Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids
(blog.smartere.dk)674 points by mchro a day ago
674 points by mchro a day ago
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.
Turn on TV: 3 seconds
Roku boots: 10 seconds
Meanwhile turn on soundbar: 3 seconds
Press Roku remote button: 3 seconds until it wakes up and repairs (remote still eats batteries)
Open streaming app: 5-10 seconds
Select profile: 3 seconds
Scroll about looking for show: 5-20 seconds, or a minute to type it in
Select the right episode: 3-10 seconds depending on if it's currently on the right season (somehow not always)
Start and buffering: 5-10 seconds
Ad: 20-40 seconds (depending on platform)
And that's all if you're concentrating on getting through it and the device isn't a laggy UI toxic waste dump. Some TVs you have to press each button and wait for each one to register.
At least there isn't an FBI copyright warning at the start I suppose (when you don't live in the US).
Your Roku had to "boot" for 10s - why? Would resume from standby in a couple of seconds, so you've chosen to slow yourself down.
My TCL TV runs Android/Google TV, wakes from standby in 2s while also waking the surround in ~3s via HDMI CEC (and I don't need to hear anything until I've chosen something to play) so really it only take me 2s before I can start to open a streaming app (via a button on my remote) vs your 16s to get to the same point.
It's the choosing what to play that's the slow bit for me - every app puts what you were last watching in a different place, and not all apps notify Google TV so its own attempt at letting you resume is incomplete...
It also frustrates me that profiles streaming apps don't link to profiles for the OS (e.g. Google TV) - seems obvious to me that by now they should all be seamlessly linked together in a way that delivers the most personalised experience, instead of muddling up everyone's profiles and watch history!
Everybody complains about performance. Slow software feels like poison.
Except, anything written with a large JavaScript framework is allowed to be slow. In fact slow as syrup is strongly encouraged. To prove it just ask the developers. Mention it could be 8-50x faster just by not using their favorite framework and note the response. Even better, show them a proof of concept and take note of their unemotional objectivity.
I had a 75-inch TV I inherited, it was on the higher end and the TV UI was supper snappy. Then, I broke it accidentally and got only 1/4 of the money from insurance. Because I barely watch TV, I thought I would just buy a TV of the same size, but on the lower end... both TVs were Samsung anyway. What a huge difference. The image quality is a little worse, barely noticeable after you get used to it. But the UI is agonizingly slow. Every time I turn the TV on it starts showing some channel fairly quickly, but then after several seconds the image gets black because it's loading the stupid UI... and I can't find a way for it to NOT do that! The higher end TV, needless to say, didn't do that. So now, I know what you're paying for when you get a TV for $4,000 instead of $1,000: slightly better image , but a proper computer to run the stupidly heavy UI (probably made using some heavy JS framework, I suppose).
> The higher end TV, needless to say, didn't do that
Actually it is very much needed to say that. Manufacturers get away with crappy unbearably slow UIs even on expensive TVs because it's not something that gets enough consideration by reviewers or indeed buyers.
That sounds like you have an overly shitty ‘smart’ TV. Plenty of external devices (I’m partial to AppleTV) have no significant lag.
Or it could be you’re using some niche service that has its own issues.
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 the next time I try to launch it. This lag also persists over app switching. So if I stop watching a show, switch to something else for a while, then go back to Peacock and quickly go into the series I was watching, it will play old stuff.
Even switching between 2 series in my currently watching list can take an exceedingly long time. Sometimes I try to switch back and forth to force and update and it feels like I’m back on 56K.
The Apple TV HD is old, technically legacy, but still supports tvOS 26. I have an Apple TV 4K in the house as well, which I’ve been meaning to migrate to, to see if it’s any better. But the HD works fine for pretty much everything else. Peacock as a service seems to have an extreme amount of lag.
External devices like AppleTV, Roku or Xboxes are responsive. It’s the actual TV UI that tends to be very slow and laggy.
It’s a matter of time before tv manufacturers start requiring an app to sync with the TV to set it up.
That would let them glean information about you every time you use said app.
You’re still getting around this with a 3rd party device like an Apple TV for the most part but if it’s required to even turn it off or on it’ll be enough to sync any metadata that it holds
Part of it is the displays themselves. Some have unbelievably bad response times. I've seen 2 seconds multiple times. Makes gaming impossible.
