description on Wikipedia:
After the header, the file is split into packets called “FLV tags”, which have 15-byte packet headers. The first four bytes denote the size of the previous packet/tag (including the header), and aid in seeking backward.
I believe Daisuki.net does the same method as well.
I was already thinking of two challenges at hand, but I was already on the prospect of seeing more challenges for the staff of Halo Halo House. Nevertheless, I will make it a habit to watch the show every weekend.