Dramageddon and the Viki vs. KOCOWA Dilemma

So I'm sure by now you all know DramaFever bit the dust. 

October 14th everything was normal. 

October 15th first they charged everyone with a subscription on time as usual (yes me too!), then they put a freeze on every airing drama with wording that insinuated everything would be back to normal ASAP. 

I was chatting with a YouTuber who said she actually got a bad feeling that day and emailed DF to make sure nothing bad was happening, only to have them reply that all was well and the delayed episodes would indeed be uploaded ASAP. If that's true then it's even more upsetting that not only were they shady but also liars.

October 16th, Dramageddon, according to several people I spoke to, they were still accepting NEW subscriptions (and the money that went along with that) up until late afternoon when (without ANY warning, contrary to a statement I saw in a news article where they claimed to have sent out an email) hordes of Asian drama addicts like myself were literally CUT OFF mid-watch by either an error message on mobile, or this ugly and thinly-veiled 'Thanks for the dough yo (we might give some back if we think we can't legally avoid it), we don't feel like we owe you an explanation OR apology, so Sayonara Suckers!' where the website full of happy sweet Asian drama cuteness used to reside. 

I spoke briefly online with an ex- volunteer employee from DramaFever who was pretty certain from what she knew that the employees who were laid off in this debacle went to work Monday morning not knowing they wouldn't have a job to come back to the next day. That makes me angrier than anything else honestly. I figured as much, because they were still updating things meticulously and adding writeups, posters, pages, episodes until about 24 hours before the site went dark (why would they work so hard right up to the day before Dramageddon if they knew?), but to hear my suspicions echoed by an ex-employee really made my heart sink.

Yeah so all that was a whole 3 weeks ago and I'm still seething. I NEVER got an email explaining ANYTHING, firstly. Would it have killed the powers-that-be at Warner to give their poor employees a heads up so they could, I dunno, look for a NEW JOB?! I hope they did. Would it have KILLED them to give their CUSTOMERS a heads up so we could at the very least write down what episode we left of on for each of our dramas? Did they really have to get so competitive about getting exclusivity for dramas like 100 Days My Prince, Age Of Legends, The Third Charm, and Devilish Joy, only to DUMP us mid-season with zero warning? Not to mention other dramas that were completed but they had exclusivity to, like Miss Hammurabi, leaving mid-season watchers of those dramas just as stranded as those who had been watching airing dramas.

Out of 4 airing dramas I was watching, I only found ONE on Viki or KOCOWA. (Terius Behind Me aka. My Secret Terrius and I found it on KOCOWA.) The others left me and so many others stranded on a midseason cliffhanger with no way to find out how it ends aside from abusing Viki's Request Form and hoping for the best, or finding a less honest way/place to watch the rest of what we PAID Drama Fever for before we got scr*wed over.

The kicker? Apparently there are rumors that Warner is wanting to launch it's own streaming service to compete with NetFlix and they were concerned that DramaFever would compete with it. If the rumors are to be believed, they hope to launch by the New Year and charge us more for a streaming service that mixes HBO programming with Kdramas. They might think we're going to go "Oh wow yes, Kdramas totally go well with HBO! Of COURSE I forgive you for yanking DramaFever out from under me the day after you took my money, I don't give a rodent's rear about the employees you screwed over, and I'm more than happy to throw twice as much cash at you monthly for the honorable privilege of subscribing to the new streaming service that you launched to replace my favorite Kdrama streaming platform. Where do I sign up?!"

How about no. I dunno about you all but I'm more like... "Thanks sooo much DramaFever. */sarc* I would have understood if there had been some warning for everyone affected, a decent apology, and at least somewhat of a real actual explanation. I'd have been sad to see you go, but accepting. The way you skipped out on us all like a one-night-stand however leaves me inclined to give you this little bit of advice: If you think I'm going to come crawling to you for a new streaming service, that I in any way think you understand your customer base if you're going to offer HBO alongside Kdramas, that I forgive you for your insane lack of employee and customer consideration, and that I'll ever want to trust you again, well you can take that big fat NO and shove it along with your rumored streaming service."

