Although unofficially existing for days, weeks, and possibly a month before today’s date, LA projects officially came into existence five years ago today on August 29, 2003. It should be acknowledged that my co-founder and I are still active in this project we started five years ago. Our project began solely as an IRC channel back in 2004 with the purpose of commuting and having good relations with a small group of friends. It eventually turned into a haven to share various entertainment and multimedia files with each other, on top of being a place to hang out with our circle of friends.

A few months later we started sharing our very own exclusive content with everyone (at that time new Saturday morning cartoons), and that sparked the growth of many new users looking for and sharing their own personal collections of cartoons and anime shows. We stuck to this path to ultimately arrive at the place we are today; constantly providing a shared interest in various files, focusing primarily on anime and cartoons.

These past five years have not been without their devastating setbacks though. There have been many people that have not appreciated the work and dedication of my co-founder and me (the ones who have provided you with nearly all of the unique content up to this point). In relation to the previous statement, we have also seen and experienced a recess in users in the IRC channel throughout many of the years of existence. Still, we do what we do because we find it fun and enjoyable; not to please a certain crowd or demographic.

The same five years have also brought forward many great moments. There have been many great users who I have had the privilege of enjoying communication and fellowship with—primarily only users on the IRC channel. Unfortunately, there have been many characters that had such a big impact in the channel’s existence that have mysteriously disappeared without a trace. It is great however to see older users returning just to see how things are, or just to say hello. It’s those users that really make what we do seem special, and we can’t thank them enough for their interaction and involvement.

It is quite alarming comparing the download count on our files to the amount of “thank you” messages we get. To be honest, we receive about one “thanks” for every 200 downloads. That doesn’t really make us feel the greatest, but we still crank out new releases because others enjoy them, as well as ourselves. It would truly be great to see a change in the attitudes of the users who download our files ungratefully in the future.

While the service we provide you on this website is free for you to download as much as you want, it unfortunately is not free for us. We pay for this webhosting, and the file hosting that you use to download these files from. It goes without saying that it can be pretty burdensome to acquire adequate funding to provide many users with this option of fast downloading. We appreciate user contributed donations to help pay for the costs of running and maintaining this wonderful little place. With all that said, I ask anyone with the ability to contribute a few dollars to our server funding to please click the donate button in the right column. Any dollar amount is appreciated, and all funds go directly to paying the monthly invoices.

I have taken a small time out of my day to write all this up for you, I hope you can take a small time out of your day to read and appreciate everything you see here. With all that said, I wish LA Projects a happy five year birthday!

Last week I posted some terrible news regarding the new Jetstream video format. I have tried various ways of converting these .flv files to different formats including .wmv and .avi all to no avail.

Although I had success converting to .avi, the audio goes out of sync immediately upon seeking. No matter what FPS settings I use (the native .flv seems to be 30fps) the audio always goes out of sync with the video.

A commenter suggested the following:

Just drag and drop the FLV file into the program window and it’ll automatically split it into audio and video files, which you can then easily rejoin through a program like mkvmerge (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html) I’m sure there are others, and you may want to search for one as, from my tests, re-merged files come out as the slightly-strange .mka format, which plays in VLC media player but might have difficulty in others.

I would prefer to keep the files a more popular video codec that most people would be able to play without any external codecs or players required for download. I also have a deep desire of hate for VLC media player.

I have uploaded the episodes of BoBoBo and Blue Dragon(Note: Blue Dragon 5 is missing. These episodes are only available for 7 days, rather than the usual 21+ days for every other show. I unfortunately did not get another backup of these parts.) to a temporary folder on our server for you guys to download and experiment for yourselves and try to convert them to a single common video codec, or if you just want to download and archive these .flvs, you are more than welcome to. I appreciate any more help or suggestions you may have.

Click here for a directory listing for these files.

The start of last week, Toonami thought it would be a good idea for their Jetstream site to be more MAC friendly. Thus they have switched the streaming video format from the standard WMV to the flash video codec FLV.

This is terrible news for me. Although grabbing the actual parts off the website isn’t any difficult (with a change in programs used) the merging and output is considerably more difficult. I have tried converting each .FLV part to a .WMV codec but to no avail. I have tried numerous programs, all with the same result of failure.

I am not entirely sure what I am to do now. Do I continue to painstakingly try dozens of programs only to result in failure? Honestly, I do not think I have the tolerance level to come to a working conclusion by myself. The only other option there seems to be until then is to release the raw .FLVs and direct people on where to get an FLV Player.

