RMVB and WMV - Why?

[aasfansubs]

I have never been able to understand why certain regions have a fascination with shitty, proprietary media formats. Most of the video that comes out of China is encoded in RMVB, while a lot of Japanese video is encoded in WMV.

Why is this?

Both of these formats are horrible. They are absurdly difficult to transcode from and they only play on a tiny fraction of hardware and software players. Neither format has anything that might be considered a redeeming quality. I can not for the life of me understand why one person would choose to encode or distribute video in RMVB or WMV formats, let alone entire countries. Is there some sort of local prejudice against codecs and containers that don't suck?

 

[elgringo14]

I think RM/RMVB is an artifact of the past, when size really mattered, with this format you can get a decent quality with a smaller file size, despite what you're saying.
WMV (and his big sister the dreadful ASF) may be more a Micro$oft affinity as it's their proprietary format.

Another feature of all these formats is that they are streaming formats, which means you could play them "on the fly" on many hosting websites. Well it's not really true anymore, because of the popularity of FLV (Flash Video).

Both are not meant for editing, that IS the very point of using them probably.
To forbid other people to "play" with them.

10 years ago, I would have enjoyed videos in ANY format, whether it was AVI, ASF, WMV, RM, because it was already an achievement in itself to download them.
Youngsters don't imagine the luck they have with today's internet :attention:

 

[Sakunyuusha]

If people intentionally encode DVD rips in the WMV file format because they don't want other people tinkering with the file ... wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow @ hypocrisy.

 

[IdolFun]

Most of the wmv are downloads from from site's like dmm.co.jp

 

[aasfansubs]

10 years ago, I would have enjoyed videos in ANY format, whether it was AVI, ASF, WMV, RM, because it was already an achievement in itself to download them.
Youngsters don't imagine the luck they have with today's internet :attention:

I know. I was downloading 250kbps .rm encodes of 3rd and 4th generation VHS fansubs long before it was "cool" (let alone easy). Low quality or not, it was still better than the only other alternative - paying $20 a piece for those same 3rd and 4th generation VHS fansubs in Chinatown. Back then, Divx was still just a really bad DVD rental scheme. Video encoding was in it's infancy and people didn't have a choice.

But that was then and this is now. Now there are much better choices, and there has been for quite a while. Proprietary codecs are a pain in the ass and do not offer any improvements in quality or file size over Divx/Xvid and x.264. Is it really just a matter of "tradition"?

 

[Desu]

Youngsters don't imagine the luck they have with today's internet :attention:

eehhhh they really don't...

i still remember the hell i gone through to download some of my earlier anime (Shingetsutan Tsukihime and Hellsing over all) in .rm or .mpg format and downloaded on a 33.6 kbs modem :murder:

 

[Sakunyuusha]

i still remember the hell i gone through to download some of my earlier anime (Shingetsutan Tsukihime and Hellsing over all) in .rm or .mpg format and downloaded on a 33.6 kbs modem :murder:

LOL. I'm in the same generation as you: and that gen's by no means "old school." They're talking mid-to-early 1990s, my friend, and you're talking 1998 at the soonest. Two totally different conversations. You showed up on the tail end of the .rm wave (as did I), but they rode the entire wave from start to finish.

 

[Rollyco]

My first "video" was an animated ascii animation of a milkmaid getting fucked by a farmer. Downloaded at 2400bps. How's that for old-school?

 

[Sakunyuusha]

I said "old school," Rolly, not "Neolithic."

 

[Desu]

LOL. I'm in the same generation as you: and that gen's by no means "old school." They're talking mid-to-early 1990s, my friend, and you're talking 1998 at the soonest. Two totally different conversations. You showed up on the tail end of the .rm wave (as did I), but they rode the entire wave from start to finish.

in early '90s we didn't even get the phone line here :miserable:

no, i'm exaggerating, but still... i first heard the word "internet" in 1995 (i'm sure 'cause that year is some kind of milestone in my life, but for other reasons), and you're telling me that were people downloading even before (apart from napster)? wow! i'm the classic frog in the well then etrfied:

edit: i probably chose the wrong example: i serched for those anime and actually they were released in 2003, not even in the nineties, but i remember downloading Gatchaman 94 and FF legend of the crystals (ouch! those were BAD!), both dated 1993 or 1995... so can I be labeled as an old schooler now? :ridiculed:

nothing to be proud of, really...

 

[nosihc]

eehhhh they really don't...

i still remember the hell i gone through to download some of my earlier anime (Shingetsutan Tsukihime and Hellsing over all) in .rm or .mpg format and downloaded on a 33.6 kbs modem :murder:

agree you
at our age..watching anime
rmvb is our god life saving(it cope with download speed)

(them baby never know how everything come with a reason):attention::attention::attention::dunno::dunno::dunno::dunno:

 

[chippy]

i'm the classic frog in the well then

Geez...you and Rollyco are making me feel my age here. I didn't really get rolling (no pun intended, Rollyco) until 14.4K, but my "firsts" were also animated ASCIIs, but I'm talking about .EXE files from Colossus systems back in the mid-to-late 80s. Anyone remember phreaking? I'm surprised AT&T/MCI never busted me for downloading all that crap for free LD from California BBSs. It was all too easy back then....before the days of PkZip, even.

But I digress (nostalgia has its moments) from the original topic. I too am dismayed by the amount of RMVB stuff out there. WMV isn't even as bad, but go check the JAV forum here and you'll still see embarrassing amounts of stuff released in RMVB format. I can only guess that laziness is at the root of it, and that were it not for the existence of crappy formats, a lot of what we see might not even be there.

So I join the lament about crappy codecs, but with the cornucopia available out there thanks to the internet, I tend not to get too upset about a small fraction being distributed in a bass-ackwards format. If a poster puts together an appealing screenshot, I'll snag it and tolerate the format. This is--after all--an entirely different situation from getting an ISO of an amazingly darling IV and being able to do with it--ahem--what you want.

One pun, one double-entendre: my post has reached its maximum level of literary transgression and is thus finished.

 

[guy]

As IdolFun mentioned, WMV because that's how most content providers encode them. It's because the vast majority of Japanese use Windows and thus have WMP, and WMV is effective at enforcing DRM.

People who share WMVs on torrents aren't the ones encoding it to WMV. Rather they are simply stripping the DRM out of the original WMV and torrenting the resulting DRM-free WMV file.

In reality, WMV and RMVB file formats (and associated codecs) aren't all that bad. It's the media players that Microsoft and RealNetworks pushes with those formats (WMP and RMP) that are absolutely terrible. Anyone with half a brain should figure out that WMV and RMVB formats can (at the very least) be played by VLC, or in the current best scenario be played using ffdshow+MPC.

 

[loremipsum]

In reality, WMV and RMVB file formats (and associated codecs) aren't all that bad. It's the media players that Microsoft and RealNetworks pushes with those formats (WMP and RMP) that are absolutely terrible. Anyone with half a brain should figure out that WMV and RMVB formats can (at the very least) be played by VLC, or in the current best scenario be played using ffdshow+MPC.

And if a user wants native windows codecs instead of VLC there is always Real Alternative
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/real_Alternative.htm