The Great Courses Signature Collection Now Available Through Apple TV Channels

[MacRumors]

The Great Courses Signature Collection is the latest video subscription service to be made available through Apple TV Channels.

Previously only available through Amazon and Roku, The Great Courses Signature Collection offers access to over 200 of The Great Courses' latest video courses taught by leading U.S. professors. Categories include history, better living, science and mathematics, and literature and learning.

Apple introduced the Channels feature in early 2019, providing a way for ‌‌Apple TV‌‌ users to subscribe to standalone services directly in the TV app. There is a growing selection of Channels available, including CBS All Access, Showtime, Epix, Starz, Cinemax, AMC+, and more.

The Great Courses Signature Collection is available now in the U.S. via the ‌Apple TV‌ app, Amazon Prime Video, and Roku for $7.99 per month. There is also a seven-day free trial available to try the service out.

Article Link: The Great Courses Signature Collection Now Available Through Apple TV Channels

 

[Apple_Robert]

Overall, the content is excellent albeit a condensed narrative. Their product pricing on their website is way too high (physical media and download).

 

[iDento]

I’d really like the Curiosity Stream to get integrated with TV Channels.

Update: there’s a channel for that, actually.

 

[BuffyzDead]

Price seems Steep.
I may never understand the 'subscription pricing model' because of this math:

1,000,000 monthly subscribers x $7.99 = $7,990,000 per month
Or
3,000,000 monthly subscribers x $3.99 = #11,970,000 per month
Or
5,000,000 monthly subscribers x $2.99 = #14,950,000 per month

Maybe its the overhead to supply that many streams
Or
Maybe there will never be enough monthly subscribers, regardless, of a lowest monthly price.

 

[4jasontv]

I like the idea of this, but I am a little confused by their options. So far I see they have The Great Courses ($50 to $400 an episode), The Great Courses Plus ($20 a month), The Great Courses Signature Collection ($7.99 a month), and The Great Courses Audible ($14.99 a month).

Audible is just content (without video) acquired as part of your Audible subscription. TGC state that lectures, where visuals are "essential" to appreciate the lecture, are not available as audio-only, but I can't find an explanation of how they define "essential".

The Great Courses is all or most of their content as an own forever option and seems to follow the radio story / early VHS justified obscene pricing strategy. You can buy downloadable video, audio-only, or DVDs directly from them. The Joy of Science is popular (4.6/5.0 stars), and old (recorded between 1998 and 2000) and demonstrates the quality and absurdity of the price model used. Right now a DVD would cost $614.95, Instant Video is $529.95, and Instant Audio is $299.95. These are not library prices and are intended for personal consumption only. If purchased as a bundle with The Philosophy of Science, which is on sale, you can get the two on DVD for $146.90 or Audio for $75.90. No Instant Video option is available. Due to the small market for this type of content prices will be high, but these fees are all over the place, and even $75 seems unreasonable for 30 hours of 23-year-old science content. A little Binging (just kidding, Google) showed that they often do sales between 30% to 90% off.

The signature collection appears to be 200 curated videos from the Plus subscriptions more than 500 videos. What I can't figure out is if the Signature Collection changes month to month, or if it's more like an AV version of Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books.

They seem to go out of their way to hide the content's age. They don't come out and tell you the recording date, and one is left to read comments, guess based on the age of the earliest reviews, or google the product. However, alongside the decades-old content are some "newer" releases. The most recent releases, as found by sorting by Newest, I see America's Long Struggle Against Slavery was released in May 2020. Language A to Z is the newest content, as sorted, and based on the age of comments and product questions it appears to have been released sometime in October or November of 2020. However, additional digging revealed that Language A to Z was re-released with a new SKU and the original release was removed, further obscuring its true age.

Service seems cool, but a bit overwhelming in terms of options. While some of the liberal arts content may have retained its value I would worry that listening to old content may promote ideas that are no longer held by modern experts in their fields. Even a 2-year-old science book is questionable reading, and I suspect that much of the arts have similar concerns.

 

[_mario]

Overall, the content is excellent albeit a condensed narrative. Their product pricing on their website is way too high (physical media and download).

They run sales constantly with steep discounts. This pricing model enables them to better manage their physical inventory.

 

[FloatingBones]

I like the idea of this, but I am a little confused by their options. So far I see they have The Great Courses ($50 to $400 an episode), The Great Courses Plus ($20 a month), The Great Courses Signature Collection ($7.99 a month), and The Great Courses Audible ($14.99 a month).