I will consider doing this, but I would like to somehow stick to a more common video format with more features. If you have any ideas or suggestions as to what I should do regarding the future of our releases, please please please email me or leave a comment.

Edit: I will provide temporary links to the the raw .FLV parts (of last weeks, this weeks, and all future weeks), and  hopefully sometime later be able to convert them to 1 file  to a different format/codec. As commenter will said, it is better to have the  parts available in another format, than no other parts at all. Check back here tomorrow evening for more news regarding this.

Thanks.

This week brings the release of a new show entitled, Blue Dragon! This 51-episode anime is an adaptation from the popular XBOX360 series of the same name. This show also airs weekly on Cartoon Network’s Saturday evening lineup at 9:30PM. I just thought it would be better to release as many sources as possible to fill the needs of the desiring fans. Post your comments/feedback of this series after this post!

I would also like to thank the two people that donated to our site/server funding this past week. The combined donations were enough to secure at least one payment for our services for the next month(s). We encourage everyone who enjoys the service that we provide, and people who have a few extra dollars to donate, that they do so to help fund us and our services. These donations, and all future donations are greatly appreciated!

Hey everyone, how’s it going? I know, I keep saying that I will update more often, but my life schedule just doesn’t allow me to do the things I would like to do as often as I would like, and I’m sorry for that. I still have tried to update the direct downloads page with links to the latest releases on a somewhat regular basis. There are a few episode releases out this week, and you can see them in the title of this post. There are also some new torrents on the tracker. However, I feel there is something more important to talk about this week.

I have been so very busy the past few months, I have failed to keep track of the website’s financial expenditures. Our website/direct download server transmit quite a bit of data very quickly on a daily basis, thus our server costs are quite high sometimes. But without these services, there would be no site or downloads for anyone to enjoy. I have been paying for these services almost entirely by myself, and it gets tot he point where I don’t know how much longer I can support this project.

I’m asking everyone who enjoys the service that I provide donate a little bit of money to the server to help keep it running. We accept all dollar amounts and every little bit helps. If you can donate, please, please, please, help me out. If you are interested in helping out, click the paypal donate button on the right and follow the onscreen instructions. Thanks a lot.

I thank the 2 people who donated during the last 5 months for a cumulative total of $20.

A few of you may have noticed my absence last week; the reason being that I was just too busy to keep up with this site at that current time. The only new episode last week was still ripped and uploaded (albeit a little late) by Tezuka. I hope to not have to miss too many days of uploading/maintaining this site, but sometimes it is just inevitable.

Here is a brief up to date episode release informational list.

Prince of Tennis / 50 of 178 released
Marchen Awakens Romance / 49 of 102 released
Mega Man Star Force / 13 of 55 released
BoBoBoBo-Bo BoBo-Bo / 13 of 76 released
Eyeshield 21 / 5 of 137+ released

Many people are aware that there has been no new episodes of Prince of Tennis, Mega Man Star Force, and now Eyeshield 21 for a number of weeks. I am not sure what the situation is with PoT, but apparently production on episodes 14+ on MMSF were halted. There have been numerous petitions floating around the web for the continued work on MMSF, but I have yet to hear any positive word on what’s going to happen with this series. Eyeshield is another question mark. For the past 2-3 weeks there has not been a new episode; I don’t want to jump to conclusions too fast, so I will assume that the people at Toonami Jetstream are withholding them for a later date, which will hopefully be soon.

Because of MMSF’s halted production at episode 13, I have decided to release a new torrent batch for this series including all 13 episodes, rather than just 1-10. It is very important that you know that support on the 01-10 batch torrent will be halted, and all resources are to be re-assigned to the new torrent. If you were in the process of downloading/seeding this torrent, you can resume your activity with the new torrent.

Remember to try and show your appreciation with your thanks in a comment, or if you are feeling extra appreciative and generous, feel free to donate to our webhosting fund. It takes a lot of storage space and bandwidth to store and share these episodes for the public masses; and all contributions and donations are greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the late release guys. These episodes were supposed to be out right on time, but the co-founder of the group, Meteora aka Tezuka, decided he’d much rather not take 1 hour out of his day of doing absolutely nothing, and not do the releases. He instead decided to wait until I get home, all stressed out from my school day and practice, to tell me that he was to busy playing his game to think about taking on his duties as the co-founder– and that is to help out, even just a little.

I really do appreciate that the co-founder knows where his priorities are. Next time you notice that the releases are not out by the usual time, you can guess that I will be doing them solely by myself once again, after my hectic life schedule. I thank everyone for their patience and understanding regarding my unreliable staff.