And on that note, this whole Dramageddon thing left so many Kdrama lovers in search of a new place to get their drama fix... Me too. I don't know anyone who wanted to wait around for December to see if Warner was going to launch that rumored streaming service after all. The two main players in the replacement category seem to be Viki and KOCOWA. [ Off topic but... How do you even pronounce that? Like a co(habitating-moo)-cow-a or like a coco(nut)-wa(ter)? I have no clue. Let me know if you know! ] I guess there's another one available to the US, called ondemandkorea.com but when I looked at it, not everything was subtitled and it seemed to be 99% the same things Viki and Kocowa had. If you're not in the US, I saw a good list of suggestions here: https://www.kdramapal.com/top-korean-drama-streaming-sites/

Back to Viki vs. Kocowa... From what little I know, KOCOWA is a Korean company that offers dramas from the 3 bigwig broadcasters in S. Kor. and has a partnership with Viki where they allow Viki to distribute most (but not all) of the dramas they offer as a part of Viki's most expensive subscription package. You would think that makes Viki the obvious choice, but alas, KOCOWA had "My Secret Terrius" which they did NOT share with Viki and I was going nuts to see the rest of it. (It's adorable and hilarious BTW, with bite-sized episodes perfect for my busy life.) Overall Viki seemed like the better choice. Viki is a subsidary of a Japanese company I guess? and they offer more dramas from other Asian countries than Drama Fever did. In addition, they have some older American movies (classics, action movies, westerns, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, there was even the Shirley Temple version of A Little Princess on there for a while but they seem to have just taken it off- glad my kids got to see it before they deleted it), Iniesta (Japanese sports & culture), Variety shows, Awards shows, telenovelas and they generate their own content including Viki-exclusive Kdramas and celebrity interview shows. They also have educational and socially interesting content by popular YouTubers such as TalkToMeInKorean.com and Drawing Hands. Oh and they are currently having a sale - 30% VikiPass Standard Annual. That means about $50 for a year of Standard (No Kocowa included.)

Some of the other disgruntled DramaFever Dump-ees I spoke to opted to go for either Kocowa OR Viki, some opted to get Viki Standard and Kocowa separately. I opted to get Viki Plus (which includes most of what Kocowa has, but not all) annual, AND Kocowa monthly.
[Hi, my name's Jessica and I'm addicted to Asian Dramas. I've hit both Viki AND Kocowa today. My last fix was 1 hour ago. I probably need help.] 
If Kocowa doesn't keep having enough dramas not shared with Viki to keep my interest, I'll cancel it eventually. For now though I have GOT to see how My Secret Terrius ends. (It's so cute! If you have Kocowa you so need to see it!!!)


[UPDATE 4/20/2019: If you like Chinese dramas, there's a new streaming site in town!]
*~*~*

Did you get dumped on Dramageddon too? Did you find a new place to watch your dramas yet? How do you feel about the way DF ditched their customers and about the rumors surrounding Warner's possible new streaming service? Whatcha watching lately? Leave me a comment! :)

Drama Fever: Credits, Premium, Apps, is it worth it?

**I am NOT affiliated in any way with Drama Fever, and this is not a paid post. I'm just a consumer of their delicious dramas. ;) **
If you are a North American who enjoys watching Asian Dramas, chances are you've heard of Drama Fever. You might already have a premium membership, or maybe you are contemplating whether it's worthwhile or not. Maybe you've never even heard of it before.

When I first began watching Asian Dramas, it was Netflix that sucked me in. Thanks, Netflix, now I have a serious addiction because of you! Alas, it wasn't long before I outpaced Netflix in my Kdrama consumption, so I had to find a new source for dramas.

In the beginning, I used DramaFever in a supplementary capacity. I watched what Netflix had when they had it and then I went on Drama Fever when I ran out of things to watch on Netflix or Netflix decided to remove a show before I was finished with it. At that point I didn't find it worth having any apps or paying for Premium.

