Where do RAWs come from?

For anime and other video sources from Japan, where do the subtitling groups get RAWs from? Are they recorded from regular broadcast feeds, or are they sneaked from the studio's offices, or what?

Most sub groups get their raws from Japanese peer to peer software, such as winny. The raws are usually recorded off TV broadcasts (which I might add are almost always HD these days), which explains why you will see the occasional earthquake update, TV studio logo, preview/timing of next episode, etc. Some raws come with commercials but will almost always be edited away by sub groups.

Like any rips from North American television, nowadays they are obtained via video capture cards, dvr software, or other means of recording television watched through your computer.

Those are usually uploaded to Japanese p2p programs, like Winny (which is still used by many groups today).

EDIT: gah, Psyke beat me to it.

I used to record TV with my ATI All-in-Wonder and then later I used a Plextor 402U external tuner/capture device. There would always be crappy quality and format lines or other extra information in the video. I guess HD recordings resolve the issue of crappy quality, though I imagine they're rather large files until converted to xvid or divx. Do the sub groups remove the extra format information with software as well? That's what always annoyed me about recording from TV.

Your recordings are all from a 480i analog signal, which is bad quality and interlaced. High-definition digital signals are progressive and incomparable in overall quality.

Thanks for all the information guys. So is HD programming very prevalent in Japan? Every J-drama or anime I've ever seen has been really high quality (comparatively), so I imagine they all came from high quality HD recordings.