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Ethanx94's review of Television Friend Channel
(Terebi no Tomo Chaneru) (?????????) (J)
Some personal info:
If you've noticed recently, anime has drastically decreased broadcasting in America. Toonami's gone and Adult Swim can't air anything that's more complex than Crayon Shin Chan. If they do it'd be epics (Bleach, although good) that no one can stay with anyway. Many people have turned to watching their anime online. Normally, if it's a really new series you'd have to wait for a fansub which is fairly quick anyway. However I, like many others, like to be ahead of the crowd. So I watch some anime raw streaming from my computer. For example: I've been trying to catch the new Haruhi episodes so I can get to the end of the "endless eight" quicker. I could rant about that more but first let's get to the channel!
The Channel:
Basically, this channel is for Japanese people with some sort of cable television subscription. But for the average weabo/otaku it makes for a quick handy tv guide that can find programs by genre, name, or info. Which I can't be bothered to figure out how to on tv.yahoo's or tvguide's Japanese site.
It's also neat that it can actually tune directly to the program through a tv/cable box.
Now the idea of someone who doesn't know Japanese to read a Japanese TV guide about the shows coming on Japanese Networks, which he himself can't even understand in the first place, is a little useless.
But I do it anyway cuz it's free and it's fun and it's Japanese so it's gotta be good!
To translate the programs: I can just use the writing pad ime that comes with Windows XP after you install Japanese typing and East Asian Fonts. Just look at the language bar and there should be an icon. It's kind of a hassle but definitely worth it in my situation. After I get it typed in I run it through translate.google.com or, a usually better, excite.co.jp/world/english auto translator (which is good for a title or a few words)
The channel itself may even give the title in the info and if not there are at least a lot of cognates in hiragana/katakana.
If your lucky there might even be a little English thrown in here and there.
Ex: Naruto is plainly spelt in English "NARUTO"
Setting up:
So first, make sure your Wii accepts region free channels or region free the wad file.
I got mine already region free'd and it shows up as onetri1 and onetri2 in my Wii's log.
It will ask you a few questions once you start it up.
What is your cable provider/tv brand?
Is the time correct? (which it won't be if you're not in Japan but you can change that through the system settings)
What mii do you want to use to stamp channels? (you can use more than 1)
And some more questions that I neglected to mention.
Afterwards it will download the tv guide from a service called G-Guide.
Lookup the current time in Japan online if your Wii isn't set to Japan's time (they're usually a day ahead of us)
Look for what's on by going to the the top. There should be a horizontal strip of numbers which represent the hours. Match em' up.
Now, in my case, I would go to my streaming program once I found something interesting like a random anime.
I would translate the title like I mentioned above.
Tuning:
If you're in Japan and you see something you like, hit the channel number to the left of the channel name. You will need to set up some details about your tv or cable box (I'm not sure which). Afterwards you can control your tv with your wiimote. Yes, it uses reflecting infrared rays to allow your wiimote to change channels and volume. Very handy. This is particularly interesting because this might be avaliable for other countries' televisions. For example, I saw a Sanyo option which I supposed could be used to control my US Sanyo tv. I wish I knew how to set it up though.
Sorting:
To sort it by anime go to the magnifying glass at the top and then choose the first option for genre then choose the first option again for anime. Then the top one once more for all (I believe.)
It should highlight the anime programs airing for the current week in a very manly purple color.
To see other days, click the - button a few times, then choose a day from the Aero Flip 3D-looking screen. You can also hit the second button from the left at the top of the screen.
You can also search by keyword with a usb keyboard or just with the wiimote. This is very handy because it will look in title and description and it will turn transliterated latin into hiragana just like Windows' ime. Just choose the second option after choosing the magnifying glass.
Random:
You can adjust the size of text by pressing the 1 button.
In the upper right are settings, I'll try to update this with more info a bit later.
You can scroll around the list a lot like the Opera browser by holding B button.
You can stamp any program you plan to with your mii's stamp. Just drag it onto the boxes of the program's info.
It can also you an hour before it comes on and put send a message to the Wii's message board (Wii Connect 24 required).
You're limited to around 24 channels which is more than enough since a few channels are duplicates.
Other thoughts:
The program I'm using to stream channels isn't the best but it's better than nothing. It's called KeyHoleTV. Look it up on Wikipedia, I helped make a nice article on it.
Anything I didn't state is either too obvious, I forgot about it, or I didn't know it was there.
Some videos:
Nintendo's official trailer
Showing channel switching in action
A very good explanation provided by Nyoronoru
Rating:
It's kind of hard to give it a rating considering it's not really a game and I can't really test all of it's functions.
But might as well anyway.
Useful: 4/5 (Sure helps me, probably 5/5 for normal Japanese people. Using the wiimote as a tv remote would be awesome!)
Sound: 3/5 (Nothing too annoying. Nothing too over the top. Much like the system menu)
Graphics: 5/5 (It's a tv guide so I don't expect it to have amazing graphics. I did like how the titles will become 3d bars when you set it to sort a certain way)
Overall: 8/10 (It does it's job and it does it better than other tv listing sites. Wish they come out with an American release (with American Channels) but the usefulness of something like this here is debatable. Works great for what I need it for though.)