The AppleTV is best in class sure but by the standards of older, pre-internet technology the lag is noticeable. The UI itself is smooth, but any time it makes a network call (which it does for damn near everything) it can take some amount of time. And once you introduce receivers and HDMI-ARC and auto switching and frame-rate differences between applications the whole thing just fucking sucks. It’s constantly turning off and on and has sound cutting out and back on.
And that’s assuming the apps are well written, which they are not.
> sound cutting out and back on.
Absolutely kills me.
No one else in the house notices when sound is from the shitbox tv speakers rather than the soundbar. It’s a high end Sony, and it’s sound quality is shameful.
Can we sacrifice a few cm of thinness and have some sound?
This can be solved by using any number of 3rd-party streaming devices: Apple TV, Google TV Streamer, NVIDIA Shield, ...
I've never experienced an TV OS that was reliably better than one of the above, though a Roku-OS TV came close.
I tried to look for a 'dumb' tv for a long time to get to a setup like this. The ultimate setup would be 1) a totally dumb and stupid tv + 2) a streaming box like Apple TV or whatever. I just want the audio/visual aspect of the screen, nothing else.
True, but when you want to change any of the TV settings you have to deal with the sluggish UI. I have memorized the key presses to toggle between two different brightness presets, including the amount of time I have to pause between each keypress. If I press the buttons without waiting sufficiently long, it goes sideways.
Keep in mind: "Is your android TV streaming box part of a botnet?"
When you're a low-tier video streaming company, you look for cost savings such as writing the same app as few times as you can get away with, so typically you end up with the same web app running on Tizen, webOS, VIDAA, PS4, PS5 and quite often Fire TV and even Xbox. Even Amazon's new Vega OS with its React Native way of building apps has a WebView escape hatch.
These TVs typically have really slow SOCs – certainly not fast enough to run a web app the way a typical dev write a web app these days.
I uninstalled google launcher and shitty Xiaomi apps in my Mi TV stick using ADB and switched to F-Launcher. Can't be happier with the performance.
And not always anything to do with the TV.
I have BT TV (https://www.bt.com/help/tv/learn-about-tv/bt-tv-boxes) and the UI is painfully slow at times (UI response to a button press of 10-20 seconds), searching is horribly slow.
Can't wait to ditch it for something more responsive (probably Sky Stream).
I also miss an old TV that had a "q.rev" button to allowed you to switch back and forth between two channels with a single button. Perfect for skipping advert breaks (which is almost certainly why most entertainment systems don't have it any more).
The "smart" TV in my office is hooked up to a chromecast thing and I interact with the chromecast dongle. My TV has never been hooked up to the TV and in fact I haven't even accepted the EULA. The GUI on the TV is lightning fast, and since it can't update itself (and never will!) it will remain lightning fast. If my 4k HDMI dongle begins to struggle, I will plug in a new device via HDMI.
I was not able to win that argument with my wife on the living room TV but our LG (C series) I was able to disable the ads and with a recent update I can now turn off all but the ~4 apps we use (youtube + disney+, + netflix and one or two rotating services). Fingers crossed LG does not push the "brick your TV" update before it's usefule EOL. The HBO app on our ~2016 era samsung was totally useless by 2018. I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight. The Samsung also started showing ads in the app menu selection about 3 years after we started buying it (from korean car makers, really good way to ensure I never buy your brands!).
"I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight."
Ha! The Sharp color TV here in the kitchen is now nearly 48 years old (bought in 1978) and still functions well but with the addition of a set top box/PVR although its remote control has been repaired many times (but the TV itself has never needed maintenance).
Other flat screen TVs have no internet access or are used monitor style with separate STBs/PVRs. As I mentioned on HN some weeks ago, if the trend continues and manufacturers booby-trap sets into planned obsolescence, I'll buy only monitors and connect them via HDMI to a TV feed.
My ancient Sharp TV shouts at me that these days there's something terribly wrong with domestic electronic appliances.
Do you remember analog TVs? Switching channels was a sub second affair.
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.
Modern TV, yeah. TVs from 15 years ago were waaaay faster than smart TVs. Ridiculous.
This can usually be improved by turning off all the crap you want anyways (noise reduction - smart dynamic contrast adjustment - anything similar). Opting out of the ad tracking and personalisation also seemed to slightly speed up some TVs as well for me.
