[V.LIVE+ Review] EXOMENTARY SPORTS - Bowling Competition

Hello everyone! I just posted a reivew for the behind cam of Bon Voyage but I'm back to review an episode of EXOMENTARY, which I haven't talked about in quite a while.

The great thing about EXOMENTARY is that it's a series of live broadcasts, which I think is the best charm of V App. While they have a general outline of a script to follow, everything is completely live so there's a lot of spontaneous hilarity that happens, especially with a group like EXO who are naturally funny together. 

So in this episode they have a bowling competition. Normally I find bowling pretty boring so I'll admit I wasn't really looking forward to watching it, but they changed things up a little and made it really fun.

First off, they had to split into two teams by choosing from cups that either had coffee or fish sauce in them. Those who got coffee were the Lucky One team (ha), those who got fish sauce were the Monster team (because they make faces like monsters when they drink the fish sauce lol). There was one member who only received ice, and he was the radish, or the neutral player. Either team was allowed to use him once per frame, but he could choose how well he wanted to play so he could completely ruin their game if he wanted to.

Baekhyun was the MC for this competition, and he did a spectacular job. He gave all the members hilarious nicknames while they were bowling, and he kept the show progressing at a great pace. 

They also had "super powers" that they were allowed to use during the game, which were like cheats they could use to hopefully get a better score. For example, Kyungsoo chose his power and was able to roll two balls at once. He ended up using the radish to throw one ball while he threw one, haha. There was also the water power, where they were able to make the other team wear goggles and a tube while bowling. 

Overall it was a really entertaining bowling competition! I've really enjoyed the entire EXOMENTARY series, from the individual member broadcasts to the group episodes like this. 

The only downside to the live broadcasts is that you then have to wait a while for them to be reuploaded. A lot of people think this is because of SM or Naver but it's actually because the content has to be rated. This is paid broadcasting so they have to follow the rules and get all the live content rated before it can be officially uploaded for replay on demand, and sometimes this can take weeks because the agency that rates it will take a long time to do so. 

As always, if you have any questions about V app or VLive+ you can check out their help page, or if you can't find the answer there I might be able to help!

[V.LIVE+ REVIEW] Behind Cam EP4 (Bon Voyage)

Hello everyone! I'll be giving a quick review this week on the behind cam for episode 4, which is a gift VOD that you can receive when you purchase the package.

I actually love the behind cams almost more than the show itself, because it reminds me so much of the random Bangtan Bombs that are posted on their YouTube. You really get to see the unedited side of the boys- the silly mistakes they make, and their random adventures that didn't make the cut.

The episode 4 behind cam starts with Namjoon explaining that they're waiting in the airport, but Yoongi left to look at the Duty Free shop and ended up not being able to get back in so he had to go all the way back through security. (Yoongi played it off saying he went to go get some fresh air)

You get to see some more of Taehyung all by his lonesome, and random clips from the members' public transit adventures. There's a compilation of Jin doing some random dancing and telling some of his old man jokes, which are my personal favorites. 

There's some behind footage from Taehyung's misadventure as well. He brags about bringing food that they can eat even though they're lost, but it's just gum haha. (Oh Taehyung...)

As Jimin and Jin walk to find their hotel (instead of riding the bus like they could have) they decide to play a game to carry each others bags, a game that includes seeing if the number of gummies in Jin's pocket are odd or even...

You can see all this and more in the Episode 4 behind cam >3<

As always, if you have any questions about V app or VLive+ you can check out their help page, or if you can't find the answer there I might be able to help!

More reviews on the way~ 

[V.LIVE+ REVIEW] What happened in Bergen? (Bon Voyage Episode 2) + Download Feature

Hello everyone! I'm back with a V.Live+ review for episode 2 of Bon Voyage~ Today I'll be giving you a recap of episode 2 as well as talking about the download function available for V.Live+ videos!

