The Great Courses Plus

Just changed names back from wondrium to Great Courses Plus. My subscription has disappeared and I no longer have an account. Poorly thought out rebrand and dishonest owners.

I really like the video lectures and love that I can download them to my phone and watch later but I’m quite disappointed with the app. It’s very buggy, when casting video to chromecast the audio plays from the phone and the menu to select a video to play seems to take multiple taps before it responds. For the subscription (which is more than Netflix) I’d expect a better app. When I contacted the developer I was told to change my phone settings so my phone would never go to sleep!

But the app continues to let me know, every minute or so, that it is using cellular data. I don’t care. Just use it.

I love the content on this app. Everything I watched was informative. The app, however, was buggy. I would pause a video and the audio would continue to play. I would switch from one subject to another and have both audios playing simultaneously.

For continued learning the best app by far in content, lectures, layout, topics. Will not disappoint the curious. Learn at your pace and choosing. Superb!

I know not what you did over the weekend(if anything) but this morning (7/16/2024) when I opened the app, it displayed a “start a free trial banner” across the top of the screen, dispite being signed in with my paying account. Not only this, but I could not watch anything, including the courses which I had downloaded; and the guidebooks I had downloaded would not open, and instead attempted to download again for whatever reason. Deleting the app and attempting to sign in again gives me a message that reads: “Server Error: Login Failure” Please fix this, as I enjoy this app immensely, and would hate to dislike it over whatever this problem is. Once this issue is resolved, I will certainly change this review to a 5. Edit: I still don’t know what was going on, but I assume the app glitched. After reinstalling it, I had problems logging in, because it was automatically rejecting me, or so it seemed. It works fine now. Confusion. Confusion everywhere.

We were introduced to Great Courses, free access, with our DOD MWR library cards. That service vanished last year so we searched and found Wonderium. Amazingly (using the same email to sign up) all of of our watch history was retained. The only difference was expanded content. This year (2024) Wonderium has become Great Courses Plus and DOD MWR library access is restored. However, we decided to renew our personal Great Courses Plus account in order to support their content. We've watched their recordings from 20+ years ago (such as American History) and learned far more from GC+ professors than we did while in HS or college! Now retired, taking GC+ courses together keeps our conversations invigorating. We watch one lesson every evening together. The brain stimulation is very much needed and leads to a dialogue exhange. After 35+ years of marriage its a fantastic way to dig deeper into our relationship, shared values and individual perceptions. When our adult children and grandchildren visit, they pick out a course while here and we all learn together which opens up our family discussions at meal times.

I started with Great Courses on video tape, then DVD, then Great Courses Plus, then Wondrium, and now Great Courses Plus again. With such a wide variety of subjects, there is something for almost every interest. Time is better invested than watching the junk on TV and the various movie services. I now give subscriptions as gifts.

The ability to play courses in the background or when the device is locked is glaring omission that needs to be addressed.

Thank You🏆