They started out over 30 years ago -- I believe the original courses may have been on VHS tape. Streaming came in as an afterthought. Individual courses are outstanding; I am particularly fond of NYT science writer Steven Strogatz's Chaos course. Courses are usually on sale once a year; that chaos course is often sold on EBay for ~$20.

You'll find a bunch of their courses at libraries. My local library has over 100 titles. Information about their various online options is hard to find. I cannot find a list of what #!$$ title is in which collection. Publishers like O'Reilly have only one list of online titles in one place; they are far more attractive. Ditto for Curiosity Stream.

I think that they've gotten mired up in their legacy of physical courses. Perhaps they are bound by onerous royalty agreements with the lecturers. I wouldn't be surprised The Great Courses vanishes, is acquired by another company, or simply limps along with a mish-mash of streaming and legacy media.

 

[aajeevlin]

They run sales constantly with steep discounts. This pricing model enables them to better manage their physical inventory.

Reminds me alot of Udemy, every few weeks (or probably less) you see courses that goes for $150-200 gets discounted to say $9-20. I won't never buy at their orginal price, but at $9-20 some courses are wroth it.

 

[nt5672]

They started out over 30 years ago -- I believe the original courses may have been on VHS tape. Streaming came in as an afterthought. Individual courses are outstanding; I am particularly fond of NYT science writer Steven Strogatz's Chaos course. Courses are usually on sale once a year; that chaos course is often sold on EBay for ~$20.

You'll find a bunch of their courses at libraries. My local library has over 100 titles. Information about their various online options is hard to find. I cannot find a list of what #!$$ title is in which collection. Publishers like O'Reilly have only one list of online titles in one place; they are far more attractive. Ditto for Curiosity Stream.

I think that they've gotten mired up in their legacy of physical courses. Perhaps they are bound by onerous royalty agreements with the lecturers. I wouldn't be surprised The Great Courses vanishes, is acquired by another company, or simply limps along with a mish-mash of streaming and legacy media.

Just to confirm, the original courses were on cassette tape, then video tape, then CD/DVD, then online. The original owners sold out about the time the first on-line courses were released (2006?) and turned everything over to a venture capital fund. The vestiges of the once great company are long gone.

 

[mw360]

Price seems Steep.
I may never understand the 'subscription pricing model' because of this math:

1,000,000 monthly subscribers x $7.99 = $7,990,000 per month
Or
3,000,000 monthly subscribers x $3.99 = #11,970,000 per month
Or
5,000,000 monthly subscribers x $2.99 = #14,950,000 per month

Maybe its the overhead to supply that many streams
Or
Maybe there will never be enough monthly subscribers, regardless, of a lowest monthly price.

It's never so simple. If it were, everything would be 1 cent. In reality, yes there are streaming costs which increase per user or per view. There may also be royalties per view, and of course there's customer service which has to scale with customers, and legal and business costs when you start going international. On top of all that, purchasers are not rational computation engines. There are many, many irrational moves consumers will make when purchasing or avoiding products. For example they may happily subscribe at $15, but cancel if it starts out at $10 and rises to $12.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

I wonder if there will be a time where the subscription model kind of collapses in on itself. I get you can subscribe and cancel any time, but everything is going on a monthly subscription model now. You want this app? Pay the monthly subscription. You want this streaming service? Pay the Monthly subscription. That on top of other bills and expenses really do start adding up, no matter how little or much you use. This is why I like annual subscriptions. You pay everything up front and then you don't worry about it for the rest of the year. This course thing looks interesting (especially the science and better living things) but I can look this up on youtube for free for the most part.

 

[anakin44011]

If only there was an app that allowed us to easily download mp4 files as we browse streaming services.

Wait a minute...

Uppie??
No, that's not the name.
But I think I'm close.

I feel like it is on the tip of my tongue...

 

[yaxomoxay]

I wonder if there will be a time where the subscription model kind of collapses in on itself. I get you can subscribe and cancel any time, but everything is going on a monthly subscription model now.

I don't mean this as a political post, but just to show the direction.
When the big economies met for the World Economic Forum in Davos a couple of months ago, the Item #1 in their "Great Reset" plan was the following:

 

[hxlover904]

Back about 10-12 year’s ago, these courses were superb. Especially the history and science courses. We used them to home school the kids and the kids liked them a lot even tho some were college level and “above” their class level. When they got into high school, a lot of their classes were reviews for them because of these videos. We got a lot from the library. I have no idea what their pricing is now, but based on the above comments it’s a bit of a cluster.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

I don't mean this as a political post, but just to show the direction.
When the big economies met for the World Economic Forum in Davos a couple of months ago, the Item #1 in their "Great Reset" plan was the following:

View attachment 1786896

Oh I know. I don’t want to get political either but I do have strong (maybe unpopular) feelings on what is going on.

