Grand Chinese TV Watching Challenge

[Sarevok]

What are people doing now that both youku and tudou are unavailable outside of china?

I am using 风行网.

http://www.funshion.com

You have to install their software and once you do that it's similar to watching things online on Youku or elsewhere... with one added benefit - the application saves the buffered parts to your HDD and once they are all there, it makes an actual video file out of them. You can watch it offline later and you can also queue up several episodes and use it as a de facto download manager (only a limited number of files can be downloaded at the same time though). There are no problems with availability outside China and the speed seems to be a bit better than e-mule...

[feihong]

@imron: Some of the shows on tv.sohu.com are just embedded videos from tudou or youku, so they should be equally affected by this "temporary blocking". Or that was my understanding, anyway.

EDIT: This turns out not to be the case. However it does affect what iPad apps I can use to watch Chinese shows. The Youku and QQ apps have stopped working, but Sohu and PPTV still work.

[jkhsu]

What are people doing now that both youku and tudou are unavailable outside of china?

I'm in the USA and have found success with ppstream and video.baidu.com. I've found ppstream to be the most reliable though with very little to no buffering during shows and I watch a couple of hours everyday.

[creamyhorror]

I think myself, Imron and Renzhe all rate it very highly. It's 80 40 minute episodes though, and very challenging, so if you're looking for something you can *finish* you might want to look elsewhere. I'd say if you're not enjoying it it might be one to come back to later.

Sometimes the slower parts set up some really funny episodes much later, it all makes sense if you watch it in sequence.

But I agree that it's hard going, and I agree with roddy's suggestion. I started this one 3 times and gave up because it was too hard. Only the 4th time did I actually manage to enjoy it -- and it was still hard work at times.

Okay, I'll try another episode or two. Hopefully it'll hook me. Thanks a lot for the encouragement, guys

Tell you what I'd love someone to watch - 走向共和, that was a brilliant show.

Will also check that out, since you found it that great. The Road to Communism? Hmm...

[renzhe]

Not to Communism, to the Republic, up to 1924. The overthrow of the Qing, Empress Dowager Cixi, Li Hung Chang, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, Yuan Shih Kai, all that stuff. It's not only well done, but also a source of information about an incredibly important part of Chinese history for many of us outside China.

Good stuff, and on my list for definitely watching at some point.

[rob07]

Thanks to all for the recommendations on where to find the shows.

Been meaning to watch 武林外传 for years, but I have been put off by it being 80 episodes long and more a collection of individual episodes than a single coherent story. Obviously, it is also quite difficult. I am planning to get stuck into it now, watched the first episode last night.

Tell you what I'd love someone to watch - 走向共和, that was a brilliant show.

I can echo this recommendation. I remember I watched it because Roddy described it as "worth learning Chinese for". I found it a lot easier than I was expecting. There is a lot of imperial and classically influenced dialogue which obviously means some new vocabulary. But I think there is also a benefit in that because actors don't talk like that normally themselves, they don't speak at full native speed. Not only do they speak a bit slower overall, they also have more of a tendency to pronounce each character separately. My reading was and is a lot better than my speaking, and there are subtitles obviously, so I was able to cope with the imperial/classical bits more easily than I was expecting, and I appreciated the slightly slower pace.

[Hesham119]

Finished the second episode of 奋斗

heres a list of the words I couldnt find in dictionaries and had my Chinese friends explain them for me thanks to them

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/17355-first-episode-11-%e5%a5%8b%e6%96%97/page__view__findpost__p__260010

[renzhe]

OK, as a motivation boost, I've covered a recent drama here. It's on youtube in 1080p (!) and there are plenty of other streams out there. It looks very promising, reminds me of 中国式离婚 and similar serious dramas.

Unfortunately, the peacock feather wuxia I was watching is apparently so new that only the first 10 episodes are online, so I'll have to put that one on hold.

[jbradfor]

*BUMP*

It's been a week. Everyone still in?

I just managed to finish episode 13 last night, right at the bell. I actually wouldn't have finished, but my daughter wouldn't go to bed until 10:30, so I had to stay up too, so I finished. She watched with me. It was right at the scene where that rich playboy guy "dumped" the straight-haired woman (楚楚?), so she was crying, so my daughter kept asking why she was crying, so I'm not really sure I can say I followed the whole thing.

Thus far for the other accepts I see

• Gleaves
  
• Hesham119
  
• renzhe
  
• Sarevok
  
• langxia
  

[feihong, are you in?]

[roddy]

Nice one, I was going to give this a bump later in the afternoon but you've saved me the trouble. I love it when the community takes the lead

[Gleaves]

I only watched one episode of Chinese tv last week (episode one of 孔雀翎). I ended up watching a few different movies so it sqeezed out my tv watching time.

As part of this challenge, I've decided to try and watch a different first episode until I watch them all, starting backwards, one a week.

[feihong]

I suppose I'm in. I did manage to catch an episode of 非诚勿扰. It's a little hard to remember exactly what happened, all the episodes kinda blend in together. I think there was a really buff guy that tried to get the girl with the dimples to come with him, but she rejected him. Oh yeah, a guy from Hong Kong got the traditional singing professor to go with him (man, she looked completely different from when she first came on the show). Only that one guy managed to 牵手成功. I am still a little bummed by the departure of the dance teacher, she was the funniest contestant ever, and she seemed to have left without 牵手成功ing anyone.

I also watched two episodes of 城市猎人, a Korean show. I can manage to follow the basic plotline by just reading the subtitles. It's not a bad show, but obviously not too deep if I can understand what's going on even though I can only read half the words before they disappear.

[querido]

CCTV Learn Chinese, graded Advanced or above: "TV", or not?

[Sarevok]

I watched two episodes of 螳螂 yesterday and updated the respective thread, just forgot to write a post here.

[Hesham119]

Working on 奋斗 episode 3

大家加油！

[Quakebum]

I just discovered you can download all the tv shows on http://tv.youku.com/ outside of China EVEN if it says it can't stream it unless you're in china. You just need to download their iKu software, then you can download whatever you like;) Beats using their stream (no stupid buffering or ads)

[Hesham119]

I am using pptv

quality is quite good, buffering speed is good too and you can download series to your pc to watch it offline

www.pptv.com

[Gleaves]

Thanks for the 风行网 recommendation. i checked it out and it works well for me. I haven't looked at pptv for a while, but maybe it is worth a re-install.

edit: also I watched the first episode of 说好不分手. Decent drama.

[feihong]

I watched another two episodes of 非诚勿扰. I think I need to 分手 with this show. I don't think I learn very much from watching this show anymore, it's mostly just a guilty pleasure. In any case the big thing that happened last week was that one guy made a super elaborate attempt to get Ms Innkeeper to date him, but crashed and burned in an absolutely brutal way.

I also watched another ep of 城市猎人. This show doesn't quite grab me but it's not terrible and at the very least cannot be considered TV junk food. The political conspiracy dialogues are really difficult to follow through the subtitles.

I also watched the first ep of 在线爱. Shockingly, I really enjoyed this. It is a typical romantic comedy, but each episode is only 30 minutes long, which is pretty rare. The pacing is more like what I'm used to from American shows, which is a nice surprise.

Another 30 minute show I saw was 毛骗. This show is a little old, but I only saw the first episode of it a while back and then never followed up on it even though I liked the premise. It is about a group of young con artists who reunite for one last series of scores. Sometimes they talk super fast in this show which can make it a little hard to follow. It certainly stands out from the majority of shows for young people, which are generally about either 奋斗 or 恋爱--this one is about neither.

[renzhe]

Still watching the peacock feather, but I did squeeze in an episode of 我爱我家 in there.