Tiger Cinema is an online DVD rental service that specializes in Asian movies and TV series. I've been a member since September 2007, and so far I've rented more than 20 DVDs from this service. I thought it was about time I wrote up a review.
Why I Chose Tiger Cinema
Before signing up for TigerCinema, I did a fair amount of research on DVD rental websites that specialize in Asian cinema. But before I get into the comparisons, let me mention that I don't consider outfits like Netflix, Rent Anime, or Anime Takeout to be direct competitors to Tiger Cinema. These websites have a lot to offer, but their catalogs are too limited to represent the broad spectrum that is Asian cinema.
Here's a comparison matrix of the services I researched:
| Name | Price (Basic Plan) | # of DVDs out at a time (Basic Plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Tiger Cinema | $9.99 | 1 |
| eHit | $13.95 | 2 |
| Cinflix | $19.99 | 4 |
| CinemAsia | $13.99 | 2 |
As you can see, Tiger Cinema has the cheapest basic plan out of all these services. However, compared to the other services it doesn't seem to be such a good deal [1], because the other services all let you keep more DVDs at once. So why did I choose it? Well, I'm generally pretty busy, and I didn't think I would have time to watch much more than 4 movies a month. So I figured that as long as I can get about one movie per week, I would get the most value out of the Tiger Cinema basic plan. If I ever found myself with more time on my hands, I would probably try out the other services in the order that I listed them.
Plans
Tiger Cinema, like all other rental services, offers a number of plans that go beyond their basic plan. I won't bore you with the exact details, but the differences basically revolve around how many movies or TV series you can have out at a time. I should mention that the basic plan doesn't allow me to rent TV series at all. They also have a feature called Tiger Stream, which is a Video On Demand service that costs $1.99 and above. I actually think Tiger Stream looks kind of promising, but unfortunately there are not many movies available for streaming so I haven't had an opportunity to try it out. Also, Tiger Stream requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 11, which is not a huge deal but kind of off-putting [2].
Speed
So how fast do the DVDs get to my house? Well, at first it wasn't really one movie per week, but then they apparently got a new warehouse in a better location, and they got noticeably faster. Now they're back to being somewhat slow again, but I'm not sure if it's because they think I'm "locked in" or because of some of the horrible mail-delaying weather we've had this winter. It helps that they have an "Advanced Shipping" feature that lets you request the next DVD to be shipped even if the return of the current DVD hasn't been confirmed.
Diversity of Catalog
Overall, I think Tiger Cinema's selection is pretty good. They don't have many marquee anime titles, but it doesn't matter too much since my main focus is on Chinese action and comedy movies. I have also gotten several Korean movies, and in this area they seem pretty strong. I can't comment on TV shows, since I don't really care about them, and anyway my chosen plan doesn't allow me to rent them.
Browsing Experience
You can browse by movie genre, language, actor, and director. The search feature seems to work fairly well. Movie entries have 5 tabs: movie details, photos, member reviews, members also enjoyed, and write review.
I like the fact that the movie details tab contains a summary of the plot in English. The summaries may be badly translated, but at least they give you a general idea of what the movie's about. Also nice is the photos tab which contains a gallery of stills from the film; this helps you get a feel for the movie's visual style. However, the stills gallery is unavailable for a lot of movie entries. Some entries include a trailer, but this feature is largely useless since the video streams so slowly that it just isn't worth it. The "members also enjoyed" tab is only somewhat useful; it seems that the movies listed here usually don't seem to have much in common with the movie whose page you're viewing.
Overall, I think browsing for movies is a pleasant experience. If any of Tiger Cinema staff is reading this review, here are my recommendations for improvement:
- Load the trailers onto Youtube and then just link to them from each movie page.
- For each movie entry, put a link to its corresponding IMDB page. I often check IMDB because it has more complete cast and director info.
DVD Quality
The DVDs that you get from Tiger Cinema look pretty good. If they are bootlegs, you can't tell. They have menus, special features, and previews like any normal DVDs you can get at Wal-Mart. I have not had any problems with the English subtitles on any of the discs I have received [3]. However, I have noticed that there are some movies in their catalog that do not have English subtitles. In these cases, there is usually a different version of the movie that does have English subtitles [4].
One thing that may annoy some people is that not all discs are going to be Region 1. In fact, a decent number that I received were Region 3. This didn't bother me too much because I just used easily-obtainable DVD ripping software to transfer the video to my hard drive, and then played them from my computer [5]. But I can see how some people would really hate this inconvenience. To be fair, the region code is always clearly displayed in the entry for each movie. You can also see the region code in the queue page by hovering your mouse over the "document icon" next to the name of the movie (assuming you have JavaScript enabled).
