[jahbie]

Have any of you purchased these Maxcast videos, and if so what do you think of them?

The first one I bought was Hip Philosophy by Leyla Najma, a while ago when it first came out, and it had teething problems. No chaptering, a very slow fast forward and a very small picture. If you wanted to see a certain section you had to watch the whole thing until you got to it. Anyway I corresponded with the man who produced it and he put chapters in and made it so that you could have it full screen.

A few months ago Amaya put out some of her Dvds in this format and I was suprised to find that there were just the same problems. To her credit Amaya worked very hard and put chapters in them, very quickly, but in both Leyla's and Amaya's the full screen function isn't full screen, it's still only small. They've now added a "Jump forward" function to all these dvds, but the fast forward still ticks over frame by frame.

When I bought these, the attraction was that you don't have to wait for delivery, you get them as soon as you've paid for them, and of course there is no shipping charge which is a big plus for international customers.

But.. you can only watch them on your computer, which might be OK on a laptop but not if your computer is somewhere with no space in front to dance or fling a veil. And even on a laptop it needs to be full screen to be able to see it properly from a distance . Besides that, you can't watch them if you can't get the internet for some reason.

So, on balance, I think I would have been better off buying the discs, because although they would have cost more I would have been able to watch them in another room, and also I would be able to sell them when I'd finished with them.

However, having said all that, it's only my opinion and experience with them.
There's a conversation on Shira's video group which says that Leyla Najma is now offering a personalised video coaching service, and some people seem to be very happy with that. So maybe this format is going to become more popular in the future.