 

[cr2]

I agree with most of the comments here. I have a few, which I got them used from Amazon and few from Audible.

Audibles is usually a miss. I got them before I knew about the DVDs!

Many of the DVD lectures are old, really old and has poor video quality and occasionally poor audio too.

i would not pay the full price for a DVD set, unless I know what it is.

It might be a good idea to try the subscription for a couple of months and then shortlist the courses you want to get. Some are worth revisiting again and again and some are worth watching it once. I was disappointed in a few courses as well.

In the recent past the newly published courses are quite shallow and not so competent lecturers. (Either in content or delivery or both).

I guess there is a tremendous pressure on keep generating newer courses to get more revenue.

 

[anakin44011]

It might be a good idea to try the subscription for a couple of months and then shortlist the courses you want to get. Some are worth revisiting again and again and some are worth watching it once. I was disappointed in a few courses as well.

In the recent past the newly published courses are quite shallow and not so competent lecturers. (Either in content or delivery or both).

I guess there is a tremendous pressure on keep generating newer courses to get more revenue.

Exactly, like all of the platforms. Great Courses was (and is) invaluable when focusing on humanities. College level stuff for pennies on the dollar, but the pressure to keep publishing dilutes the quality and confuses the offering.

Lynda.com (LinkedIn Learning) was (and is) invaluable when focusing on Excel, Photoshop, etc. And some of their business courses are surprisingly good, but the pressure to keep publishing dilutes the quality and confuses the offering.

Lather, rinse, repeat for Udemy (>100k courses isn't a feature, it is a bug), SkillShare, Coursera, et al. Excellent resources within their wheelhouses...and questionable outside it. And the redundancy is a big problem...as is the lack of concern for the viewers time ($15/month is cheap, my time isn't).

Coming soon...Lather, rinse, repeat for HBO Max, Paramount+, Disney+, et al

 

[Ion-X]

I tried out the free Apple TV Channels trial today and started a course on gravity. It’s absolutely fantastic and I’ve learned more in one episode than I do from entire seasons of many “science” shows. Great-quality stuff.

Just wish the price were more like $4.99 a month.

 

[cecil444]

I’d really like the Curiosity Stream to get integrated with TV Channels.

Wait, seriously? Curiosity Stream has been included since early on. I think it was in the first dozen or so channels they added.

 

[Apple_Robert]

If you ever have ambitions of becoming a 'know it all," Great Courses can help you attain your goal.

 

[joeblough]

Just to confirm, the original courses were on cassette tape, then video tape, then CD/DVD, then online. The original owners sold out about the time the first on-line courses were released (2006?) and turned everything over to a venture capital fund. The vestiges of the once great company are long gone.

that's really interesting - i was going to comment that this company always seemed a little scammy and overpriced to me, based on where their magazine ads were placed and the tone of those ads. the VC/Hedge fund thing would go a long way toward explaining that.

 

[name99]

I like the idea of this, but I am a little confused by their options. So far I see they have The Great Courses ($50 to $400 an episode), The Great Courses Plus ($20 a month), The Great Courses Signature Collection ($7.99 a month), and The Great Courses Audible ($14.99 a month).

Audible is just content (without video) acquired as part of your Audible subscription. TGC state that lectures, where visuals are "essential" to appreciate the lecture, are not available as audio-only, but I can't find an explanation of how they define "essential".

The Great Courses is all or most of their content as an own forever option and seems to follow the radio story / early VHS justified obscene pricing strategy. You can buy downloadable video, audio-only, or DVDs directly from them. The Joy of Science is popular (4.6/5.0 stars), and old (recorded between 1998 and 2000) and demonstrates the quality and absurdity of the price model used. Right now a DVD would cost $614.95, Instant Video is $529.95, and Instant Audio is $299.95. These are not library prices and are intended for personal consumption only. If purchased as a bundle with The Philosophy of Science, which is on sale, you can get the two on DVD for $146.90 or Audio for $75.90. No Instant Video option is available. Due to the small market for this type of content prices will be high, but these fees are all over the place, and even $75 seems unreasonable for 30 hours of 23-year-old science content. A little Binging (just kidding, Google) showed that they often do sales between 30% to 90% off.

