Crunchyroll is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Sony Group Corporation. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by East Asian media, including Japanese anime, and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a Japanese branch located in Shibuya, Tokyo.
The Crunchyroll Store at Crunchyroll Expo 2017
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of over-the-air programming was the most common form of media distribution. As Internet and IPTV technologies continued to develop in the 1990s, consumers began to gravitate towards non-traditional modes of content consumption, which culminated in the arrival of VOD on televisions and personal computers.
Some VOD services require the viewer to have a TV set-top box. This photo shows the set-top box for the Jazzbox VOD service and its accompanying remote control.
A screenshot of "The Great Courses Plus", a subscription video on-demand service offered by The Teaching Company that offers instructional videos