In Episode 1, the boys (minus Taehyung) flew to Bergen, Norway for the first leg of their do-it-yourself vacation. Among the most notable happenings were Jimin losing his bag, and everyone throwing a surprise coming-of-age party for Jungkook.

So, what happened in Episode 2? 

If you're like me and you were expecting the action to pick up and a lot of funny exciting things to happen...well, be prepared to be let down.

The episode opens with Jungkook eating breakfast, and showing the morning scene at the hostel. It turns out they're up pretty early because it's Norway Constitution Day and the streets are full of parades and fanfare!

It then cuts to Taehyung who is making his solo adventure to Bergen. Spoiler - he manages to find his way without too much trouble (I'll admit I was expecting some sort of mishap lol). Once he makes it to Bergen and finds out the money staff gave him wasn't enough for both transportation and food, he ditches the plan and uses his credit card (which is technically against the "rules") to go to TGI Friday's and buy a nice meal for himself and the staff (great, now I want ribs...).

The five members (Yoongi is resting at the hostel for the day) split into two teams to climb to an observatory. Namjoon and Jimin go hiking, and Jin, Hoseok and Jungkook ride the cable car. There's a lot of cute dialogue that happens during this time, but most notably Namjoon and Jimin dance to Fire to get them through their tiring hike up the mountain. 

Once car team reaches the top, Hoseok realizes he lost his ticket. (Losing things is fast becoming a fandom joke...) However, thanks to a kind local who picked up his ticket, he got it back quickly! 

After both teams meet at the top and admire the view, they all head down via the cable car when...(wait for it...)...Namjoon realizes he left his bag at the top. The staff say they'll give him money to go back up via the cable car to get it, but he has to rap to get their card. After an impressive freestyle rap, instead of the check card, the staff give Namjoon his bag which they had picked up for him. Such nice staff taking pity on our Lost Boys ;3;

The five members finally reunite with Taehyung at the bottom of the cable car ride, and they split up into seafood lovers and meat lovers for dinner. 

Aaaand that was it! Like I mentioned earlier, not much happened...haha. If you don't have many coins and can't buy the whole package, I'd recommend saving your coins for another episode.

There were also some problems with the live show this time around, many people (myself included) noticed that the subtitle timing was extremely off, and some people had problems with audio as well. Hopefully the live broadcast is better executed next time. 

I'd also like to mention the download feature that's available! This feature gives you the ability to watch the video via the app without connecting to the internet. You can't save it to your PC or anywhere else, it's only viewable on the app, but it's very useful for when you don't want to use data or you have a slow internet connection.

If you go to your purchases on V app, you'll see a little arrow next to each aired broadcast. Once you tap this, a screen where you can select the resolution will pop up.

I chose 270p since I don't have much space on my phone ^^;; Once it's finished downloading, the icon that was an arrow will change into a trashcan (in case you want to delete the download later. But you'll still be able to watch it online of course!). 

And that's it! The subs will be available with the download, so you don't need to worry about those. Do be sure to try out the download feature if you haven't already~

As always, if you have any questions about V.Live+, check out the help page on the V App website or feel free to ask me.

Do let me know if this review helped you out ^^

[V.LIVE+ REVIEW] BTS SURPRISE PARTY (Bon Voyage Episode 1)

Hello Everyone! I'm back with another V.Live+ review, this time for BTS. I'll be focusing on the first episode of their new V.Live+ series, Bon Voyage.

As most of my followers are fans of BTS and may have already seen the show, I spent some time thinking about what exactly I should review. In the end, I decided to focus this review towards those who haven't yet seen the content. I'll be discussing what I think of the overall production of the show, some of the content itself, and what I find to be the pros and cons of the broadcasts so far!

Unlike my previous review, you may notice that there are no screenshots haha..That's because I forgot to screencap while watching the live show on my PC :( Oops. (But you've probably already seen screencaps floating all over Twitter, etc. anyway so I doubt you need mine..)

