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Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

blog.smartere.dk

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Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#281

Post by AndrewDavis »

tantalor wrote: post #24
tete wrote: post #3

> Modern TVs are very poorly suited for kids. They require using complicated remotes or mobile phones, and navigating apps that continually try to lure you into watching something else than you intended to. I'd argue that's not too different for grown-ups. ;)

My biggest gripe is how terribly slow it is to navigate UI on a TV. The latency between user input and the UI responding can be upwards of 10-20 seconds. Just incredibly user hostile.

Mine is so slow to become initially responsive. It (thankfully) comes on to whatever source / channel it was on when turned off, but it takes a good 15 seconds till you can change a channel, closer to 30 seconds to change input source. And when it does accept inputs it frustratingly drops inputs for another 10 seconds or so.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#282

Post by sleekest »

IshKebab wrote: post #213
k2enemy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are also easy to DIY with a raspberry pi, rfid card reader, some blank cards, and phoniebox [0] for the software. I don't have much electronics experience and had it up and running fairly easily for under $40. [0] https://github.com/MiczFlor/RPi-Jukebox-RFID

I thought the same before we actually got a Yoto. This is one of those "I could easily DIY that" things that you really couldn't.

I have a DIY one, which took two evenings, but it's limitation is that it isn't portable.

I expect there are big benefits to portability, but I'm okay with not having them.

Is there anything else I'm missing?

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#283

Post by rfarley04 »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #270
klondike_klive wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the Yoto. My son and I have had much fun making our own cards and I got pretty good at extracting audiobooks from YouTube, processing them with audacity and making cards of book series that he was into. You can fit a staggering amount onto a single card (5hrs of audio if memory serves). Honestly that was the biggest extra feature for us, we quickly exhausted all the Yoto store content that appealed, and were…

Is the data stored on the card, or on the player? My guess is that each card just holds an id?

It's just an id. But the audio is stored on the yoto itself for offline play.

And second the blank/customizable cards, that's what 80% of our cards are and my daughter loves helping track down and extract content. Biggest hits for her have been Roald Dahl and random science stuff.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#284

Post by bawolff »

tete wrote: post #3

> Modern TVs are very poorly suited for kids. They require using complicated remotes or mobile phones, and navigating apps that continually try to lure you into watching something else than you intended to. I'd argue that's not too different for grown-ups. ;)

Oddly enough, i think one of the main benefits of piracy is you have to be intentional about what to watch. You pick something and go find it. You aren't prodded into mindlessly watching whatever is suggested to you. It helps break the "addiction" loop.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#285

Post by bawolff »

01100011 wrote: post #274
gffrd wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gripe with Paw Patrol is that everything is met with a cheery "sir, yes sir!" and then the show stops short of ever showing real challenge, friction, risk, failure, or loss. It's a missed opportunity.

Don't overthink it. Some of us were raised on Looney Tunes and MTV and somehow still figure out normal social interactions and do quite well in life. 40 years ago my parents had a close friend with a young and irresponsible wife who raised their child in front of a TV. At 4 years old the child could barely speak. My parents began babysitting and helping socialize her. Now she's a successful businessperson herself and…

After watching some looney tune episodes recently... maybe the world would be a better place if we weren't raised on it.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#286

Post by bawolff »

jamesgill wrote: post #261

" I wanted to build something for my 3-year old son that he could understand and use independently " As a father I can't imagine ever leaving a 3-year-old alone with media so they can be 'independent'. If for no other reason, that's an age and developmental stage where media should be almost nonexistent in their lives.

The way i read the article, was not that the kid is unsupervised, more to give some agency.

The same way you might say to a kid, "pick out the book you want me to read to you off the shelf" this is something like, pick the video we are going to watch together.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#287

Post by bartread »

hamdingers wrote: post #279
bartread wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you say it's not particularly useful, but do you want a TV that runs like a bag of spanners or not ? Because if the answer is "not" then complaining about how your TV performs whilst stubbornly allowing it to download whatever updates it likes and stubbornly refusing to buy one additional device (like an Apple TV or a Firestick) to plug into it is kind of dumb, don't you think? Ornery even? I agree that it is r…

> complaining about how your TV performs whilst stubbornly allowing it to download whatever updates it likes and stubbornly refusing to buy one additional device (like an Apple TV or a Firestick) to plug into it is kind of dumb, don't you think? Ornery even? No, I have plenty of other devices that update and remain useable. So do you. I would describe your attitude that way though.

> No, I have plenty of other devices that update and remain useable. So do you.

Sure, but your TV doesn’t behave like that and it won’t behave like that so why does it make sense to treat it as though it will?

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#288

Post by array_key_first »

drewg123 wrote: post #272
array_key_first wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paramount plus is one of the worst apps I've ever used. It's so bad that I can only assume they tried as hard as possible to be is unusable. Unstable, slow, and lots of things just don't work right.

What gets me is the "play/pause" button behavior on a firestick remote. How many presses of play/pause would you think it takes to pause then resume playing? 2? Oh, no. Its 4! Pressing play/pause on the remote brings up the UI, like a mouse-over on some crappy web-player. You have to hit pause twice to actually pause the video. Then play again brings up the UI, then you have to hit it again to play again. And don't e…

My favorite is the "sorry, we can't play this" just randomly out of nowhere in the middle of an episode. You were playing it just fine, what happened?

And, of course, the crashes. I don't think I've ever seen an app crash this much. It makes me very worried for the codebase.

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#289

Post by nazgul17 »

palmotea wrote: post #32

There are some off-the-shelf products that work similarly in the audio space: https://us.yotoplay.com/ https://us.tonies.com/ I had plans to build something that for the TV, but having kids means I never had the time. And honestly, that might not have been such a bad thing since it made setting limits easier. I was able to teach my kid to turn the TV off when she was fairly young (and pause more recently), which seem…

Is there anything like this but for music selection? I mean, for adults. Say I want to have a dozen "albums" on my coffee table (NFC, QR, whatever), and insert one in a box to listen to them. Like an Audio CD, but without the risk of running, leveraging Spotify, or my MP3 connection. Something like in the OP, but using something less prone to stop working than a floppy disk (I was there, I remember).

Re: Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids

#290

Post by microtherion »

tete wrote: post #3

> Modern TVs are very poorly suited for kids. They require using complicated remotes or mobile phones, and navigating apps that continually try to lure you into watching something else than you intended to. I'd argue that's not too different for grown-ups. ;)

I get to visit my 90-year-old mother in law a few times a week to get her TV setup (Cable box running Android TV, connected to a TV running Android TV — FML) working again.

To make matters worse, the cable box remote works via Bluetooth, the TV remote over IR, so getting any universal remote that works with both AND is simple seems a difficult prospect.

What are people even doing for universal remotes these days? Our household is equipped with Logitech Harmony remotes, which are no longer being made, and I dread the day they stop working.

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