Archive for News

The dissappearing play button

The play button is a big blue icon located where it’s always been, right next to the donate button, you can’t really miss it. However, it seems that more and more people are having problem not seeing the play button in order to access the videos. Unfortunately, we are unable to replicate the problem at our end. We’ve test viewing the page with Windows XP, Vista, Win 7 Beta running various browsers including Firefox  v2 and v3, Safari v3 and of course Internet Explorer. All seem to be working for us. If you’re experiencing this problem, please include the Operating System (Windows, Mac, Linux ..etc), browser type and version (ex: Internet E xplorer v7) when you’re reporting the problem to us.

The following are the suggested steps for fixing the problems, let us know if they still not working for you.

  1. Clear your browser’s cache. Please use Google for the necessary steps for your specific browser.
  2. If  it’s still not working, try resetting your modem/router/gateway that you’re using to connect to the internet.
  3. If you’re still having problem, try to find someone who is technically knowledgeable to help you out. We can give you more technical details to help you diagnostic the problem, but unless you understand them, they would useless to you.

If anyone successfully fix the problem using the above steps, or your own procedures, please let us know so we can publish them here for others to use. Depends on the solutions, we might modify our codes to further alleviate the problem for future visitors.

showplaybutton

Update 1: If you’re currently using IE v6, try upgrading to the latest version v8. That should fix the problem.

Update 2: We’ve tested the latest browsers – Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 – and they seem to be working just fine.

A new year, a new direction

Can’t you believe it, it’s been over 2 years since we started this little project. Along the way we ran into numerous problems , from server failures to hosting cost hike. Still, here’s we are … starting our third year, and with some luck, we’ll stay on a little longer. We understand that we’re not one of the few sites for free online videos like it used to be, but at least our video quality is still one of the best being offered, and we’re always working toward better and better streaming quality. More on that later. It still surprise us that even though some people has been coming here for a while, they still haven’t figure out some of the features we have here. So, before I go on, I’ll cover the basics.

OnlinePhim.net and OnlineDrama.net are two separate sites. I’m always amazed to find out that someone doesn’t know there are 2 sites. Depends on what you like to watch, you’ll probably spend the most time at one site or another. OnlinePhim.net contains videos that are vietnamese audio dubbed in the US. We don’t host any narrated videos (phim thuyet minh) here. EVER. OnlineDrama.net is the sister site that contains videos with their original audios with english subtitles. If you want to watch something that’s currently being aired in Asia, this is the place.

Searching for something to watch. This is one of the things we kept in mind when we built the site from the ground up. If you know the title of the video you’re looking for, then use the Search function. Make sure the word you’re using is 3 or more letters, otherwise it won’t return anything. This is the default search behavior. By selecting Viet, it enables you to type in vietnamese characters, if the title you want is vietnamese. Want to watch something new? Browse the New Releases section or check out the Newest Added Videos box. Videos more than a year old will be found in the Videos section, which act as the archives. The Directory Listing under the logo gives you the ability to quickly locate videos from the countries of your choosing. You can further filter out the videos by selecting series or single. Of course, if you don’t care about the country of origin or the titles, you can find the videos you’re interested in using Tags (genres).

Read the blog. We understand that you rather watch videos then read any random stuffs we put here. However, try to skim through it once in awhile. We usually post updates here. If the site is down, or we made some changes to the system, chaces are the information is right there. Don’t send us a hundred different emails about a problem we already know about.

Moving on … For the past 2 years, we have been bringing you quality contents for free. However, it’s getting more and more difficult to maintain the site. With the help of our contributors, we have been able to get this far, and we understand that without them, we won’t make it much further. Therefore, as a way to show our appreciation, we will now turn the majority of our effort into creating something only for our contributors. We actually been planning for a long while now, but problems always come up that forced us to post pone the project. Since the holidays are over, we’ve started to put our attentions at the project once again. Once we’re done with the first phase of the project, we’ll send out invitations for a preview to get feedbacks and comments before we move on to the next phase.

So what’s exactly are contributors? They are the people who help the site by contributing time, effort, and/or money. This includes video uploaders, link posters, reviewers/writers, graphic designers, promoters, and donators. There are other way to contribute too, but that’s the main designations. Email us if you want anything clarified. Speaking of donators, to those of you who donated a few dollars, for whatever reason … please don’t. Although we appreciate every dollar we can get, what you’re doing is actually giving it away to paypal (our current credit card processor). Paypal charge a processing fee for every donation we get, and after all the fee, we basically get nothing. So, if that’s all that you can afford, please save your money. More information on the invites coming soon.

A week of ups and downs

Since last week, our site has been online/offline pretty much every day as we’re trying to recover from a DDos attack. Afterward, we were experiencing problems with misconfigurations on the server which basically lock out users. Then, we ran into hardware problems which froze the system. We have no idea when all these problems will go away, but for now you should be able to access the videos normally. As for the staffs … there’s no rest for the weary.

PS. We have began testing a FriendConnect module which you can sign in using any openID service like Google, Yahoo, Myspace, etc… without the need to register again. For now, this will allow you to write reviews/discuss the videos. The review boxs are placed on the main video title page, at the bottom.