Go get these episodes, and leave comments encouraging me to keep doing this. Because I really feel like I do not want to do this anymore seeing as how I get help from no one.

And if it sounds like I’m pissed, you have no idea.

T-t-t-triple release!

Grab your releases off DDL and seed on the torrents available! With exception to BoBoBo, that batch torrent will be out in approximately 7 weeks.

Once again I’ll make an announcement about us needing donations for our web hosting. We here at LA rely primarily on user donations to help run and fund this website, and it’s fast direct download server. If you would like to help fund our site and our server to keep it running for months/years to come, feel free to donate any dollar amount as many times as you want. All donations are greatly appreciated. If we do not receive moderate donations, our website and all of our fast direct downloads would cease to exist. I would hate to see it come to that, but I cannot run it solely out of my pockets.

If you want to donate, I added a donation button to the right column. If you have greatly appreciated my work and service this past year, a couple dollar donation would be a great way to say “thanks” this holiday season.

Many people may have noticed the lack of updates every week with download information of the newest episodes of the shows. I am currently swamped with a lot of other projects in my personal life, but I do try to be as quick as possible and as informative as possible in a quick timely manner. Expect our updates to return to normal as of today!

Our direct download links have serviced quite a number of people, and I am glad that we can provide such a service for everyone to enjoy. Our torrent releases have not been so great in the past, due to unreliable trackers and things of that sort. This is about to change, thanks to the good man by the name of Edward_K.

Edward_K has provided us with a BT tracker for our personal use. A lot of anime groups rely on Edward_K for a reliable and stable BT tracker, and we are ecstatic that we were able to obtain one for our releases. If you are anywhere in the ‘anime scene’, odds are you have downloaded something off of one of Edward_K’s hosted trackers before, and you know how stable and reliable they are.

From hereon, we will no longer be uploading our torrents to bad free trackers like MegaNova anymore. Rather, we will be using the new BT tracker. We will upload all of our batches, and new single episode torrents in the days to come. So be prepared to update all your old torrents!

With this new tracker, we ask that the people give back by seeding the finished release, whether you downloaded it off DDL link, or through BT itself. This will help us greatly reduce the bandwidth costs of the direct download server. Thanks.

With all that said, here is the blurb for this weeks episodes: Prince of Tennis 45, and MAR 40.

There is no single torrent available for MAR episode 40 simply because that would be redundant. Instead, if you would like only episode 40, and not have to re-download episodes 31-39, simply use a popular BitTorrent client such as uTorrent or Azureus. Both include a selective download option that lets you pick what files you want to download from a torrent. So just select episode 40 and you’re on your way.

It is also vitally important that you know that support for MAR single episodes 31-39 are going to be terminated. It is in your best interest if you were in the process of downloading or seeding them to continue your activity with the new batch torrent.

[LA] Prince of Tennis - 045 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].wmv | 75.6MB | DDL - BT
[LA] MAR - 040 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].wmv | 82.6MB | DDL - BT (31-40 batch)

Not one… not two… but THREE releases this week! I am not going to elaborate much on these episodes as there is some exciting news that you should hear.

As you can see, we now have our own official hosting and domain name. We are no longer bound by the limitations of the free Wordpress service! We now have the ability to change to a complete different style or system, if we so desire. But I think this theme and style works well for the time being.

You may or may not notice that some of the old comments are missing author names, but don’t worry, I’m am currently working on removing some of the coded tags that edited them out and they will all be restored to as before.

Also with this new hosting, we are able to offer our episodes on our very own direct download server! Soon the DDL/BT links archive will be updated with NEW DDL links that will NEVER expire! I would like to thank our previous DDL provider for letting us use his webhosting for our releases. It was greatly appreciated by many, and greatly taken advantage of by many.

Onto release news:

Megaman Star Force 02 is out ONLY on direct download. There will be a batch torrent at episode 05 or 10. That is still undecided, but rest assured, when it is released on torrent, it will be a batch.

[LA] Prince of Tennis - 041 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].wmv - 75.9MB
[LA] Prince of Tennis - 041 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].torrent - 12.2KB
[LA] MAR - 036 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].wmv - 82.6MB
[LA] MAR - 036 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].torrent - 13.2KB
[LA] Mega Man Star Force - 02 [ENGLISH DUB WEBRIP].wmv - 72.7MB

If you are having problems, RIGHT CLICK > SAVE TARGET AS instead of just clicking on it to save it.