Sunday, July 17, 2016

[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 ^^

Sunday, July 10, 2016

[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