I'll start with the basics- The entire Bon Voyage show costs 400 coins to buy. Since there's 8 episodes, that's 50 coins per episode. Each episode also comes a gift VOD (video on demand) Behind Cam. So for roughly $8USD, you're getting more or less 7~8 hours of footage.

Each video also has the option to be downloaded within the app. This means you can replay it without an Internet connection on the app. You can even choose which resolution to download it at, from 144p to 1080p. I think the download feature can be a great thing to take advantage of if you're worried about data or you're someone who likes to watch something again and again >3< (I haven't done it myself because I have no free space on my phone- uh oh)

Okay onto the episode review! I'm not an experienced reviewer by any means so I'm just going to give a brief overview of what happened in the show. First off, it was definitely a full length episode- the official time on the app reads 46 min 35 seconds. It looks like this time doesn't include the live commentary, which doesn't seem to be included in the VOD available on the app. With the special live commentary for the first episode, the live broadcast ran just around an hour.

As it was the first episode, much of the content was just the boys finding out their destinations, packing their luggage (the producers only gave them an hour to pack and mild panic ensued lol), trying to figure out the self check-in at the airport, etc. etc. I have to say, it was kind of amusing to see idols struggling with something "normal" people do on a daily basis. 

The boys' first destination was Bergen, Norway. I think the most notable incident of this entire episode was Jimin forgetting his bag on the bus, lol. It made for a great show, but the poor kid was so worried about his bag. In the end when he finally got it back, he confessed he just didn't want to lose it because it was a carrier fans had gifted to him. Precious Jimin :(

Another cute moment was Jungkook trying to figure out the laundry machine; he sat there trying to figure out what all the settings said by entering them into Naver Dictionary (my favorite tool btw, awesome if you're trying to learn Korean!).

The first episode ended with the boys holding a little surprise party for Jungkook to celebrate his Coming of Age day, complete with ramen and candles balanced precariously on top of a cake Jin and Namjoon found for him at a market that they went to earlier to stock up on groceries.

Overall I thought it was a pretty entertaining episode, though I'm not sure what the central focus would have been on if Jimin hadn't lost his bag haha..I think the captions especially were really cute. The little commentary and captions done in post-editing were done really well (at this point I'm not referring to the translations, just the captions in Korean). It reminded me of the captions for Run BTS and BTS Gayo because those were always really hilarious.

The translations of the captions and subtitles were pretty great too. Since this show wasn't broadcasted "live", the subtitles were made beforehand and they were very good quality. Of course during the live broadcast there was special live commentary, so those segments were live translations, but the actual show footage was all pre-done. 

Oh! I'd also like to mention the gift VOD for the first episode. This first gift VOD was a 12 minute compilation of the members' self cams of their time at the airport. With the way it was edited, it reminded me of a bunch of Bangtan Bombs all squished together. There's a lot of tiny clips, sometimes funny, sometimes cute, always really fun to watch. One that remains the most in my memory is Jimin filming Hoseok eating his bread forlornly outside their airport lounge because he wasn't allowed to eat it inside haha. Again, the captions were really great and the translations were done really nicely since it was all pre-done. Definitely a wonderful gift ;3;

So to sum up:

Pros:

• Great translations of the subtitles
• Good quality broadcast
• Length of broadcast
• In-app download feature
• Gift VOD

Cons:

• Live commentary not included in the VOD
• Taehyung wasn't in this episode due to his drama filming aw
• Why can't I think of any other cons?

So, should you spend your precious coins on Bon Voyage? In my opinion, yes. Do it. But if you can't afford the whole 400, I suggest saving what coins you do have for some later episodes, as I assume the "action" will pick up the longer they stay abroad.

As usual, if you have any questions about how to purchase and use coins you can check the V app help page. If you're curious about anything regarding V.Live+ feel free to ask me!

Do let me know if my review helped you out ^^

-Skye

[V.LIVE+ REVIEW] EXOMENTARY

Hello everyone! As you may or may not know, I'm what's known as a V.Friend and I'm here to bring you reviews of the content available only on V.Live+.

