Outsmarted again...

[Andrew 45]

Hello! First I would like to say that I hope this topic is in the right category, I was taking quite some time to decide where it would need to go. The jist of the topic of this topic is that I would like to know what to do about watching Chinese television through a proxy which used to work but now doesn't.

Okay, to begin the topic, I am learning Chinese, but am trying to get as much... exposure as possible, even if I don't really understand it. I think this isn't too bad a use of my time and I get to lessons eventually anyway.

I used to watch some Chinese television on Tudou, but I couldn't get a particular series to work. Or episodes would be missing. Or something. In any case, I went to another site (ku6.com) and found it and everything was working great with my foxyproxy on firefox until I took a 2 month long break from everything (school related, I'm majoring in Finance, so my Chinese practice had to take a break). Anyway, I come back after that 2-month long break and find that now the site is on to me. It doesn't play the video and says the usual "we can't stream this video to your country". I live in the United States btw, and as I said, it was working great earlier.

Well, I figure what is going on is that my foxyproxy is only able to proxy me through the patterns I set it to. If I set it to do everything through the proxy, it doesn't let me do anything, so there has to be some balance. Anyway, what I think is happening is that there are probably added sites that I have to connect to when I watch the video. Since these escape my patterns (which are like *ku6.com* ;; where * means wildcard(s)) they can easily see that, through at least one of these sites, I am not actually in the country they want me to be in. Well, I can see these sites flashing by as it connects, but it goes a lot faster than I can see them happen, but I did manage to remember a few. If I can't figure anything else out, I might try more of this, but it's very hard to do.

In any case, I have tried some nice sites that proxy completely for you, like Proxify, but they for some reason don't let me watch things; it's always "get adobe flash now" or some such.

Any ideas on how I can get back to Mandarin immersion?

Thank you!

*P.S. I've tried Tudou again and it still works, but I still can't find that particular series... in fact, I type in the characters and it doesn't even find anything. This is after I've found an episode of it, ctrl-c ctrl-v'd the characters into the search box and it still finds nothing!

P.P.S.... if you REALLY want to know the series, it's 数码宝贝第一... don't judge me!

[jkhsu]

Try searching in video.baidu.com

I found this link but am not sure if it's what you're looking for. BTW, I can watch this in the USA.

http://www.pinshan.com/anime/video/102528.html

[imron]

http://tv.sohu.com

In my opinion, it's the best of the Chinese online video sites for things like TV series and movies (check the respective sub-sites from the main page). It has tons of licensed content, most of which is available from overseas areas without needing a proxy or whatever.

There are also dedicated applications for watching Chinese TV, e.g. PPLive, but to be honest tv.sohu.com works well enough for my needs that I've never bothered.

[Andrew 45]

Alright, thank you both very much. So far so good.

Is there a way to turn on any sort of subtitles? Mostly because in the future I want to "mine" episodes like you, Imron, said how to once. Something along the lines of watching something you're interested in, figuring out what was said and counting what you didn't understand (to like, 10 words) and then doing the same thing the next day and you get better and better at it...

Not that I want English subtitles, just like... Chinese simp (that's the kind I'm going with) just so I can be absolutely sure this is what was said. I'd like to think I can tell which tone happened and which sound, but occasionally I am wrong.

Again, thank you both!

[imron]

Most Chinese TV shows and films, including the ones you'll find on tv.sohu.com, have 'hard' subtitles that cannot be turned on or off, but are always there.