OMG AnimeJunkies! I used to refuse to download anything by them. And they seemed to do everything. Ghost in the Shell, Chobits... man, this takes me back.
To add some input on the current discussion, I started watching digisubs in 2000 thanks to a friend of mine who ran a mirror for animedownload.net - It still exists, but just as a reminder of what it used to be. Anyway, it was direct FTP download with ratios for anime. People would upload encoded VHS subs and even dubs. I remember him letting me just hook one of the hard drives he had used for that, and nabbed up some stuff, including early Love Hina episodes. I am pretty sure this was in summer 2000, and everything else on that drive was ripped from VHS. (Flame of Recca, Hand Maid May, DNA2, Kodomo no Omocha, Evangelion, and some other stuff, all pretty crummy quality. The Flame of Recca subs were in .ra format and a TINY frame size! Hard to read the subtitles!)
So, yeah, I am pretty sure it was some time in Summer of 2000 when Love Hina got subbed, and I have heard from almost everyone through the years that Love Hina was the very first 100% digitally subbed anime.
Hope this is helpful.
