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An NFC movie library for my kids

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Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really cool project, but also way beyond the skills of an average person. I don’t know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found someone’s porn collection! I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic…

We went back to DVDs for my kid, actually. My wife and I really like the idea of a hard start and end to a video (with no chance for algorithmic tendrils to reach you) and we like the idea of having to put in some amount of effort to start the video. It's on demand, but not as on demand as scrolling through a streaming service is. I can't quite articulate why this feels like an improvement to me. Maybe it's because I…

We often decide on things by process of elimination: it's easier for us to identify what we don't want than what we do.

If there are 5 choices available, the effort to decide on one is low as the contrast between choices is high … and holding all options in memory is easy.

If there are 1,000 choices, the effort is high and the contrast is low … and you can't hold them all in memory, so there's always _something_ right around the bend that _might_ be the perfect thing.

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#302

Amazing write up and work in general putting this together - this is such an ideal form of the word "hack" in its incredibly low cost, durability, and usefulness. I was staggered when I saw your build cost list - I know ESPs are in the realm of "Cheap AF" but all of those NFC cards also for $9?! This is one of the few reasons I would shop Alibaba! We're talking around $15 total for the full NFC setup if you can print…

Unfortunately and at least as of March, Jellyfin doesn't support deeplinks.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/discussions/3...

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#303

Amazing write up and work in general putting this together - this is such an ideal form of the word "hack" in its incredibly low cost, durability, and usefulness. I was staggered when I saw your build cost list - I know ESPs are in the realm of "Cheap AF" but all of those NFC cards also for $9?! This is one of the few reasons I would shop Alibaba! We're talking around $15 total for the full NFC setup if you can print…

The author himself pointed out in the end of the article that blurays are cheap- in my view they provide a close enough physical experience. I would probably stick with Blu-ray approach?

Sooo many forum postings of parents lamented the loss of VHS when DVDs and Blu rays took over because of the kid factor. I saw a lot of people backing up their discs and giving their kids the duplicates because of the cost of (especially Disney) films. I also think slot-load (rare for disk players) is a lot more durable than tray-load for kids.

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#304
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author himself pointed out in the end of the article that blurays are cheap- in my view they provide a close enough physical experience. I would probably stick with Blu-ray approach?

Sooo many forum postings of parents lamented the loss of VHS when DVDs and Blu rays took over because of the kid factor. I saw a lot of people backing up their discs and giving their kids the duplicates because of the cost of (especially Disney) films. I also think slot-load (rare for disk players) is a lot more durable than tray-load for kids.

Backing up is the way, disks should be cheap! That’s the whole point of them

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have children aged 0-4? My daughter had a CD player before we got the kids a Yoto each, and she and her little brother scratched the heck out of the CDs, not intentionally, but you just can't expect a child that age to handle them carefully enough not to scratch them. I know Blu-Rays can take a bit more than a CD, but even they won't stand up to a 2yo.

If you teach your children to treat everything gently from birth, they won’t even know how to abuse things. They’ve never learned it.

Congrats on having the only kids on the planet that are gentle with everything and have never broken a single toy or object they have come into contact! What is your secret??

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#306
post #92

I have an extremely similar setup for my 3yr old. He has his NFC cards and select from stuff we find suitable. The TV comes on, one episode runs, TV goes off. He's not fighting over the remote and he has agency. And he's certainly not stumbling his way through YouTube on a tablet. No ads. Very nice for him. It's not yet necessary to track his usage. But I'm well prepared for it. Home Assistant works very well for the…

This is a really cool project, but also way beyond the skills of an average person. I don’t know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found someone’s porn collection! I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic…

> you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic shit

I'm not sure that watching a movie on a streaming service requires more IQ points than watching it on a DVD.

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one don't own a blu-ray anymore and really don't want to - they feel to me like LaserDiscs or BetaMax at this point! :) Plus, to fathom a three-year-old-destroyer-of-property handling your blu-ray disc collection, I shudder! They are great frisbees, and coasters, and etc. If I even still owned blu-rays I might consider ripping them and then converting to this just to avoid the above mentioned pain.

I think that the fragility of Blu-Rays is a great way to teach a kid responsibility. You only let your kid have access to their Blu-Rays and if they scratch them or break them it's over - no more movie. They'll learn after they break a few.

My kids did not learn, perhaps because new kids kept coming to learn the lesson. And they generally can't connect a non-working disc to a specific act. Instead, a disc stops working after dozens of cumulative actions. We never replaced any broken discs either, and just slowly saw our collection dwindle from 20 working discs to something like 2.

My favorite example was the kids using dvds as roller skates to slide around the room.

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really cool project, but also way beyond the skills of an average person. I don’t know If I am becoming old fashioned, but I feel things were simpler when I was a kid, we had DVD player and we would come over to a friends house and watch a movie. We even found someone’s porn collection! I feel this issue is endemic through all of society - you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic…

> you have to spend more and more of your IQ points figuring out basic shit I'm not sure that watching a movie on a streaming service requires more IQ points than watching it on a DVD.

It does if you forgot your password and the service logged you out, again.

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#310
post #94
post #64

The movies visible in the photos in the article, and their runtimes in minutes, are: 94 The Good Dinosaur 92 Trolls 98 Wall-E 88 The Lion King 103 Moana 81 Toy Story 91 Trolls World Tour 95 Inside Out 103 Frozen II 95 A Bug's Life > We have two boys, and the eldest is permitted a 30-minute TV session in the morning and another in the evening. So...if one of them wants to watch The Lion King or Toy Story they have to…

Author here (surreal to see my post at the top of HN!) My kids are 3 and 2, and they don't watch TV like adults. They watch a bit of movie, get up, walk around, do something else, come back, and watch a bit of another movie or even switch to a TV show. It's weird! I like your idea about flexibility, but they're too young right now. Maybe we'll introduce your "bank" concept when they get older or increase the "TV budg…

Totally normal for kids of such age. A 5-7 year old maybe could sit through a whole movie, but only if it would be engaging for him.
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