yep.. smap's performance was so good, they really helped that victory.. to me, kouhaku is no more the thing to watch already.. enka is not interesting and it is not interesting to see the same artistes appear on stage every year.. i believe the year-end specials of FNS, Music Station and NTV are definitely better.. kouhaku is just watched for tradition sakes..

So far I think I like the FNS performances the best then closely followed by Music Station Super Live and NTV. Haven't seen the complete Kouhaku yet but I'll agree with you that not many of us like the enka part and its there for tradition.

When is the FNS performance? And what's NTV? Thank god those kind souls captured the show and put it up on BT.....

groink wrote:

Hey! booxonline.org captured it, and is available through BT. I've placed the torrent file on my web site: http://groink.no-ip.org/torrents/NHK2003RedWhite.torrent Specs: 2.93GiB (3,153,969,088 bytes) 3008 pierces (1,048,576 bytes each) Announce URL http://bt.uglab.org;6880/announce Cap by booxonline.org File's huge! I'm downloading it right now as I write this. I'll see how the quality is once it's finished.

Finished downloading it!!!!! The quality is most excellent!!!! The video is MPEG, 480 x 480 resolution.

Personally, I love the enka stuff more than the JPOP. I'm showing my age!!!

--- groink

DJEnD wrote:

When is the FNS performance? And what's NTV? Thank god those kind souls captured the show and put it up on BT.....

FNS Music Festival was shown on the 3rd Dec 2003.

NTV Best Choice Music Special was shown on the 17th Dec 2003.

The only bad thing I have to say about these shows was where was Day After Tomorrow?? One of my favourite band didn't show up they were only seen on the Hey Hey Hey XMas special.

groink wrote:

Finished downloading it!!!!! The quality is most excellent!!!! The video is MPEG, 768 x 576 resolution, 2036Kbps.

Interesting. I grabbed the same torrent file but mine shows it is an MPEG2 at 480x360

I also watched this on NGN2 when they broadcasted it live at 325am yesterday morning x_x

This encode seems to be missing the first 30 minutes which has BoA, w-inds, Maki Goto, 175R, Rina Aiuchi, EXILE, Yoko Nagayama, George Yamamoto, Kaori Mizumori, Yutaka Yamakawa, Kaori Kouzai, Kiyoshi Maekawa, Morning Musume. What I downloaded has Gackt performing (he comes right after Morning Musume).

Just wondering if my download is messed up.

NoBus wrote:

Interesting. I grabbed the same torrent file but mine shows it is an MPEG2 at 480x360 I also watched this on NGN2 when they broadcasted it live at 325am yesterday morning x_x This encode seems to be missing the first 30 minutes which has BoA, w-inds, Maki Goto, 175R, Rina Aiuchi, EXILE, Yoko Nagayama, George Yamamoto, Kaori Mizumori, Yutaka Yamakawa, Kaori Kouzai, Kiyoshi Maekawa, Morning Musume. What I downloaded has Gackt performing (he comes right after Morning Musume). Just wondering if my download is messed up.

You could actually be correct on the resolution... The info I posted earlier came from Windows Media Player 9. The file size and the resolution you reported seem to match up better.

--- groink

groink wrote:

You could actually be correct on the resolution... The info I posted earlier came from Windows Media Player 9. The file size and the resolution you reported seem to match up better.

In addition... It appears that the booxonline version is incomplete. There's a huge chunk of the beginning part missing. I'm watching it right now on KIKU-TV... It's scheduled to be 5 hours, possibly with commercials throughout. And the booxonline version is just under 3.5 hours, with a news piece in between. There could be one hour or more missing. Watching the KIKU-TV airing with my very limited JPOP knowledge, BoA was one of the first to appear. In the booxonline version, Gackt (sp?) was first, followed by Matsuura Aya.

So this means I'll go forward with my earlier capture/distribution plans.

BTW, no English subtitles in the KIKU-TV version. Subs definitely take time to create.

--- groink

Thanks! I thought I was going crazy for a second.

Oh, there are at least 2 other people encoding the complete show. Demand for this is surprisingly high. One guy I think is almost finished with getting it to DivX. It will probably be put up on womby's tracker. No subs though so you will not be duplicating efforts if you do that.

The booxonline video is complete from Gackt on. FYI, the actual length from the NGN2 broadcast yesterday were just a little over 4 hours complete sans commercials so KIKU has 1 hours worth of commercials added in. TV Japan only inserted 5 minutes of commercials at each 1 hour interval when the actual live broadcasts broke for their own commercials. Looks like KIKU hasn't cut anything so far (I remember years ago they used to butcher the hell out of the show). I heard the broadcast this afternoon on the Bay Area international station had some performances (from Aiko, ELT, whomever else) edited out.

Oh yeah, the enka performances rocked (and I normally do not care for many of the stahlwarts). Kiyoshi Hikawa's performance (later part of the show) was just incredible. Personally, I thought this was the best Kouhaku in recent years. Maybe getting rid of Saijo Hideki helped (just kidding).

