vcd's

[jun_erh]

Any chance of KFQ putting out vcd's? They're cheap and at least as good as video. and very correct ethnically

[GeneChing]

We do offer a few VCDs at MartialArtsMart.com but only a few. This has been a big experimental market for us since a lot of people don't understand VCD technology. You don't know how many returns we get on VCDs, so many that in the beginning, we were losing out on our investment and that just ain't good business. It's been getting better since most newer DVD players now handle VCDs, but there's still a lot of people who have old ones. So I don't know if we will expand this any more. Sure it's cheap, for us and for you, but all those returns are a pain in the butt. If the returns continue to outweigh the sales, we won't go any further.

[jun_erh]

I didn't know that they couldn't be played in the older DVD players. I've been buying the shaw bros ones here in Bos.

[jun_erh]

what is take america home ???

[norther practitioner]

Music Videos.....
Hmm... no idea why they have them though

[GeneChing]

Actually, you can play VCDs on your computer but you have to find a player program. I imagine there's freeware available somewhere on the net (if you guys know of some, please pass it along.) But some of our clients are pretty freaked out by different technologies and can't handle these concepts well, so it's troublesome. We have a hard enough time with DVDs. Some really old machines won't play some of our TC Media produced DVDs as well, even though they are the right platform. Some of the older machines didn't quite have all the bugs worked out.

So what is America Take Home? Good question. It's like a postcard on a VCD. We carry them because they are a product of our VCD maker and it was part of the deal to get a discount on VCD production. Essentially, he uses us a distributor, since he's not set up for that. It sells mostly to Chinese tourists - Chinese love VCD postcards. We have a few odd products like that on www.martialartsmart.com. You got to remember that we sell to Chinese so we offer some videos in Mandarin and Cantonese too. It's not a huge market for us, since many Chinese speakers can get it from China cheaper, but it is a market big enough for us to put in on the website. I think that's one thing that makes us very different than the others - we do business in Chinese and Korean so we're a little better networked into Asia.

[jun_erh]

you should market it more. Do some more posts about it on the main forum.

[GeneChing]

I was tempted to do so on some of the threads about my last Shaolin Trip ezine column but I thought that might be a bit too much. Now that those threads have trailed off topic, I might try it on your suggestion.

[MasterKiller]

Windows Media Player can play most VCDs. You have to right-click on the file, then select OPEN WITH to get it to work.

The only problem with watching them on a computer is that you have open each file before you can watch it, and most commerical VCDs are made up of 4 or 5 video files, so you can't just open the first file and watch the whole thing without interruption.

FYI---Most DVD players that won't play VCDs will play them if you burn the files onto a CD-RW instead of a CD-R.

[norther practitioner]

With the WMP.... you can sometimes set up all the video files in a play list... then It'll play all the way through...

[jun_erh]

I meant the American Postcards

[GeneChing]

mk - Didn't know about the burning trick. Interesting. Unfortunately that won't help our sales of VCDs. I certainly wouldn't want a product that I had to burn like that.

np - nice tip

je - I know. I figured that "respected american" thread on my ezine article would have been a funny place to plug the postcards. It's one of those products that I have a hard time plugging, obviously, but then it really sells independant from our market. And it makes a great gift for some of our visiting masters...

[jun_erh]

I just bought two today. a two disc set on chi kung ($10) and an movie called Madame Whitesnake ($5) from like 1956, so no hair band groupie documentary, just early HK fantasy stylings. I've been getting these for similar price in town as well.

[GeneChing]

Yeah, vcds are really changing martial arts in China, much like videos did here in late 80's. Some of that is bleeding over outside of China. It's a very interesting phenomena to watch.

[jun_erh]

I got one that has a nice empty force demo on it. It has empty force and mandarin duck boxing = greatest vcd ever. the natural boxing or something

Madame whitesnake I'm bringing back, in Japanese with Chinese subtitles.