Managing Your Queue
Most of the interface is drab but functional; for browsing it's perfectly acceptable. But the interface for managing the queue is annoying. For some reason the default queue interface does not allow you to drag your entries up and down. After you enable dragging, you find that after you drag an entry to a different location, the whole queue has to reload (this takes as much time as the whole page reloading). This makes the interface feel slow and clunky. One possible way to improve the interface would be to have an "Update" button that you click after you've finished dragging the items around the queue.
Another weirdness is the concept of "saved items". These are items that are not in your queue because they're out of stock, not yet released, or otherwise unavailable. But once they do become available, they are supposed to be automatically added to your queue. The problem with the "saved items" section is that almost all of my items there have a status of "unknown", and most of them have had that status for a few months. I can't believe that they really don't know why these items are unavailable; it makes me think that their system isn't working right, or else their catalog is smaller than they lead me to believe.
Summary
Overall, I'm satisfied with Tiger Cinema and plan on staying with them for the time being. However, I'm not so exuberantly happy about it that I won't try out the other online rental services. With the exception of CinemAsia, they all offer free trials, so I figure I don't have anything to lose by signing up and seeing what they have to offer.
| [1] | Tiger Cinema stacks up a little better when you pre-pay for a full year (you get two months free). But the other services may have pre-pay discounts that I don't know about, so I don't consider those kinds of things in my comparison. |
| [2] | I don't like using Internet Explorer unless I absolutely have to. |
| [3] | Well, sometimes the subtitles are not completely accurate, but usually the main point is preserved. This sort of thing basically happens with subtitles in any foreign language movie. |
| [4] | Why do they have different versions of the same movie? I think it's usually because the different versions have audio tracks in different languages. |
| [5] | It generally takes about 20 minutes to rip a DVD to my hard drive. I'm patient enough to consider this a minor hassle. Also, I have everything set up in our living room so I can just hook my laptop to the TV with an S-Video cable. And of course, I delete the video file after I'm done watching the movie. |
.. editlink:: /feeds/7759675509232464806/posts/default/6197395119129948706
TigerCinema
===========
.. labels:: dvd rental, movies, review
`Tiger Cinema`_ is an online DVD rental service that specializes in Asian movies and TV series. I've been a member since September 2007, and so far I've rented more than 20 DVDs from this service. I thought it was about time I wrote up a review.
.. _Tiger Cinema: http://tigercinema.com
Why I Chose Tiger Cinema
------------------------
Before signing up for TigerCinema, I did a fair amount of research on DVD rental websites that specialize in Asian cinema. But before I get into the comparisons, let me mention that I don't consider outfits like Netflix_, `Rent Anime`_, or `Anime Takeout`_ to be direct competitors to Tiger Cinema. These websites have a lot to offer, but their catalogs are too limited to represent the broad spectrum that is Asian cinema.
.. _Netflix: http://netflix.com
.. _Rent Anime: http://rentanime.com
.. _Anime Takeout: http://animetakeout.com
Here's a comparison matrix of the services I researched:
.. csv-table::
:header: "Name", "Price (Basic Plan)", "# of DVDs out at a time (Basic Plan)"
`Tiger Cinema`_, $9.99, 1
eHit_, $13.95, 2
Cinflix_, $19.99, 4
CinemAsia_, $13.99, 2
.. _Cinflix: http://cinflix.com
.. _eHit: http://ehit.com
.. _CinemAsia: http://cinemasia.com
As you can see, Tiger Cinema has the cheapest basic plan out of all these services. However, compared to the other services it doesn't seem to be such a good deal [#]_, because the other services all let you keep more DVDs at once. So why did I choose it? Well, I'm generally pretty busy, and I didn't think I would have time to watch much more than 4 movies a month. So I figured that as long as I can get about one movie per week, I would get the most value out of the Tiger Cinema basic plan. If I ever found myself with more time on my hands, I would probably try out the other services in the order that I listed them.
Plans
-----
Tiger Cinema, like all other rental services, offers a number of plans that go beyond their basic plan. I won't bore you with the exact details, but the differences basically revolve around how many movies or TV series you can have out at a time. I should mention that the basic plan doesn't allow me to rent TV series at all. They also have a feature called `Tiger Stream`_, which is a Video On Demand service that costs $1.99 and above. I actually think Tiger Stream looks kind of promising, but unfortunately there are not many movies available for streaming so I haven't had an opportunity to try it out. Also, Tiger Stream requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 11, which is not a huge deal but kind of off-putting [#]_.