Also experienced a Samsung TV at an Airbnb once that was insanely slow - turns out it had very little storage space to begin with and was literally at 0 remaining. Deleted a few larger apps and reinstalled the remaining and it sped up a lot once it had some cache to work with.
I don’t run into this because I never allow the TV to connect to the internet.
I basically use it as a dumb screen with a set of speakers and a bunch of devices connected to it: Apple TV, consoles, etc.
As such, when I do use the TV remote - if I need to manually change sources, adjust picture settings, or whatever - the TV’s UI remains responsive.
I have heard that some brands of TV will try to stealth connect to open hotspots to download updates and whathaveyou, but haven’t run into that issue with LG or, in more recent years, Hisense.
This is always the top reply and it's not particularly useful. I want the ease and convenience of having a single device both play and display content, there's no reason that should be so hard. Of course I know I could Buy More Things but that sucks as a suggestion.
This is how most people use their TVs these days (despite the issues with it). It's reasonable and fair to ask for a better experience.
This is definitely due to the age/quality/model of the TV. I have 4 LG TVs across the house and the newest/biggest is 100x faster than the oldest.
The monitor I use for work is 43” and can double as a TV. It also has 4 HDMI inputs, which can act as 4 displays. I could, in theory, watch TV via a streaming box, play a console, and still have the equivalent of 2 21” monitors going at the same time. I’d love this kind of flexibility on my primary TV in the living room.
Our Samsung running Tizen has the obnoxious need to check if antenna-based broadcasting is available, every single time you open the settings menu.
It never is, it won’t ever again be in Europe. But it checks. And lags. And then whatever you chose in the menu is not what it selected.
Every. Single. Time. Going to settings makes me wince.
Yeah, I don't understand why everyone is trying to invalidate their experience or suggest workarounds (implying that they are the problem); this isn't stackoverflow.
Every TV I have interacted with in recent years is slow and terrible, except for really old ones. The TVs are the problem, and we shouldn't be making excuses for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things This book - or its later editions, should be required reading for ALL engineers and designers. Actually for their managers as well.
The current way is quite intentional. It wasn't done because the designers didn't know about design.
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.
I argue that most kids are far better at using complicated remotes and mobile phones / apps than most adults. This has been true for a long time. Programming VCRs was a dark art reserved only for teens in the 80s, and I have no doubt the Romans had similar issues :)
This kid is only 3. I doubt that he is old enough to navigate the complex on-screen menus, while taking the delays and other puzzling behaviors into account. This is not to say that young kids are stupid. But the modern device interfaces often feel like a pile of random hacks, rather than something based on the sane and well established design principles that were formulated on the basis of experience and human psychology.
It's not just the TV, it's the weird take that tuners are bad, apparently. I helped my mother-in-laws friend, a lady in her 60s, getting her TV working after a move. The local cable providers don't care to offer their coax solution anymore, you need their box. To be fair, the box is nice enough, but it's way more complicated than simply hooking up the tuner.
Modern Samsung TV are also awful, there's no longer a source button on the remote, so you have to use their terrible UI to navigate to the bottom of the screen, guess which input you want, which takes 10 - 15 seconds. If you can find it in their horribly busy UI.
From what I've read on some modern Samsung TVs if they have a settings button on the remote long pressing that is a shortcut directly to the input selection.
Another option is if the remote has a mic button you can use that. This works pretty well on my several year old Samsung (most of the time [1]). I just press the button and say e.g., "HDMI 2". If I want to watch an OTA channel, say channel 4, I say "channel 4".
I don't know how well this works on the newest models because I believe they know have they own Alexa-like thing called Bixby handling this instead of something built specifically for TV voice control.
If you don't watch OTA TV another possibility is to enable HDMI-CEC for your devices. Then when you turn on or wake a device it can switch the TV input to that device (and turn the TV on if it is not on).
[1] Around a year ago they had a glitch that affected the voice commands on older TVs around the world. Most reports were for 2017 TV models. These TVs started only recognizing voice commands in Russian (and the feedback showing what you said was in Russian too).
For switching between HDMI 1 and HDMI 2 I was able to learn how to say those well enough in Russian for it to work by listening to Google Translate speak them in Russian. But no matter how many times I tried I was not able to learn how to say "channel 4" well enough in Russian. It worked if I let the TV listen to Google Translate speaking it, so the problem was my pronunciation rather than Google Translate not translating correctly.