Too late. It was on New Year's Day from noon to 5PM on KXLA.

atheon wrote:

Well, the veteren singer, Wada Akiko commented something about kouhaku 2003... She said that Hamasaki Ayumi should be the last artist to sing instead of Tendon. It doesn't mean that Tendon was not good, but they should pick someone from akagumi that can compete with Smap, which is selected too to be the last performers. I think this is one of the reason red team lost.

I don't think so. It wouldn't have mattered who went last because the White team was so far ahead at that point. A strong last performance wouldn't have been enough to save them. The White team was full of very strong performances this year. I thought that they had a lot better presentation than a lot of the Red Team's performances. The White team seemed to perform with a lot more passion than the Red Team. Most of the Red Team looked like they were just going through the motions.

The only performance on the Red Team that stuck out for me was Joshi Jyuumi Gakobou. That was pretty cool music. Other than that, there wasn't much excitement generated by the Red Team. The White Team had more performances where I thought "that was pretty cool" after seeing it--exile, Ito Takio, Hanawa, yuzu. I even enjoyed Tokio, which I didn't really like in years past. I just liked their choice of song.

I'm watching through the entire show right now... For a non-JPOP fanatic, I find that this show's introducing me to new artistes I should look into...

One artiste that tickles my fancy is Natsukawa Rimi. I saw a quick few seconds of her in the preview (which was actually 53rd Annual Kouhaku), and I kept her on my list of to-watch-out-for artistes. In the 54th Annual event, she sang �܂�������, along with two other artistes.

Her voice sounds very similar to two other singers I just love... Kimura Maki (who sang Suki nan desu, the closing theme to Video Girl Ai). And, Rimi's voice/style also reminds me of American artiste Alison Krauss, the bluegrass singer from the band Union Station.

Time to start hunting around the 'net for more information!!!!

--- groink

NoBus wrote:

Looks like KIKU hasn't cut anything so far (I remember years ago they used to butcher the hell out of the show). I heard the broadcast this afternoon on the Bay Area international station had some performances (from Aiko, ELT, whomever else) edited out.

actually ELT wasn't edited out here in the bay area (since i actually watched ELT perform on the show)
they showed the show here in 2 segments, one 2 hour segment at 6-8pm, then it started again at 9-10pm (i think i forgot what time, but there was either a 2 or 1 hour gap between the 2 segments).
this aired yesterday though, the one that you mention that aired today? not sure if they did air it again today, but probably that airing was edited.
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groink wrote:

One artiste that tickles my fancy is Natsukawa Rimi. I saw a quick few seconds of her in the preview (which was actually 53rd Annual Kouhaku), and I kept her on my list of to-watch-out-for artistes. In the 54th Annual event, she sang �܂�������, along with two other artistes.

I like Rimi too, she did an awesome performance of "Nada Sousou" at the FNS music festival and special version at the NTV.

Quote:

actually ELT wasn't edited out here in the bay area

Why would anybody in the right mind want to edit out ELT in the first place They've been around, they're popular and they're good!

go here http://www.jdorama.com/viewtopic_2518.htm

I like Rimi too!! Nada Sousou is a damn nice song!! Hey, I was wondering Heyx3 Xmas special is when? And where do you guys find the torrent files to these special ocassion videos? Would you mind giving me the website? And oh yar, anyone have "Nada Sousou" mp3 to send me? Pls......

That's one thing that I didn't like about Kohaku this time--combining performances and this one in particular really bothered me. Yeah, she sang with BEGIN and another female whose name I don't remember. When they combine performances, everybody got to sing for about 1 minute and then the next performer got their turn.

I really would have liked longer individual performances. Rimi has such a sweet voice and it's really too bad.

For this recent Kouhaku...does anybody know the name of the grunge like rock band. It was the band where the lead singer had like blonde hair and there was a drummer, lead guitar, and bass guitar.

The lead singer was crazy. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Going My Way. He sang really fast and looked really wacked out. I really admired their performance though. They poured all their heart and emotion out in that sing they sang.

Anybody know the name of the song and band? Thanks

DJEnD wrote:

I like Rimi too!! Nada Sousou is a damn nice song!! Hey, I was wondering Heyx3 Xmas special is when? And where do you guys find the torrent files to these special ocassion videos? Would you mind giving me the website? And oh yar, anyone have "Nada Sousou" mp3 to send me? Pls......

Heyx3 Xmas special was aired on the 22nd Dec 2003.

torrents can be found over at womby's http://bunko.theppn.org/ however the sites been having bandwidth problems lately.

BmwM3Rod wrote:

For this recent Kouhaku...does anybody know the name of the grunge like rock band. It was the band where the lead singer had like blonde hair and there was a drummer, lead guitar, and bass guitar. The lead singer was crazy. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Going My Way. He sang really fast and looked really wacked out. I really admired their performance though. They poured all their heart and emotion out in that sing they sang. Anybody know the name of the song and band? Thanks

i like that song too!
it's called "sora ni utaeba" and it's sung by 175R