Forum Activity Idea - Simulwatch!
 

Good god this place is dead. DEAD. Almost as dead as the threads that get made for dead people, which is more or less what this place has become. I don't know why that is, I'm sure you're all watching season five hundred of 24 and Doctor What but there's no discussion! Fuck you guys, let's do some shit to get this place in gear.

What's a Simulwatch?
A wonderful idea I'm stealing from SA! In combination with what you have probably seen in my journals, with me torturing CHz and anybody else I can get in range into watching horrible, horrible anime with me.

The concept is simple. You pick a set of shows, in this case since the dead husks of Media Center and Animespot have combined to form one amazing wasteland, we'd split the choices to one television show and one anime. The general idea would be to pick something that isn't horrible and is pretty well acclaimed from both pools (think The Wire and Cowboy Bebop) to watch together. Obviously since TV shows generally run a lot longer than anime we'd have to stick to one season or the closest equivalent of 26 episodes, and from there we'd have to decide whether to continue or pick something else and let interested parties continue on their own.

How would we Simulwatch?
Good question! The general gist is to have an "airing time" at which point you're expected to watch the episode for a given day, and then openly discuss it in the thread. There's two ways to go about this. You can either get together with a group of folks in IRC at a designated time, say about 9PM and watch together (generally this would be for all the "wow did you see that" stuff, actually discussion is better suited to the thread), or you can watch it by yourself whenever just as long as you watch it after the airing time, and before the next episode time. If you watch it beforehand you are an asshole.

What would we Simulwatch?
That is a good question! It's entirely up to you! If we agree to go ahead with this, we'd throw a bunch of suggestions together and have a vote. From there it's a matter of getting the material together. Now they're a lot stricter re: pirating over there (in before LeHah oh god oh god), but if it's not all that difficult we could always go the route of choosing one TV show and an unlicensed anime/one of dubious licensing status that way people would reasonably only have to buy one thing. The people that can could always pool together to help out the few that can't. Or you could just download everything I'm not really going to police everyone about that.

I dunno, I'm not real big on TV/Anime...(or don't have the time)
What are you a faggot? It's about 25 minutes out of your day. And if you fall behind (as is likely to happen to anyone) we'd only be doing five/six days out of the week, with the others as catchup days. Seriously. Get involved, expose yourself to something new and different.

Any questions? Let me know here if you'd be down or if you have any suggestions or whatever.

Oh and if you're interested please post saying so that way I can gauge whether or not this is worth doing.

I'd be down.

Yeah, sure. Why the hell not? I have nothing better to do.

I'd be down with this. I don't have cable, but I can stream most any show/anime, usually.

If I can find the time, I would love to participate. I have a good deal of American sitcoms in mind (don't worry, none of that Arrested Development junk). Don't know too much about anime, but I'm sure there's plenty of help here for that.

I nominate the first show we do this with be Arrested Development.

If it would solve the problem of everyone watching it at the same time, I'm pretty sure someone could set up a streaming channel on Justin.tv or Livestream and then wrangle up everyone in there to discuss the show as it's being broadcasted.

I'd like to second the Arrested Development nomination just to spite Shiny.

THIS THREAD IS NOT FOR NOMINATING SHIT IT IS FOR GAUGING INTEREST quit being dumb that part will come later

While this is applicable (Acer said the same thing when I was suggesting the idea to him) I'd still rather people had their own copies and stuck to using IRC as there's no guarantee people would want to/be able to make it a stream channel every night. The only reason that format works with Drink-On is because it only occurs once every couple of months.

I would be down, but how frequently are you thinking of doing this? I don't think I can download episodes fast enough in order to meet a 5-a-week schedule.

Would you not have enough time/storage to do so if we gave about two weeks advance notice to do so prior to starting (once we picked shows, that is)?

That's a good amount of advance notice. I'll give it a shot.

I've been getting into tv more and more so yes let's do this.

I'm down. So long it's not Wednesdays.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

:(

Yeah I got nothing. Ideally the schedule would run M/Tu/W/Th/F/Sa (ABABAB) or just M/T/W/TH/F (ABABA then BABAB) depending on what people think would be better suited. If we went with option #1 you wouldn't have to worry about catching up with show #1 until Friday at best if you would miss Wednesday.

I'd love to take part in this, but I don't know if I could necessarily keep up with the 5 times a day schedule (at least consistently).

Also, I don't know if I'm thinking of this correctly, but we choose either the Anime or the TV show, right? I have a large collection of Anime already on my hard drive, but I have no TV shows at all. I'll probably occasionally take the TV show just to broaden my experiences, but I'm not sure I want to find a way to obtain every TV show that passes.

:( I suppose there are some instances where it can't be helped (heh) but asking for as little as 25 minutes out of a day isn't really a lot. Also I assume you meant to type five times a week.

No. The objective is to choose one from each category. We'd be doing two shows.

