Cheng & Tsui - new forums for user feedback

[ipsi()]

Depends how much processing power it's using. I use my computer *a lot*, and leaving it to run would be annoying, unless I was working during the day or some such. And even then I'd still have to manually turn the tape over. Meh. Flag buying tapes. CDs are better. Though if they had MP3s instead of the uncompressed sound they normally have, that'd be perfect.

Hell, maybe they could bundle one more CD with the Audio, which only has MP3s on it? Save everyone a bit of hassle in terms of ripping them.

[imron]

and then turn the tape over when it finishes.

I skipped that step, by having a tape-player which automatically swapped sides.

[Luobot]

I would never (again) buy anything intended to improve spoken Mandarin if it doesn’t have high quality audio that I can play digitally on the go right out of the box, with no more than simple ripping from CD to digital. In fact, I don't even want to be bothered with a physical CD, anymore.

As far as DRM or other protection schemes, I don’t think it’s necessary. For example, Pimsleur is very expensive and popular, commonly ripped to digital after purchase, yet you never see it shared on the web, even after all these years (this being from my observation of Mandarin related forums and websites). In fact, you don’t even see the paid subscription “premium” content of popular creative commons sites (like ChinesePod, for example) being shared, other than the posting of excerpts, though that would be the easiest thing to do given that the source material is unprotected and ready to go.

The future is for all content to be easily downloadable from the Web -- text, audio and otherwise. Most people will pay a reasonable price for the ready availability, safety, and in short, for the convenience. Therefore, everything should be digitized and put online.

By the way, there are too many sites to chase after just to make a comment about each product. One of the great thinks about this forum is that it brings it all together in one place. Thank you for posting here in a straight-forward way.

[imron]

Pimsleur is very expensive and popular, commonly ripped to digital after purchase, yet you never see it shared on the web, even after all these years

There are plenty of pirated pimsleur materials on the web, however I'm guessing that people who download them are not people who would buy the originals anyway.

[Luobot]

There are plenty of pirated pimsleur materials on the web

Sure, I shouldn't have said that it never happens, but on whole, you don't see it (and actually I've never seen it, but I don't go looking for it either). It hasn't stopped Pimsleur or ChinesePod, for example, from making their content digitally available and potentially vulnerable. They seem to be getting on quite well with their business model.

however I'm guessing that people who download them are not people who would buy the originals anyway.

Quite right.

[imron]

They seem to be getting on quite well with their business model

This is my point exactly. Legitimate users will still purchase your product if you produce something of value in an open format - see for example radiohead's latest album, available for whatever price you want to pay (including free if you wish) from their own website.

Punishing or inconveniencing legitimate users (by e.g. adding DRM) only drives them to find alternative sources.

Also, you can bet that if Chinesepod charged for its podcasts, there would be pirated versions of that around too. People who want to pirate stuff will do it anyway.

[childbook88]

Pimler's Material is going after a special market - which is different than the general market for example music IMHO.

ITunes is doing well and CD sales are down, but there is still an awful lot of downloads going around that the artist is not being paid for. But would the artist be paid for anyway if downloads were not available? All downloading has done compared to in the old days making copies of cassette tapes, is make it easier to copy.

DRM just annoys users not to mention the spyware issue. And there is always somebody out there with a tool to remove DRM, and put it on a peer to peer network anyway. DRM did not work back in the days of the Apple II, I don't know why it would now.

Businesses forget why they are in business, and that happy customers usually buy more. So why upset your customers with DRM? Especially poorly implemented DRM that results in bad publicity. Like the blind user in the UK who's computer was killed by some DRM I heard about at CES a couple of years ago.

Ray, Owner

links removed - you're welcome to contribute, but could we stop with the embedded links please. Admin

[Mikael]

When you say "audio materials are awful" are you just talking about the audio quality?

Anyone know for certain that you can simply rip the CDs (the ones for Integrated Chinese) or do they have some copy protection?

[Mikael]

To anser my own questions. The audio quality is poor, some annoying background noise. Not sure why but it's clearly worse once I ripped them (digital and converting to 160kbps MP3s in iTunes). Now it's still clearly noticeable when playing from the CDs (using the computer).

It's not only the audio quality that's poor, it's also clearly a low budget for the prodcution using only one female and one male voice even though the dialogues often have two female or male actors. A couple chinese teacher could probably spend a day or two producing the entire series using just two microphones and computer with CD burner. Amazing that this is supposed to be the most widely text book in US.