I witnessed my great aunt of 85 trying to watch TV. It was sad and painful. How ux is forgetting this entire generation is just terrible.
When my grandmother was in her late 70's, she couldn't figure out the concept of menus on DVDs, so she stuck with VHS well beyond the point others had let it go.
The capabilities of individuals over 70 are hugely varied. Some folks are clear-minded until 100, others start to lose their mental faculties much, much earlier.
I don't think the generation is forgotten, just so vastly different in needs from the core audience that it would require an entirely different solution, and likely an entirely different company model.
I think it's not that they lose their mental faculties... it's that they lived most of their lives in a world without computers (at least home computers - which only became a common occurrence in the 90's, when today's older people were already in their 50's. So they just never learned to use computers and smart phones and are completely unused to their modern UIs. Even I find it hard to use many apps on my phone! Like, how am I supposed to know that wiping carefully up and to the left is the only way to do something!!!??? So, older people may try a few things, and if it's too frustrating they just find something else to do and give up. At least that's my experience with my mom and auntie. Both of them managed only to learn how to open WhatsApp and call family, but it's always an agony when they accidentally touch something and the video disappears, or pauses, or flips so they can see only themselves or some other nonsense. And that's all they use their "smart" phones for! They just wanted an old fashion phone with a big dial buttons, plus a screen to see the person on the other side.
I do wonder how much of that is just convenience, a lot of people just don't want to bother, even if they would figure it out if they tried - they just don't. Your grandmother probably could've figured it out, but tapes were just much more convenient even if you had to rewind them (Obviously there's a learning curve, though)
This, 100%.
I've seen the same scenario - someone with limited vision, next to no feeling in his fingertips and an inability to build a mental model of the menu system on the TV (or actually the digi-box, since this was immediately after the digital TV switchover).
Losing the simplicity of channel-up / down buttons was quite simply the end of his unsupervised access to television.
Channel up/down doesn't scale to the amount of content available now. It was OK when there were maybe half a dozen broadcast stations you could choose from.
To be fair, I remember visiting my aunt's house in the mid-2000s, who had a surround sound set up her husband had set up. It required three or four remotes to work and no one but him could ever get it working. I think UX has forgotten a few generations by now.
In the long run shareholders care about customers though, not the UI. Of course in the short term the stock market has always been about something other than fundamentals, but in the long run shareholders who care about customers tend to do better and most shareholders are in it for the long run - but they never are enough to be powerful today.
My father, before he passed away from Alzheimer's, couldn't do anything _except_ watch TV and I was so infuriated by how impossibly unusable they were for him. In the end, we just bought a DVD player and a mountain of physical DVD's (on the plus side, used ones are really easy to find cheap nowadays). I can't believe there's no option to just channel up and channel down a damned TV any more.
With my grandpa thankfully it wasn't as bad, though I had to regularly change back the source to HDMI (from STB). Somehow changing that himself was too much, even though he regularly read the teletext. Later, when choosing a new TV I opted for one that accepted a CAM module, obsoleting the cable STB. The simplicity of the remote was also a factor. So a cheap 32" Samsung TV it was. Turned out great. The other choice was a Sony, but my gut feeling about UI was right all along.
It’s also true vice versa - an entire generation tends to forget UX. That is to say, most people don’t want to keep learning new things, they don’t want to continue to engage with novel technology they are unfamiliar with, they “just want it to work” because “the old thing was working just fine.” They claim not to see the value in the new thing, while falling farther and farther behind the curve as they fixate on the old thing.
There are some off-the-shelf products that work similarly in the audio space:
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 seems to be enough.
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 expectations for the pricing of audio/video content has changed (probably for the worse)... for me at least.
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 Bluetooth speaker from our phones, which removes a lot of the utility of the player (he can't navigate chapters, we can't set a sleep timer, we can't use our phones for other things).
The concept is great though and the specific product, walled content garden notwithstanding, has been a net win for us.
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.
The make your own cards are really nice for this. We bought a bunch of them and you can add any mp3s you want onto them. We even print stickers to put on the front.