It wasn't long though, before I just found it easier to START on DramaFever, so I could be more certain that whatever I was watching wasn't going to get canceled in the middle of my marathon. I would run into the problem of the newer shows having some or all of the episodes restricted to Premium only. I then figured out that watching on my desktop computer earned me credits which I could redeem for Premium-only episodes.

As before, it wasn't long before my Kdrama addiction outgrew my ability to keep up with earning credits, plus I had a new baby and sitting in one place for very long wasn't working well, so I downloaded the DramaFever app to my tablet. I discovered the app is amazing and works perfectly - except for one thing. It's fussy about whether you get the credit for watching shows on the tablet or not. About 60% of the time, watching on the tablet never counted toward earning credits, which was a bummer. :( It was a nice surprise when it did though! But generally speaking, even with the app, because of the inconsistency, it eventually got to a point where I was asking myself, so do I need to get Premium now?

Long to short, I have Premium now! Surprise! Yeah yeah wipe the shock off your face. ;) I LOVE it. It's just the basic Premium, no bells and whistles. For me, I watch DF more than Netflix. In fact, I have watched several hours of DF this past week, and 0 minutes of Netflix. Sorry Netflix! Because I almost never watch anything that isn't an Asian Drama anymore, Drama Fever has become more of a necessity than Netflix. If I had to choose only one streaming service, I'd choose DF.

I really used to like the web version layout of Drama Fever. It was very easy to figure out/use. The new web version released this week however is causing me some annoyance. I used to be able to comment on individual episodes as well as leave a review on the main show page- can't seem to do that now. Used to see a series synopsis on a main page for each show and then episode synopsis on each episode's page, but now I can't find any series synopsis. In addition to this, it keeps switching the text of the site randomly between various assorted languages without my doing anything to cause it. "Yo Drama Fever! I do not speak Japanese! How am I supposed to read the language menu in Japanese to switch it back to English?!" C'mon, I am only fluent in one language and dabble in 2 others. The random language switching is getting out of hand. I do love that I can still have a "My Shows" list for all 67 dramas that I am watching or planning on watching. (I already said I'm addicted to Kdramas, what more do you want from me here? :p )

If you watch 2-10 hours a month of Asian Dramas:
In this case, Drama Fever is probably going to prove more reliable than Netflix for you. Many shows are free and many more have most of the episodes free with just a few at the end available with credit or Premium only.

If you watch Asian dramas several times a week up to one hour a day:
It might be a good idea to download the app to your phone or tablet to support your new drama addiction. The app works great, I've had it over a year and never had a problem with it other than the odd issue where it doesn't fill up the credit meter all the time.

If you pretty much watch dramas daily, or nearly:
Yes, Premium is probably for you. If you're at the point of eat-sleep-breathe dramas, you maybe need to just bite the bullet and fork over the meager amount of cash required to bump up your membership from free to Premium. When you have a Premium membership, you can get the SmartTV app for your telly and make your significant other watch something with you. I will warn you though that I've had difficulty after difficulty with the Smart TV app randomly shutting down if I try to pause, play, rewind, or fast forward. Occasionally even if I'm not touching anything. Then when I restart the app, it wants to restart the episode back at the beginning, meaning I have to touch the ff button again, meaning I'm risking it shutting down on me again. It's a vicious cycle. Not sure if it's the app, the tv, or a joint effort to make me crazy. Maybe it's just the fact that I live in the mountains of the Pacific Northwestern US in a town that boasts a population of 500 so the internets no be so good sometimes.



{>>>}UPDATE 2018 Nov. 07:
DramaFever is dead, Netflix has had the same 20 Kdramas for the last 2-5 years, and I had to find a new source to feed my Kdrama addiction. https://kdramafeelz.blogspot.com/2018/11/dramageddon-and-viki-vs-kocowa-dilemma.html