Just a suggestion: if you can update the thread with download information on say, Sunday for example, with a list of places people can download to watch like "This on Monday, that on Tuesday, etc. etc. etc.," I think that might facilitate the process.

Your 9PM (assuming you're on the East Coast) is like my 6PM and that's when I get off work, so naturally I'll be 30 minutes late to everything given that I'm in LA. Knowing what shows to download the night before means I have to keep my computer running all night and I'd like to avoid that if much as possible.

If I know what to download on Sunday morning, I'll let the downloading go as I'm going to church, doing laundry, or other stuff. :D

(my personal opinion or what I'd do to make my participation possible, just putting it out there)

Maybe I'll understand a bit more when we start so, what the hell, sign me up.

And yes, I did mean to type "5 times a week" and not "5 times a day."

I was actually considering giving out batches before the thing starts (as lurker asked about earlier) but I guess I could specify for people doing the week to week thing?

As for the 9PM thing, that's really just because of myself and the other east coasters. It'd be hard for me to help run the thing any later since I work nights, but I assume you wouldn't be the only west coaster who couldn't make that kind of time. You guys could always run your own session later at night if it's a better option~

OH GOD DOUBLE POSTING. For now I'm going to split things off while we pick, but afterward it'll all be brought together for a single discussion thread.

TV time
OMG DBZ

Um... can I throw in hulu.com for a reference for people to watch things? Its probably easier for someone to watch something online that's easily accessible (AND HAS CLOSED CAPTIONS). ETC. There's plenty of shit on there even with anime (Vampire Knight ie lmao).

So like... commercials may be that annoying but its helps to break up time to post on the INTERNETS with remarks and silly tomato throwing at whatever we ended up watching.

ehhhhhhh I don't think Hulu has ever been used for this sort of thing but it's certainly viable (not really the best option though as it'd be a bitch to keep a browser window open for streaming along with IRC)

I see where you're coming from though~

e: also what turnip said. Fucking licensing restrictions =\

Hulu only works for Americans, though.

Just want to say that I may use drunkgff livestream for something like this. I've wanted to stream a few animes before. If people are interested I'd love to do it. I mean it's still hilarious even if it's just one person (pack i <3 u for doing ladies vs butlers with me) but I'd like to see some genuine interest. I'd probably go with some Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Princess Tutu, and Hare+Guu first but Tails has a very good list of shows in this thread too. I'm not necessarily limiting this to anime but I kind of run this stream so it's probably a good idea to be interested in what I'm streaming, so really I'm saying I'm not signing up to be your daily theater jockey unless I'm willing. That said it might be a fun idea to do some gay ass online anime club shit like air 2 or 3 episodes of one series and then go to another to showcase maybe 3 or 4 series twice a week or something.

I don't know how many people here are Netflix members, but we could also take into account what shows are up for Instant streaming at the time. Incidentally, all of Arrested Development is currently available for Instant.

Not complaining at all, I'll likely just try to tag in for the later portion of the show when I can. =)
I'm probably the oddball within the West Coast participants anyhow; I wouldn't want you to change what you've already planned on because of just me. I'm sure the other guys don't have an issue with the time.

I'd be dow-own =V

Alright, this one is kinda tough (I know I'm asking a lot from you guys here). The poll is self explanatory for the most part. The Simulwatch model I'm using here (ADTRW's) runs with the first option, 6 days. However, since I'm sure the folks around here probably don't have as much free time to laze about as SA folk do, I've thrown in a couple other choices re: how often we'd do this. The last two poll options are kinda wacky but I'm throwing them out there in case you guys really want to take it slow. Any suggestions for day swaps with those would be welcome.

Regardless of the final choice, it'd be a rotating schedule of Show A, Show B, Show A, Show B and so on. The set "air time" would be 9EST, and if it's too much of a problem I wouldn't mind working alongside the west coast folks in order to help you guys set up your own time for an IRC simulwatch if what I'm asking is a little unreasonable.

Questions and comments on all aspects welcome~

Damn... too late to express interest?

Although i guess i'm not really signing up as such. My biggest problem is the blocking of IRC channels on my firewall. I get free internet from the building i rent, so i kind of play by their rules.

You're free to jump in whenever you like! This isn't going to be one of those deals where you have to sign up beforehand, I was just seeing if there was enough interest to make doing it worthwhile.

Also sucks to hear about the IRC block business but as I was discussing with Acer, the primary function of this would be forum end discussion. Live-chat isn't really suited to breaking down a show and talking about it, though it is fun for just random offhand comments about what's going on at the moment.

I have class (currently) on M/T/Th, so none of the options work for a simulcast, but I can catch up on episodes whenever, so no big deal. Not sure which I'm voting for yet.

Quick bump here because it looks like we're close to deciding on shows and I'd really, really appreciate everyone's input on just how often we should do this (hint: see above poll).

Oh and if you haven't voted in the show polls you should check the other two threads.