Watching Japanese TV online for free (Comparisons thread)

[Jade]

Feel free to suggest your own, and make your own judgements on your method!

NIJI TV
Niji TV is a Windows only program that offers 11 different channels: Tokyo TV, Asahi TV, Fuji TV, TBS, NHK Education, NTV, NHK Sougou, Osaka TV, Yomiuri TV, JSports, and Kansai TV. The quality is decent, and doesn't change even when full screen. If you have the volume too high, you do hear a semi-high-ish noise sometimes, but everything is still easily audible at a lower volume without that weird noise.

(The quality is usually better than this, but my internet is awful atm so I can't offer a better shot. Sorry)

You need to register an account to use the program: which you can do by clicking the ログイン button (which isn't visible in my screenshot). The activation email looks really awful, but it's not a scam (thankfully!).

What do you use for watching Japanese TV? Post your own!

[chocopie]

I use 無料ドラマ動画館 which has up to date links to drama, documentaries, variety shows, sports shows, films etc. You need an idea of what you want to watch but there's a huge variety to choose from and you can watch at your convenience 

[Jade]

I used to use ドラマ動画館, but a lot of the linked streams never loaded fast enough for me lol It was good when I wanted to watch a drama that didn't have any torrents available anywhere though.

[Jembru]

I still just use fengyunzhibo but I know a lot of people have issues with it not loading. I do too, but I know the times that are best for me to watch, and have a little trick I use (if you can call opening several tabs at once a 'trick'). Now and then, it will just suddenly crash though. This morning, I got up early so I could make furikake* and watched it for almost 3 hours before it finally stopped, and it only paused to buffer 3 or 4 times, for maybe 3 seconds at the most, in all that time, which isn't too bad at all. We watch it on JP's PC, which runs through our regular TV set. That means that on full screen, it feels just like watching regular TV (I'm short sighted, so can't see a difference in image quality). When it does work, the image and sound quality are very good.

I've told JP about NIJI TV. He said he hadn't heard of it so will give it a try. He likes to watch his favourite anime shows but unfortunately, when popular anime or dramas play, tend to be the times it crashes the most. Does it go full screen? 

* I actually started trying to record a short piece on the winter olympics on my phone for Anna, but I had to stop when my cat stole a whole sheet of nori off the dining table... ^^
 

[Jade]

Jembru: Yes it does, and the quality stays the same full screen or not♥

[Bokusenou]

NIJI's back? OMG, I missed it! The channel selection wasn't as good as some other viewing methods, but it was the most stable streaming method I'd ever found! Then one day the streams went offline, the same day Japan passed a new anti-piracy law, and they stayed off for weeks. I thought it was done for! Reinstalling it as soon as I turn on my computer tomorrow!

[Aryth]

Last year I met a Japanese person who showed me a pretty good blog. It's called バラ動画.

I've seen quite a few different things (as the title would suggest). From news about the China/Japan debate to really strange comedy and novelty shows. It's usually uploaded stuff (like YouTube, DailyMotion, or Youko) so it's not streaming. I know that most of the shows are also up to date to the end of 2013, I don't know how much there is for 2014 yet. It's definitely stable since live streaming can get difficult.

I'm definitely going to check out NIJI TV, though. That looks awesome.

[vino]

I've been using NTKTV for a while since I like to watch some shows that only air in Japan.
I spent a crazy amount of time looking for a good TV app or website but it was all lagged and hard to use.
So eventually I found NTKTV, which runs on Java and Windows Player. It allows you to watch shows an hour after it's been aired.
I'm not sure if it's been posted before or if there's something better out there but I have a modified version that's easy to use and I have it uploaded on Mediafire for easy downloading.

Here's a zip file with the channels.
Here's Winrar if you don't have anything to unzip it with.

All you need to do is select the channel you want to watch, then press 2nd NKH, it'll always say that. Then you can select the date and time when it was aired. 
It'll open on Windows Player and you can simply maximize it and watch.

Let me know if you have something better to watch Japanese TV, but for what it is, it's rather great. 
You can download the original one here, but it only has one channel unless you pay for it. The one above contains 8.

Here are the programmings too. Cheers.

NHK
NTV
TBS
TOKYO MX
TV ASAHI
TV FUJI
TV TOKYO

[Jembru]

I hope you don't mind that I merged your post with this thread Vino. I thought it was worth including this here. Thanks for sharing the link and information. It has NTV!! I was gutted when I realised NIJI didn't include it!

[vino]

Mar 11, 2014 1:33:20 GMT Jembru said:

I hope you don't mind that I merged your post with this thread Vino. I thought it was worth including this here. Thanks for sharing the link and information. It has NTV!! I was gutted when I realised NIJI didn't include it!

It's alright! I was hoping someone would, I didn't realise the thread existed until I posted, so thanks.
I hope you enjoy it, it's pretty good quality, I was very excited when I found it.

[Jembru]

Well, I gave it a go. The image isn't anywhere near as good as fengyunzhibo, especially as we like to watch on full screen. It also skips more too, and crashes completely. You can at least hear it just fine when it isn't skipping. I also noticed that when I clicked on 'TV tokyo' I got 'NHK kyouzai'. Not sure what's up with that.

I guess JP and I will stick to fengyunzhibo, but use this when it's not working. It goes through good patches and bad patches, but will play flawlessly for hours on end on a good day and the image and sound is immaculate. I never bothered installing Niji TV, because it's not much use to us without TV Tokyo, well, I'm happy with NTV and NHK kyouzai, but it's JP's PC that runs through the TV, so he has the final say on what gets installed and what doesn't.

[Bokusenou]

Jembru NIJI has TV Tokyo. Did you mean NTV?

[Jembru]

Oh yeah, thats the one that was missing. I just knew it was JP who pointed it out, so assumed it was his channel that was missing! He might still try it, but now I'm worried the image quality is down to us watching on a 51" screen. We're possibly noticing the pixelation more than someone watching on a smaller screen might. So t could be something that happens with all such programs (JP blames Windows media, he says anything running off that is going to have issues). I think it's worth a try maybe. It can be pretty frustrating if the stream crashes just as you were getting into a show. Just need to persuade JP to set it up for me.

[Bokusenou]

Mar 14, 2014 6:01:16 GMT Jembru said:

Oh yeah, thats the one that was missing. I just knew it was JP who pointed it out, so assumed it was his channel that was missing! He might still try it, but now I'm worried the image quality is down to us watching on a 51" screen. We're possibly noticing the pixelation more than someone watching on a smaller screen might. So t could be something that happens with all such programs (JP blames Windows media, he says anything running off that is going to have issues). I think it's worth a try maybe. It can be pretty frustrating if the stream crashes just as you were getting into a show. Just need to persuade JP to set it up for me.

Oh, I forgot. NIJI does have NTV. It's just called 日本テレビ, somehow I forgot that earlier.