Training Tapes

[Ben Gash]

Regardless of wether you think they're useful or not, why are they so d*mn expensive? While I appreciate the economies of scale argument, $40 seems to be very steep, especially when you consider that many of these titles are over a decade old.
Also, it's a big gamble as you are buying the product completely blind with little clue as to the content.
Just to pre-empt Gene, his guys seem to buck the trend and offer a more transparent product at a more realistic price.
Also, they seem to be very slow at picking up on DVD.
Do you think the availability of very cheap Chinese VCDs will have an effect on prices in the broader MA market?

[MasterKiller]

Videos are expensive to produce. Filming costs money. Editing costs money. Distribution and wharehousing costs money.

A lot of people don't like the Chinese VCDs because they aren't in English or even subtitled. I don't mind them, though.

[David Jamieson]

Ben-

what is it with worrying about cost?

you study outmoded hand to hand fighting techniques that lost relevance with the advent of firearms and you pay for that.

The information is a whole lot older than it's current practitioners, so why should you object to paying for it in a different media?

as for qigong and health/transformative related kungfu training in any format, well what price would you put on your peace and well being.

Everyehere you go and everywhere you look, feel free to ask what the price of enlightenment is from each school. Because there is a dollar value attached no matter where you go. lol

The taint exists everywhere, it cannot be washed away by anything but your own mind.

cheers

[Ben Gash]

MK, a can of coke costs money to make, store and ship, you don't pay forty bucks for it.
I'm not saying that they should be giving them away. I'm saying there's a great disparity in price. A cruddy straight to video movie costs money to make (and indeed, the production quality on many training tapes is APPALLING), and it retails for substantially less, and is probably at least twice as long.
I'm not saying people shouldn't make money from the tapes, but as far as I can see everyone loses. Many people are put off buying a tape they're curious about because of the outlay, which means the company don't sell as many tapes. If they lowered their profit margin per tape they'd probably make more in the long run.

[Leimeng]

~ Well, If it is tooo much money for you, don't buy it.
~ Coca cola cost something like 10 cents to make for 50 gallons of syrup.
~ Ever see how in Starbucks a $.25 cup of coffee ends up costing 3 bucks?
~ Profit is a good thing.
~ The information on quality instructional tapes is not outmoded, however the way people train usually is.
~ Continue to discuss amongst yourselves.

Peace

Sin Loi

Yi Beng, Kan Xue

Flatulo Ergo Sum ---

~ The average man's life consists of twenty years of his mother asking him where he's going; forty years of his wife asking the same question; and at the end, the mourners wondering, too!

(***Insert Personal Wise A$$ed Remarks Here***)

[Brad]

I'm not saying that they should be giving them away. I'm saying there's a great disparity in price. A cruddy straight to video movie costs money to make (and indeed, the production quality on many training tapes is APPALLING), and it retails for substantially less, and is probably at least twice as long.
A lot less people are interested in buying kungfu instructional videos than crappy direct to video movies, so you have to charge more to break even.

[IronFist]

They are f'ing expensive. That being said, you're (supposedly) paying for rarity of knowledge. Why do some feng shui consultants charge like $500 per hour? Because their knowledge is rare and hopefully good.

That being said, a lot of MA tapes suck ass.

[David Jamieson]

That being said, a lot of MA tapes suck ass.

You got that straight!

man! I have a few of them and out of about 20 tapes, maybe 4 of them actually have useful stuff on them.

One is a wing lam video of his hung gar, realy well done and the other ones are green dragon bagua tapes also really wlel done.

the rest are poorly written, poorly produced, poorly edited, etc etc etc. Not completely useless, but virtually useless. lol

anyway, caveat emporum.

I do have some xingyi vcd stuff from china that is really excellent. All in chinese though, but put together properly and easy to understand.

anyway, just saying

[Ben Gash]

Brad, but the MA tapes cost hundreds of thousands less to produce.

[Ben Gash]

http://store.martialartsmart.net/prtc009.html
http://www.secretsoftheorient.com/secretsoftheorient/Shaolin.htm
One is new, gives a good idea of what you get and is $20
The other is well over ten years old, doesn't say much about it and is $40.