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An NFC movie library for my kids

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Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#331

Post by llasse »

sodality2 wrote: post #25

This is so cool! I do something similar for music - I have posters up for albums, and a small NFC tag is embedded behind the poster, so tapping my phone to the poster’s corner and clicking the notification begins playing it immediately. I really want to make a collection of cassette-or-record-style plastic cards with album art and NFC tags, and hook it up to a speaker, so I can place my album on a pedestal and it sta…

I love vinyl so I built m daughter a wooden vinyl player with wooden discs that carry an embedded nfc so now she can put some vinyl on herself :))

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#332

Post by ndriscoll »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #249
eadmund wrote: post #224

This is an awesome example of the kind of innovation which overlong copyright prevents. There’s no particularly good reason that it should be legally impermissible for someone to build and sell a system like this loaded with movies from before, say, 2010 (or 2000, or whatever), but instead what the prospective entrepreneur would be legally able to include would be … Steamboat Willie, and other films of that vintage (…

If there's a business case to be made, companies like Netflix might release a physical product for this... but I doubt they would, because of the investment and time required vs the revenue. Spotify tried something with an in-car device, but they cancelled and recalled the product pretty quickly. Streaming services rely on volume; for them, hardware just isn't worth it.

If not for excessively long copyrights, streaming might not have taken off in the same way. You could instead buy e.g. $250 HDD that's loaded with 2,000 movies from 20+ years ago or whatever. A company could sell a NAS-like appliance that's designed to slot in drives that are pre-loaded with tons of media along with a card library like this to play them. Since they'd be out of copyright, there's no need for DRM and HDCP and all that, so the system might actually work without tons of fiddling. You wouldn't need high-paid techies to maintain a gargantuan delivery platform; you just clone drives at manufacturing time and ship them.

There's definitely a business case to be made with this if it were legal. There's sketchy Chinese pre-built mini PCs with emulators + 50k-100k ROMS that you can buy for ~$100 on Amazon right now, so basically following this exact business model. I'm actually surprised that there aren't similar products for movies (from what I can tell anyway).

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#333

Post by zer0zzz »

nsteel wrote: post #322
zer0zzz wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find so much of modern technology to be a huge step backwards. Example: People used to call friends over a land line and tell them to tune into the movie on whatever channel and they’d watch at the same time together from two different places. Doing anything like that with modern tech is such a hassle these days that no one does it anymore.

Tried Streamio? I think it has that exact feature. Not tried it yet but given everything else just works I imagine that will too.

How does it handle the problems with drm?

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#334

Post by fivestones »

squeed wrote: post #158
maweki wrote: 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…

I, too, built almost the same thing for my kids. It plays music, using Spotify, Chromecast, and a whole lot of virtual duct-tape via HomeAssistant. There is also an NFC tag that will turn off all the lights and turn on a disco ball :-).

How did you get Spotify to play? Are you using an official Spotify client? Casting Spotify via code/home assistant somehow? When I tried to do something similar (was trying to run a cron job to cast a particular playlist from Spotify to play on my chromecast audio/speakers every morning) maybe 8 years ago I couldn’t figure out how. Maybe it’s easier now?

Re: An NFC movie library for my kids

#336

Post by alias_neo »

nsteel wrote: post #321
alias_neo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids (2,4yo) have one each. They were recommended by a friend who has one for their child. Honestly one of the best pieces of tech I've used in a while. The app is thoughfully made with exactly the sort of features you'd want (alarms, separate volume limits for day/night, night light with changeable colours, morning alarm, bed/wake colours so the kids know when they should be asleep/awake; though my kids don't pay…

I like that you can get other people (i.e. grandparents) to join your yoto "family" and have them record things via the app and it transfers to your card.

My wife and I are both in the Yoto family, and both have full access, so a grandparent could do the same. Nice idea!
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