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

Post by auslegung » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #18

auslegung wrote: post #11

There’s a product with a similar UX for audio books called a Yoto Box https://us.yotoplay.com/ It’s very popular in Charlotte Mason homeschool circles

Looks like fun and educational toy, interesting find. But why the mention of it being popular in homeschooling circles? Mentioning that in the same context makes it seem like you're not recommending the product because of that :P

Post by eru » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 1:28 AM UTC

HNisCIS wrote: post #280

eru wrote: post #276

> There is a pin 34 “Disk Change” that is supposed to give this information, but this is basically a lie. None of the drives in my possession had that pin connected to anything, and the internet mostly concurs. In the end I slightly modified the drive and added a simple rolling switch, that would engage when a disk was inserted. I wonder if he could have just polled the drive every five seconds?

Reading the drive is a mechanical process so it would be constantly making noise and wear out components

Post by mirashii » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 1:46 AM UTC

arscan wrote: post #44

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…

We have a yoto for our son, and its a great experience, but be prepared for pricing of content to match what we used to page for cds/tapes. e.g., the pout-pout fish card is $8 USD for 10 minutes of content [1]. I think that's ok, as he actually would get a lot more than 10 minutes of use out of it, and its great to pay the creators while not having to worry about ads manipulating my kid. But it highlights how expecta…

Post by cout » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 2:05 AM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #177

al_borland wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m using an AppleTV HD with Peacock and it’s pretty bad. I wouldn’t consider NBC a niche service. After an episode ends, I need to wait for the new one to start to be sure it marks the last one as watched. When going back to the main screen, it can take upwards of 30 seconds, maybe more (it feels like an eternity), for the “watch next” to update. If I don’t wait for it to update, it will start playing an old episode…

If you think Peackock is bad, try Paramount+, it's an impressively bad app that, along with being very laggy, will crash fairly regularly too.

Post by arscan » Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

fredley wrote: post #96

neutronicus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a Yoto here as well, for our six-year-old. The concept is great - RFID as a replacement for cassette audiobooks (with fewer storage limitations!). I do wish it integrated better with sources of free audiobooks. The Libby app gets us access to a lot of audiobooks through the public library, many of which are not even available for purchase through the Yoto player. We can only use it to play them for him as a B…

The Yoto system actively encourages you to buy 'blank' cards to fill with your own content, and the process is relatively simple. Simply remove the DRM from the borrowed media, (convert to an appropriate format if required), then upload to the card. Wipe your card whenever you borrow a new audio book from the libarary for a clear conscience. yt-dlp is also a great source of content.