The signature collection appears to be 200 curated videos from the Plus subscriptions more than 500 videos. What I can't figure out is if the Signature Collection changes month to month, or if it's more like an AV version of Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books.

They seem to go out of their way to hide the content's age. They don't come out and tell you the recording date, and one is left to read comments, guess based on the age of the earliest reviews, or google the product. However, alongside the decades-old content are some "newer" releases. The most recent releases, as found by sorting by Newest, I see America's Long Struggle Against Slavery was released in May 2020. Language A to Z is the newest content, as sorted, and based on the age of comments and product questions it appears to have been released sometime in October or November of 2020. However, additional digging revealed that Language A to Z was re-released with a new SKU and the original release was removed, further obscuring its true age.

Service seems cool, but a bit overwhelming in terms of options. While some of the liberal arts content may have retained its value I would worry that listening to old content may promote ideas that are no longer held by modern experts in their fields. Even a 2-year-old science book is questionable reading, and I suspect that much of the arts have similar concerns.

Your obsession with "NEW!!!" is silly. Almost everything in a Great Courses course is, if not exactly timeless, as correct today as in, say, 2000. This is obviously true for, say, the literature courses ("Giants of Russian Literature" or whatever). But it's just as true for the history courses ("The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes" is REALLY good) or "professional" courses ("Law School for Everyone" is again very good). Even for the science courses it's basically true. Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Organic Chemistry just haven't changed their fundamentals in 20 years.

I won't say everything in Great Courses is good, but it almost all is -- pretty much the only things that have disappointed me have been subjects where I expected, going in, that I wouldn't be much interested, and the lecturer wasn't able to change that expectation.

If people are worried about cost, I'd say that mostly you are paying for levels of convenience/flexibility. The course you buy you can listen to any time from now till eternity. The course you stream restricts you insofar as it could be removed from the service next month. The cheapest options of all, if that upsets people or they want to try things out, is go to your local library. They will have a lot of Great Courses on CD and DVD, and if physical media aren't your think, they will probably have arrangements with Overdrive or Hoopla that also stream many of the Great Courses. (Of course now the additional inconvenience is a time limit, and maybe a restricted number of items per month.)

Especially good (IMHO) were Everyday Engineering and the course called Literary Modernism by Jeffrey Perl; this latter in particular was one I did not expect to enjoy but I was extremely impressed by how well the prof presented his case.

 

[jgreg728]

I’d really like the Curiosity Stream to get integrated with TV Channels.

It is a part of the TV Channel lineup! $3/month

 

[4jasontv]

Your obsession with "NEW!!!" is silly. Almost everything in a Great Courses course is, if not exactly timeless, as correct today as in, say, 2000. This is obviously true for, say, the literature courses ("Giants of Russian Literature" or whatever). But it's just as true for the history courses ("The Barbarian Empires of the Steppes" is REALLY good) or "professional" courses ("Law School for Everyone" is again very good). Even for the science courses it's basically true. Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Organic Chemistry just haven't changed their fundamentals in 20 years.

I won't say everything in Great Courses is good, but it almost all is -- pretty much the only things that have disappointed me have been subjects where I expected, going in, that I wouldn't be much interested, and the lecturer wasn't able to change that expectation.

If people are worried about cost, I'd say that mostly you are paying for levels of convenience/flexibility. The course you buy you can listen to any time from now till eternity. The course you stream restricts you insofar as it could be removed from the service next month. The cheapest options of all, if that upsets people or they want to try things out, is go to your local library. They will have a lot of Great Courses on CD and DVD, and if physical media aren't your think, they will probably have arrangements with Overdrive or Hoopla that also stream many of the Great Courses. (Of course now the additional inconvenience is a time limit, and maybe a restricted number of items per month.)

Especially good (IMHO) were Everyday Engineering and the course called Literary Modernism by Jeffrey Perl; this latter in particular was one I did not expect to enjoy but I was extremely impressed by how well the prof presented his case.

This is not just absolutely false but dangerous as well. Sciences from anatomy to zoology have had many important changes in the past 20 years. I am sure that topics such as music theory and interpretation of classic literature have also changed as well.

Medicine textbooks are the most useless resources because they are out of date before they ship, and lectures more than a year or two old are often filled with errors. A 23 year old lecture about science is going to be filled with mistakes.

 

[JoeShades]

I’d really like the Curiosity Stream to get integrated with TV Channels.

I assume you like that? I was thinking about it, not very expensive