You can use third party cards which are sold for a fraction of a price too. There are a bit of hassle to setup (you need to link an original card and then clone it to a cheap card), but when done they work flawlessly
Like some others, I built my own too: https://rdeaton.space/posts/screenless-digital-jukebox/
Tonie boxes are extremely widespread in Germany, and while the media are similarly priced, there's a huge used market and public libraries have them as well. Nothing is tied to a specific account or box, so there are no restrictions on resale or lending. Almost shocking in this day and age.
People already mentioned the blank cards, but the Yoto club subscription is actually a pretty great deal. You get a ton of credits that you can just apply to books and the value works out pretty well.
You do have to watch out for Short content, but if you were buying audiobooks on Audible, you’d have the same issue .
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).
You can also buy ready-made PhonieBoxes on some marketplace sites.
yes! PhonieBox - But you built it yourself [0]. You make your own cards with nfc/rfid stickers in them, put a nfc/rfid reader somewhere nice, and hooked up to phoniebox rpi with spotify to a nice sound system.
A friend of mine built an open-source version of this! Check it out at https://github.com/tommyblue/favolotto
I -have- built something like this for the TV using NFC cards, which was a great first-electronics-project for myself. That said, the most frustrating part is not the actual hardware itself but getting whatever streamer you're using to play the content you want. For example, this project required the author to WireShark and reverse engineer how Chromecast managed things.
If you do go down this route, I found that Plex offered the best deep-linking functionality and would wrap all of your content with that... but it was still somewhat unreliable.
The toni boxes are also quite hackable https://tonies-wiki.revvox.de/
At least the older model. Don't know about their latest model with gaming and everything.
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 weren't into any of the big franchise content (except a pleasantly surprising read of Pixar's "Cars") or joining the Yoto club.
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.
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.
Access to the audiobooks published for Yoto. Yoto daily (daily podcast for kids that my kids absolutely love). A button that plays relaxing music to help them go to sleep. The display (they love this a surprising amount). General polish (I imagine it's pretty janky if it took 2 evenings).
I recently discovered Tonies when I remembered the Fisher Price cassette player which was my favourite toy when I was a kid and wanted to get something similar for my son. What I ended up getting: A used Fisher Price cassette player on e-bay plus a cassette deck to record with.
Tonies just seem like such a horribly bad deal: The actual content is content that the family already pays for twice because my wife pays for Spotify and I pay for YouTube Premium, and the content on those Tonies is actually on the streaming services as well. So, we'd end up paying for the same content a third time.
Moreover, we'd lock ourselves into a closed cloud. If the Tonie company goes out of business, Tonies will no longer work.
One of the nice things about a cassette player is that it seamlessly transitions the kid into enjoying the culture of the grown-ups. I can remember how exciting it felt as a kid when I started borrowing my dad's music and enjoying that on my Fisher Price. -- With the Tonies, you're locked into whatever content the content-mafia deems appropriate for toddlers.
There are also all the arguments pertaining to streaming vs. physical media in general that play into this, which I won't repeat here. I'll just say that children's literature is consistently a target for political influence on culture, and cloud-based centralisation makes it more vulnerable to that sort of influence -- “Vote for me, and there will be no more Taka-Tuka Land for Pippi Longstocking! That's so offensive to ... uhm ... whoever (Polynesians, I guess? Africans?) And what about that shy lion that needs to learn to roar, so the other animals will take him seriously? Toxic masculinity!”
I don't know the particulars of what the Tonie system looks like from a content creator perspective, but I certainly find it peculiar that Tonies lean heavily in the direction of Disney content. The German language is not exactly the best market for content creators. So, I think we should support our own content creators as well as we can to avoid a situation where the only kind of culture we have is translations of whatever Disney cooks up in the Anglosphere.
And the blank/creative Tonies are not a counterargument to the above because I'd expect there to be upload filters for copyrighted content and the like (or there soon will be if there isn't already).
> A remote control should be portable, and this means battery-powered.
I don't know, I would have just have the kid get off their seat in between shows and walk up to the TV with drive attached and change disks there. Very similar to how you had to change VHS tapes.
Unless, of course, the above was just an excuse to do some tinkering, then it's fine and fun.
Right? This is basically just reinventing the VHS.
The plus is that you get higher quality video and don't have to press the play and rewind button, but the disks are easier to lose/break (outside of the player).
The real benefit (outside of being a fun project for a certain type of parent) is having a curated library of shows for kids that they can use themselves.