V.Live+ is a new addition to the original V App, and offers exclusive content in exchange for V coins which you can purchase in the app. 

EXO received the honor of being the first group to share their content on this new service! Through the EXOMENTARY LIVE package, you can receive access to an entire month's worth of never-before-seen content as well as the entire multi-cam experience of their comeback showcase. Overall there's 15 live broadcasts, the showcase multi-cam, 1 actioncam live broadcast, as well as additional behind stories and hidden video gifts. Super awesome deal!

Earlier this week EXO had a total of 9 live broadcasts in two days, each showcasing a special more personal time with the members. You may be thinking "this is just like the regular V.Live, what's different?" 

Due to a situation I was only able to catch a few of the live broadcasts, but I'll tell you my impressions of what I saw! Rather than reviewing the actual show content itself, I'd like to review the overall progression of the broadcasts and how worthwhile I think the V.Live+ broadcasts are in relation to the coins you spend to access the content. Even if you aren't an EXO fan I hope this will be a help to you in deciding whether or not you'd like to purchase coins for broadcasts done by other groups!

The first thing I noticed is that these broadcasts were much more structured like TV shows while still being personal. 

You can see in the screenshot the tablet with the stream running. The members were constantly checking comments! 

The camerawork and set appeared professional, but the progression of the broadcasts were very casual and gave glimpses into sides of the members fans hadn't really had a chance to see before. I found it to be a nice combination of professional broadcasting and casual hang-outs like V App has originally been known for.

There was also a great effort made to make the broadcasts very fan-focused. I noticed this especially in Chen's and Xiumin's radio show. A large portion of their show was dedicated to reading stories from fans and helping them solve their worries! They constantly checked viewer comments for feedback as well. 

Another great thing is the personal touch the members brought to their broadcasts. Some cooked, Sehun brought his dog, and then we have Baekhyun....playing LOL. 

I know nothing about LOL, so I was extremely confused watching the broadcast. But seeing him having fun and trying so hard to explain the game to everyone watching was really touching. I have to say, I know more about LOL now than I did before the broadcast! My favorite thing about this was being able to see how he acts in casual settings without worrying about any sort of image. It was really refreshing and enjoyable even to someone like me who knows nothing about the game.

I'd also like to mention that each broadcast was quite long, on average an hour in length. Considering each show costs 50 coins (~$1USD), this gives you a lot of content for your money! The quality is also high at 720p.

All of the live broadcasts are available for replay (video on demand) on mobile devices after a certain number of days (to allow for content rating). I think this may be the largest downside, since those who paid for the content but missed the live broadcast will have to wait much longer to see the shows. 

As you can see in the screenshots above, there are also subs! These shows are subbed live, so they won't be word-for-word, but you can still understand most of what's going on. The quality of the subs will depend on who is translating at the time, so I did notice that while the subs were excellent for some broadcasts (shout out to Shelbi for being awesome) they were sub-par (ignore my pun) for others. I think the overall quality of subs for the V.Live+ content is something that could be improved upon since paid content ought to be held to a higher standard.

To sum up the Pros/Cons of EXOs V.Live+ broadcasts so far:

Pros

• High quality broadcast
• Fan interaction
• Personal touch
• Broadcast length
• Subs

Cons

• Wait for video on demand
• Quality of subs can vary

I hope this overview can help you decide if you'd like to purchase any existing or upcoming V.Live+ broadcasts. In my opinion, the coins are worth it! I really enjoyed the broadcasts I was able to catch and I think this content has the potential to grow into something a lot bigger than the original free content on the app. I also think it's great that you have the option to purchase individual broadcasts for 50 coins each since not everyone can spend money on the entire packages. In this way the app becomes quite affordable for everyone!

If you have any questions about how to purchase and use coins you can check the V app help page. If you're curious about anything regarding V.Live+ feel free to ask me! 

BTS is coming up on V.Live+ soon so be sure to keep an eye out~

-Skye