Thanks to:
Nyoronoru
erumoaTube
Mike Sands
(Terebi no Tomo Chaneru) (?????????) (J)
Some personal info:
If you've noticed recently, anime has drastically decreased broadcasting in America. Toonami's gone and Adult Swim can't air anything that's more complex than Crayon Shin Chan. If they do it'd be epics (Bleach, although good) that no one can stay with anyway. Many people have turned to watching their anime online. Normally, if it's a really new series you'd have to wait for a fansub which is fairly quick anyway. However I, like many others, like to be ahead of the crowd. So I watch some anime raw streaming from my computer. For example: I've been trying to catch the new Haruhi episodes so I can get to the end of the "endless eight" quicker. I could rant about that more but first let's get to the channel!
The Channel:
Basically, this channel is for Japanese people with some sort of cable television subscription. But for the average weabo/otaku it makes for a quick handy tv guide that can find programs by genre, name, or info. Which I can't be bothered to figure out how to on tv.yahoo's or tvguide's Japanese site.
It's also neat that it can actually tune directly to the program through a tv/cable box.
Now the idea of someone who doesn't know Japanese to read a Japanese TV guide about the shows coming on Japanese Networks, which he himself can't even understand in the first place, is a little useless.
But I do it anyway cuz it's free and it's fun and it's Japanese so it's gotta be good!
To translate the programs: I can just use the writing pad ime that comes with Windows XP after you install Japanese typing and East Asian Fonts. Just look at the language bar and there should be an icon. It's kind of a hassle but definitely worth it in my situation. After I get it typed in I run it through translate.google.com or, a usually better, excite.co.jp/world/english auto translator (which is good for a title or a few words)
The channel itself may even give the title in the info and if not there are at least a lot of cognates in hiragana/katakana.
If your lucky there might even be a little English thrown in here and there.
Ex: Naruto is plainly spelt in English "NARUTO"
Setting up:
So first, make sure your Wii accepts region free channels or region free the wad file.
I got mine already region free'd and it shows up as onetri1 and onetri2 in my Wii's log.
It will ask you a few questions once you start it up.
What is your cable provider/tv brand?
Is the time correct? (which it won't be if you're not in Japan but you can change that through the system settings)
What mii do you want to use to stamp channels? (you can use more than 1)
And some more questions that I neglected to mention.
Afterwards it will download the tv guide from a service called G-Guide.
Lookup the current time in Japan online if your Wii isn't set to Japan's time (they're usually a day ahead of us)
Look for what's on by going to the the top. There should be a horizontal strip of numbers which represent the hours. Match em' up.
Now, in my case, I would go to my streaming program once I found something interesting like a random anime.
I would translate the title like I mentioned above.
Tuning:
If you're in Japan and you see something you like, hit the channel number to the left of the channel name. You will need to set up some details about your tv or cable box (I'm not sure which). Afterwards you can control your tv with your wiimote. Yes, it uses reflecting infrared rays to allow your wiimote to change channels and volume. Very handy. This is particularly interesting because this might be avaliable for other countries' televisions. For example, I saw a Sanyo option which I supposed could be used to control my US Sanyo tv. I wish I knew how to set it up though.
Sorting:
To sort it by anime go to the magnifying glass at the top and then choose the first option for genre then choose the first option again for anime. Then the top one once more for all (I believe.)
It should highlight the anime programs airing for the current week in a very manly purple color.
To see other days, click the - button a few times, then choose a day from the Aero Flip 3D-looking screen. You can also hit the second button from the left at the top of the screen.
You can also search by keyword with a usb keyboard or just with the wiimote. This is very handy because it will look in title and description and it will turn transliterated latin into hiragana just like Windows' ime. Just choose the second option after choosing the magnifying glass.
Random:
You can adjust the size of text by pressing the 1 button.
In the upper right are settings, I'll try to update this with more info a bit later.
You can scroll around the list a lot like the Opera browser by holding B button.
You can stamp any program you plan to with your mii's stamp. Just drag it onto the boxes of the program's info.
It can also you an hour before it comes on and put send a message to the Wii's message board (Wii Connect 24 required).
You're limited to around 24 channels which is more than enough since a few channels are duplicates.
Other thoughts:
The program I'm using to stream channels isn't the best but it's better than nothing. It's called KeyHoleTV. Look it up on Wikipedia, I helped make a nice article on it.
Anything I didn't state is either too obvious, I forgot about it, or I didn't know it was there.
Some videos:
Nintendo's official trailer
Showing channel switching in action
A very good explanation provided by Nyoronoru
Rating:
It's kind of hard to give it a rating considering it's not really a game and I can't really test all of it's functions.
But might as well anyway.
Useful: 4/5 (Sure helps me, probably 5/5 for normal Japanese people. Using the wiimote as a tv remote would be awesome!)
Sound: 3/5 (Nothing too annoying. Nothing too over the top. Much like the system menu)
Graphics: 5/5 (It's a tv guide so I don't expect it to have amazing graphics. I did like how the titles will become 3d bars when you set it to sort a certain way)
Overall: 8/10 (It does it's job and it does it better than other tv listing sites. Wish they come out with an American release (with American Channels) but the usefulness of something like this here is debatable. Works great for what I need it for though.)
Thanks to:
Nyoronoru
erumoaTube
Mike Sands