.. _Tiger Stream: http://www.tigercinema.com/action/films~browse_vod/
Speed
-----
So how fast do the DVDs get to my house? Well, at first it wasn't really one movie per week, but then they apparently got a new warehouse in a better location, and they got noticeably faster. Now they're back to being somewhat slow again, but I'm not sure if it's because they think I'm "locked in" or because of some of the horrible mail-delaying weather we've had this winter. It helps that they have an "Advanced Shipping" feature that lets you request the next DVD to be shipped even if the return of the current DVD hasn't been confirmed.
Diversity of Catalog
--------------------
Overall, I think Tiger Cinema's selection is pretty good. They don't have many marquee anime titles, but it doesn't matter too much since my main focus is on Chinese action and comedy movies. I have also gotten several Korean movies, and in this area they seem pretty strong. I can't comment on TV shows, since I don't really care about them, and anyway my chosen plan doesn't allow me to rent them.
Browsing Experience
-------------------
You can browse by movie genre, language, actor, and director. The search feature seems to work fairly well. Movie entries have 5 tabs: movie details, photos, member reviews, members also enjoyed, and write review.
I like the fact that the movie details tab contains a summary of the plot in English. The summaries may be badly translated, but at least they give you a general idea of what the movie's about. Also nice is the photos tab which contains a gallery of stills from the film; this helps you get a feel for the movie's visual style. However, the stills gallery is unavailable for a lot of movie entries. Some entries include a trailer, but this feature is largely useless since the video streams so slowly that it just isn't worth it. The "members also enjoyed" tab is only somewhat useful; it seems that the movies listed here usually don't seem to have much in common with the movie whose page you're viewing.
Overall, I think browsing for movies is a pleasant experience. If any of Tiger Cinema staff is reading this review, here are my recommendations for improvement:
- Load the trailers onto Youtube and then just link to them from each movie page.
- For each movie entry, put a link to its corresponding IMDB_ page. I often check IMDB because it has more complete cast and director info.
.. _IMDB: http://imdb.com
DVD Quality
-----------
The DVDs that you get from Tiger Cinema look pretty good. If they are bootlegs, you can't tell. They have menus, special features, and previews like any normal DVDs you can get at Wal-Mart. I have not had any problems with the English subtitles on any of the discs I have received [#]_. However, I have noticed that there are some movies in their catalog that do not have English subtitles. In these cases, there is usually a different version of the movie that does have English subtitles [#]_.
One thing that may annoy some people is that not all discs are going to be Region 1. In fact, a decent number that I received were Region 3. This didn't bother me too much because I just used easily-obtainable DVD ripping software to transfer the video to my hard drive, and then played them from my computer [#]_. But I can see how some people would really hate this inconvenience. To be fair, the region code is always clearly displayed in the entry for each movie. You can also see the region code in the queue page by hovering your mouse over the "document icon" next to the name of the movie (assuming you have JavaScript enabled).
Managing Your Queue
-------------------
Most of the interface is drab but functional; for browsing it's perfectly acceptable. But the interface for managing the queue is annoying. For some reason the default queue interface does not allow you to drag your entries up and down. After you enable dragging, you find that after you drag an entry to a different location, the whole queue has to reload (this takes as much time as the whole page reloading). This makes the interface feel slow and clunky. One possible way to improve the interface would be to have an "Update" button that you click after you've finished dragging the items around the queue.
Another weirdness is the concept of "saved items". These are items that are not in your queue because they're out of stock, not yet released, or otherwise unavailable. But once they do become available, they are supposed to be automatically added to your queue. The problem with the "saved items" section is that almost all of my items there have a status of "unknown", and most of them have had that status for a few months. I can't believe that they really don't know why these items are unavailable; it makes me think that their system isn't working right, or else their catalog is smaller than they lead me to believe.
Summary
-------
Overall, I'm satisfied with Tiger Cinema and plan on staying with them for the time being. However, I'm not so exuberantly happy about it that I won't try out the other online rental services. With the exception of CinemAsia, they all offer free trials, so I figure I don't have anything to lose by signing up and seeing what they have to offer.
.. [#] Tiger Cinema stacks up a little better when you pre-pay for a full year (you get two months free). But the other services may have pre-pay discounts that I don't know about, so I don't consider those kinds of things in my comparison.
.. [#] I don't like using Internet Explorer unless I absolutely have to.
.. [#] Well, sometimes the subtitles are not completely accurate, but usually the main point is preserved. This sort of thing basically happens with subtitles in any foreign language movie.
.. [#] Why do they have different versions of the same movie? I think it's usually because the different versions have audio tracks in different languages.
.. [#] It generally takes about 20 minutes to rip a DVD to my hard drive. I'm patient enough to consider this a minor hassle. Also, I have everything set up in our living room so I can just hook my laptop to the TV with an S-Video cable. And of course, I delete the video file after I'm done watching the movie.
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