> The plus is that you get higher quality video and don't have to press the play and rewind button, but the disks are easier to lose/break (outside of the player).
Well, the disks here are just for fun: they just tell the player which of the stored movies to actually play.
I mean, either way, the library of disks isn’t going to fit on the couch (or wherever) with them, so they’ll be getting up at some point.
I think the portability / battery-drivenness is really just to ensure that the drive doesn’t have a cable that could break something if it were yanked on.
My 3 year old watched TV for the first time for 2 minutes in her life (it was hard hiding it from her in an airplane on an overhead screen) and I can tell that TV is generally bad for kids at that age.
Generally agreed. Though, Daniel Tiger and Paw Patrol should be judged differently. Paw Patrol is mindless and addictive.
If you desperately need a distraction, PBS shows are less bad. A few moments of pacification may be worth not disturbing the other airline travelers.
Daniel Tiger may be helpful to parents too. Interacting with children is not intuitive. Techniques from PBS shows have helped me. For example, singing to kids about trying food is move effective than a well reasoned monologue.
Some commenters either:
1. Do not have children.
2. Have a strong support network.
3. Have their partner or professional handle most aspects of child raising and have a warped understanding of dealing with a precocious and active toddler.
It's great that some folks have kids that like books and keep themselves busy. It's not so great that their parents think that is the reality most parents enjoy.
Daniel Tiger was a godsend when my kids were younger. They loved it, and the little jingles helped us get through some of those tricky parenting situations. They're easy to remember, and the kids immediately understood.
I'm still in the "it depends" denial, but I grew up in a different era, where there was only something on TV for a few hours a day. Half an hour or 45 minutes of stuff aimed at kids at 3 age cohorts, toddler stuff, Sesame Street, "youth news", and an educational / entertainment / sketch show called Klokhuis (apple core / clock house).
But that was once a day, during weekdays, and no re-runs. Watching and re-watching Sesame Street clips back to back is IMO just as brainrotty to kids as the other brainrot going on at the moment.
In some European countries like Germany, there are recommendations by institutions like the Federal Center for the "Protection of Children and Young People from Harmful Media (BzKJ)" about TV time or screen time in general [0]:
- 0 to 3 years: Ideally, no screen time at all. If media is used, then only in very short intervals and not every day.
- 4 to 5 years: Up to half an hour of screen time per day.
- 6 to 9 years: Up to one hour of screen time per day.
- For older children aged 10 and above, it is advisable to agree on a weekly time allowance.
I would watch up to two hours of tv a day right after school. TV time was up to 5 o clock. Earlier ages had school close at 3:30. Later ages had school close at 2:30. It was a good stress buster. And after that it was homework. Sometimes we would go out and play instead.
I agree with the 6-9 years old tv time. It is about what we did. But the 4-5 years? I know all my friends learned the most from tv this way. I did not because we didn’t have cable. We watched pbs.
How can you tell? What's the thing that made you say "this is bad for her", and why is it not the same for you?
She was so focussed on it and started crying when we hid it after only a very short time. This is not normal a behaviour. This only happens with things that are very addictive (also for example sugar). I do understand that not everybody can do it like that, but if you can create such an environment it's much better for them (in my opinion).
My three year old would do the same thing if he was playing in his sandbox and I abruptly picked him up and carried him away from what he was doing though. In my experience managing transitions between activities is one of the most important things. If I let my him watch a video and I tell him "I'm going to turn off the TV when it ends", he just goes back to playing with his toys when it goes off.
Don't get me wrong, I think screen time can definitely be a problem. I just think it mostly comes down to whether or not the screen time is at the expense of something else more constructive.
Absolutely this. I think a problem arises when parents install their kid in front of the TV and use it as a childminder.
Mine just turned 3. She watches YouTube kids - navigates the TV just fine and makes her own choices. She’s also a dab hand at platformer games - I didn’t think I’d have someone to play Mario with just her.
But - and it’s a big but - she spends 95% of her time doing something else, be it exploring outdoors, playing with duplo/lego, art, looking at books, telling stories with her toys, whatever.
For her, TV and games are just another thing to do, and she picks them up and puts them down like anything else.
The other problem arises at the other end of the spectrum. For me, TV was verboten until I was at least 8 or 9 years old - and when I was finally allowed that forbidden fruit I gorged myself.
