DVDs of old movies and pen scanner in Beijing...

[amandagmu]

Hey everybody, I'm looking for two things in the city and need some help.

The first thing is a DVD place that carries old PRC movies from the early years through the 1970s. I've found some of these on tudou, but my connection is a bit slow - plus I'd like the ability to watch these without an internet connection (e.g., on the plane, train, coffee shops, etc). I'm also looking for old sports movies or footage from any period up through the 2008 Olympics (like a place to get a copy of the 1990 Beijing Asian Games for example, or the 1984 LA Olympic games, CBA basketball games... ETC).

The second thing I'm looking for is supposedly called a "pen scanner", you know the kind you use when reading a magazine or newspaper in Chinese and you just need to look up a character here and there. I've seen them online and am keen on trying them out... seems useful now that I'm at an advanced level but trip up on silly adjectives and nouns I've never seen before, especially when reading about a topic I'm unfamiliar with in the paper.

In both cases, cost matters less than quality.

Thanks in advance!

[feihong]

You can use the Firefox add-on called Mason to download videos from Tudou, Youku, etc.

I'm dubious of the usefulness of those pen scanner devices. I'm at an advanced level too and for those few characters that I don't know, I just look them up in Pleco using the handwriting feature.

[amandagmu]

Yeah, I know I can download things, the problem is that it's such a slow connection here... really, it takes hours and hours, and the likelihood of the connection breaking is quite annoying (and frequently I need to refresh things as it is). This is for tudou at least: I don't use youku because of security issues I have with it. Additionally, this is partially for research and teaching purposes, so I guess having a mobile copy would be nice.

I love Pleco, but it would just be that much more helpful to have something automatic without me putting down the paper to pick up the pleco device and spend 30 seconds looking up the character. But, I see your point. Guess I'm just THAT lazy.

[Daan]

Pleco has an OCR feature these days, I think, or is about to introduce one...

[feihong]

@amandagmu

You're in Beijing, right? I get acceptable speeds when accessing tudou here in the states, as long as it's not during primetime in China. If you are on some kind of crappy dialup connection, then try going to a local Starbucks.

As an aside, if you have security issues with youku then I don't think you should be using tudou either.

@Daan

The OCR feature only works on the latest iPhone (iPhone 4), so unless she has that, she's out of luck.

[roddy]

For the DVDs - there used to be a few shops on Xinjiekou - south of Jishuitan subway - that had what looked like quite impressive collections. Still there or not, I don't know. Another option might be to look at downloading from verycd.com with Emule - even if you're getting slow speeds you can leave it running in the background till it's done, and you can stop and start it at will. Might take a while, but you'll get there.

Also - have you looked at Amazon.cn? Wouldn't be surprised if you can get a great big bundle of DVDs you need delivered at no huge cost.

[amandagmu]

I originally started using tudou while in Berlin, and I can assure you that the connection in Beijing through China Unicom is (sadly) not fast enough for using these websites. (As an aside, my guess is that the connection probably has something to do with the laziness of the CU setup in the compound I'm at; I'm fairly certain we're all sharing the same a handful of LAN connections. I don't have the energy to complain about it right now, largely because I have more important things (and more important things broken that are getting fixed by property management), but I might in the future. )

Thanks for the DVD rec, I will check out Jishuitan/Xinjiekou later since it's not far from where I live.