Crackle

I recently discovered my cell carrier has turned on the 4G towers around here. Tonight I tested the 4G speeds going phone-as-modem to my laptop. Tonight, I watched Youtube vids without buffering. Then I did the same with Netflix (yay!!!). Then I logged in to my Crackle account.

For those who never tried it, Crackle is a streaming media service much like Netflix or Hulu. Much like Hulu, it's free, and they provide the service by having commercials. The selection is nowhere near as large as Netflix, but again, this is free, as long as you can handle a few commercials. A LOT less commercials than watching regular TV! In a "half-hour" show, you will be subjected to approximately 3-6 commercials ranging from 15 seconds to 30 seconds each. That's the average I've seen so far.

Crackle has full length movies, TV series, trailers, behind-the-scenes clips, and a decent selection of their own exclusive shows. Not all crappy shows either... there's a few of their shows that actually are quite entertaining! Crackle also has a "social" feature, which I have not tried, but I have read that you can watch shows and chat about them with your friends in real time.

One big bonus, they have a damn fine selection of anime and Japanese movies! I fired up a Japanese movie earlier with an NR rating, and 4 minutes in I discovered it was uncensored... if you're into that sort of thing. Probably my favorite thing so far though, I started watching an X-men anime, which is REALLY well done, AND they have the complete series of the Valkyria Chronicles anime based on the video game! Imagine, getting into the story of Valkyria Chronicles without having to beat any levels to watch the next segment!

I will post more as I discover more, but I highly recommend trying Crackle and seeing if you can handle the commercials. If so, it will only add to the amount of shows and movies you can watch, and it's free! I believe you can watch without registering, but registering allows you to favorite shows and keeps track of what episodes you were watching... things like that. Registering is a simple email and password, and at worst you will get maybe one or two emails a weeks discussing movie/TV news and anything new that might be on Crackle. Give it a shot!

If you don't have Crackle, would you be considered crackle-lackin'?

Downloaded and installed Crackle onto the PS3 this evening since Netflix was "experiencing technical difficulties." They don't seem to have a whole lot in movies, but they do have a nice variety; I'll have to check out the television shows tomorrow or something.

Oh, and the first thing I watched? Kung Fu Hustle.

...

It is a 22MB download from the Playstation Store (3 minutes), with another 22MB download since the newest version has been found.

Amazing how Playstation announces crap like Netflix, Hulu and... and... the other one, but never mentioned the free ones like Crackle and Crunchyroll. Makes me wonder just what else there is in the Playstation Store that consumers haven't been told about!

Well that just bites. I read you could watch crackle on the PS3, and looked into how to do it, and found NOTHING. I found an obscure forum talking about turning on subtitles, but that was watching crackle through the PS3 internet browser! Now you're telling me there's a friggin app for it?! DAMMIT!

But to further discuss your findings, yeah there's not much in the way of anything, but a lot of it is niche stuff and many are not on Netflix. I do like the amount of Japanese movies and B-rated stuff.

And again, they have like 40 "original" shows, many of which aren't worth a toss, but there's a couple that I find interesting. There's one called 'The Unknown' or something like that. It stars the hobbit (who went on to cameo in Lost and FlashForward... Dominic Mongaham or some such) as like a writer/paranormal investigator/ kinda X-files meets Lovecraft, or so I've read. I started watching the first episode a while back and it piqued my interest but at the time I was buffering video so bad I just got fed up. Will have to try again! Point is, they have stuff you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else...

Edit: Kung Fu Hustle