>> started crying when we hid it after only a very short time
I'd cry too if you showed me a bright colorful shiny fun new thing and then took it away after only two minutes.
Part of what you're seeing is the novelty. There does seem to be something about screens, but it's possible to have healthy screen habits as a young child. My 3 year old enjoyed a 25-minute episode of Wild Kratts on PBS Kids on our TV while we finished packing up for a trip to the aquarium today. No problems turning it off once the episode was over and it was time to go. It's not his first time watching TV though.
My approach to these kinds of things is different: these are really important opportunities to teach moderation and to teach the social skills of learning to have fun things in moderation.
I think it's quite important to introduce these addictive things into their lives, in a way that teach how to enjoy them carefully and in small chunks.
I won't argue that it is a universal truth but it has played out the same for my kids and my friends groups kids.
They treat it like a drug and lose all emotional regulation. I don't believe all screen time is bad, but it is something you have to teach them to regulate and 3 year olds and younger are just bad at regulating emotion in general. Teaching them to do this is just part of parenting. One of the most important things we can teach our kids is that it is okay to be bored. In fact it is great to be bored sometimes.
On the other hand, being a parent is hard and keeping your sanity is important in order to be a good parent. So if it helps you be a better parent all other times, it could be worth it.
The issue is when screens are used to in place of parenting. Parents using it as a way to fuel their own screen addiction.
On the other hand, for me airplanes are a special case and all rules go out the window to help keep the kid calm.
Hard disagree with ‘great to be bored’ - being bored is one of the worst possible feelings, that you’re wasting your time doing nothing when there is almost certainly something you would rather be doing.
As a child I used to hate the feeling of boredom, knowing that I could be doing something I wanted to do. As an adult I am hardly ever bored, and it’s a strict improvement, never have I ever found myself wishing I could just go back to being bored.
Boredom is such a negative emotion that learning to manage it effectively becomes an essential life skill. Learning to set yourself up for success / be prepared required forethought to anticipate the possibility of boredom and come prepared to deal with it. Acting out on boredom is childish, learning to keep yourself occupied so you don’t become bored is mature.
There was a time people used think the same about books.
Books can also be harmful if abused. They can be used excessively as escapism. They can contain dangerous harmful messages and manipulation. They can be addictive just like anything else can. Content matters a lot, and anything that makes delivering content easy comes with the risk that it will deliver something harmful. Books, TV, and social media have all been used intentionally to spread harm and encourage addiction. Most adults have at least some chance of protecting themselves, but children don't have those defenses developed.
It's a good idea to be aware of every form of media children consume.
That's still consumption of images rather than participation in reality. Kids can absolutely read in excess as a form of escapism. Books are easier than dealing with real life when someone else does the thinking and problem solving for you. Certainly great for learning in moderation but you won't learn interpersonal skills or how to ride a bike just by reading about them.
I don't think there was. But even if so, there was a time people used to think the same about drinking antifreeze, too.
their vision is still developing and staring at a screen is not good for eye development.
it removes stimulation and interaction with the environment and replaces it with sedentary and no physical interactions.
While the exact reasons are not common knowledge, knowing TV is bad for toddlers is.
> their vision is still developing and staring at a screen is not good for eye development.
Is that true? The American Association of Pediatrics doesn't list that as a concern on their page "Health Effects Of Young Kids Being On Screens Too Long" (which is focused on children aged 2-11). Do you have a source I could review for that claim?
https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/cente...
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(The AAP page about media recommendations for 0-2 also doesn't say anything about eye-development, but _does_ recommend entirely against screen-time for that age-group except for video conversations with people)
https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/cente...
to clarify, too much “near work” for the eyes is a risk for myopia. That includes reading books all day.
My point is, watching an educational tv program like PBS for 30 minutes in the evening will not be the cause for your child wearing glasses.
The biggest predictor of good vision from the scientific studies is lots of outdoor time. This is most important from ages 6 to 11.
https://www.myopiaprofile.com/articles/how-outdoor-time-infl...
It’s bro-science all the way down. What if your environment is a boring room?
not that guy, but it would cause our kids to completely emotionally deregulate, and become fixated on the TV for a while.
and most TV is not great for people. there is a reason depression and anxiety correlate with TV time
My kids never had tablets or individual access to screens and yet we have tv and movies and now video games as the children age.
