Who replaced panther productions?

[ballroomsalsadancer]

Hello All,

After about a 14 year break from martial arts, where I learned to become a dancer, I find myself drawn back into my first love. When I left the martial arts scene, panther productions was producing the most consistent VHS instructional tapes quality wise. Not that some didn't stink but over-all they were kind of the only game in town. I know they got bought out by Century, but my question is now in the age of Youtube, who has replaced them. Are there any companies out there actively producing new blue-ray or DVD content that is not all BJJ or MMA? So far Tsunami has some nice stuff but even their dvds are 10 years old in some cases.

Thanks in Advance,

Patrick

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[sensei8]

Welcome to KF; glad that you're here!!

Interesting topic/question. I took my Panther videos, I didn't have many, and had a company transfer them to DVD. Because as old as the Panther stuff was, I was afraid that the tape would break, and after you splice tape back together, after awhile, content is lost.

I've not purchased any Panther from Century because I don't want a VHS of anything; to fragile to survive age, imho.

[ballroomsalsadancer]

In those regards, it does look like Century took most of the VHS tapes and ported them to DVD (and they are way cheaper now then when they used to be). Sadly I think some of them didn't get the treatment due the the copyright owners having died (David German's series for example.) And in some regards those old videos are fine, but I wonder who is making new quality content, or if there is even a market for it.

Patrick

[Wastelander]

YMAA publishes some good content, and some less-than-good content, on DVD. These days, though, I think most people are making their own videos to sell. It's easy enough to do, with technology the way it is. I know that Paul Enfield Sensei's Goju-Ryu DVD's are great, for example, and he records them at his dojo, himself, and sells them on his dojo website.

[JohnASE]

YMAA publishes some good content, and some less-than-good content, on DVD. These days, though, I think most people are making their own videos to sell. It's easy enough to do, with technology the way it is. I know that Paul Enfield Sensei's Goju-Ryu DVD's are great, for example, and he records them at his dojo, himself, and sells them on his dojo website.

I didn't know Paul was doing that! I'll have to check it out. Many of our customers do videos, mostly for their own dojos, but some market to others.

I'm glad to hear Century took up the Panther stuff. I remember when all the masters were locked up. I think Panther was in bankruptcy then. I forget who, but one of our customers who had done instruction for them was not happy, because he couldn't get copies for his students.

We sell a lot of Champ videos. Champ is in Japan, so they pretty much only do Japanese style content, but it's extraordinary quality. The one weakness they have is their English translations. Sometimes, they take a little effort to understand. They do instructional stuff and tournaments. Our most popular titles are anything featuring George Kotaka (Shito Ryu out of Hawaii), and whatever the most recent WKF World Championships is, and the most recent JKF All Japan Championships. People really get into watching some of the best competitors in the world at kata and kumite. Being from Japan, the DVDs are pretty pricey though, even with the US dollar being as strong as it is today.

Most of Champ's stuff is on DVD, but they're starting to do Blu-ray. They sent me one to test in our US players. It works on a PS-4, but I haven't had a chance to try it in a standard player yet. I really should take care of that.

Warrener Entertainment has a LOT of titles on a wide variety of topics. Their media quality isn't as good, but the content is great, and the prices are much lower.

Tsunami Productions has good quality, but as previously mentioned, they're not producing new stuff.

[ballroomsalsadancer]

Thanks, I will have to take a look as some the disks on your site. Budovideos.com look like they might have some decent disks, but I hesitate because they a not so nice return policy (basically you can't return anything if its an import).