The current rule is video games require 1 minute of exercise for one minute of usage. This is a self regulating time limit that has worked well.
similar observation here, with a 2.33-year old. In small doses we've exposed him to videos[1], never unsupervised, never as a parental substitute, but there are a class of them (which happen to be the lowest-effort, highest-contrast, most insipidly soundtracked CGI dreck I can possibly imagine) which are absolute baby crack. He watched some a few months ago and now he can't get them out of his head. It has gotten to the point where we are simply at a hard "no" about any videos because it always devolves into an inconsolable tantrum tearfully begging for more video crack.
[1] kid loves trucks and garbage trucks and trains, and so for a while it was fun to pull up a video of real life trucks and trains and watch them and talk about them. We'd read a book about trucks. He'd point and say, "what's that do," and I'd explain, then say, "wait! I can show you." Which was fun, until it became triggering.
we had generally the same experience but with disney princesses
was sort of a crutch for a sick kid or when things were slammed (e.g. kid 2 or 3 was also sick or we were otherwise busy) but we had to limit them heavily.
we also made the mistake of playing her the soundtracks, which ended up with listening to Aladdin or Frozen on repeat. All told not bad music compared to the drek they're putting out on YT now...
I find the type of show makes a big difference, finding something thoughtful is important (and hard). We also like to set a time limit, usually 1-2 episodes to make the transition easy. Also, no tablets, just commercial-free TV so we can watch with them.
They re-enact fun/positive stuff from shows and don't get locked in or desperate for TV. Seems to work for us.
I love this! I really wanted to go down this road when my kids were younger, but the paucity of floppys and the low storage space made me go down the Avery business card print outs with RFID stickers on the back and a raspberry pi with an RFID reader inside. Of course, the author is using the floppys as hooks instead of as storage media...what a great idea. The tactile response and the art you can stick to them makes them ideal for this purpose.
QR codes on cards would work as well, if I'm understanding what this project is. The floppy disk approach has some nostalgia maybe but seems quite fragile. I quickly learned to never let my kids handle CDs/DVDs (one of the worst physical media designs ever; they are totally unprotected) as they would quickly become damaged and unplayable. Floppy disks are at least sort of protected but the same idea applies.
I still have a large number of working CDs from when I, myself, was a kid. DVDs too but they were later and more durable.
I’ve always wondered what people are doing to them? Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe I was just careful with them. Maybe I don’t remember the ones that failed.
I don’t think kids are less careful now, although being screamed at for making the CD or record skip was probably a deterrent.
My little kids loved to slide discs on the ground like they were cleaning a mess with a rag. We lost many movies this way.
Some people really get the idea of only handling it around the edges. Lots of other people just handle them however they want and have no problems touching the media anywhere. Especially kids, which often don't have the cleanest hands at any given moment.
Lots of kids will handle them however they want. They'll pick them up with greasy, sticky hands right on the media section. They won't necessarily care about ensuring they're properly in the drive tray. They'll jam all kinds of things into the drive slots. They'll drop them on the floor and step on them, toss them in a toy box when told to clean their room, etc.
Obviously not all kids will be this way, but many will.
I don't think I can get my hands on a floppy drive, but I still have an ancient computer somewhere with a DVD player in it. While not as cool, I had been considering turning into a simple media station for the specific purpose of letting my kid pick what music to play or video to watch by herself, without needing a screen to navigate it.
Like you, it never occurred to me that I can also just use specific DVDs or CDs as hooks for videos to be streamed, or media downloaded on a hard drive. So that suddenly makes the whole project a lot more interesting, and possibly easier too.
Buying a large pack of burnable DVDs is a lot cheaper and sustainable than using SD-cards like other commenters suggested.
"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.
This sort of blanket judgement on media puts quite a lot of pressure on parents that require an electronic babysitter to function. Sure, it's great when you have a support network and a child who can keep themselves busy, but some of us just need Mrs. Rachel, Caillou, Daniel Tiger, etc to sedate/educate our children while we cook/clean/work/etc.
Besides, non-interactive, low-stimulation media with a plot line and simple dialog is not on the same level as giving your child a tablet and letting them have at it.
My real concern with this project is the amount of time the builder spent away from his children. Now I get it that some folks(dads on the spectrum?) might feel their best contribution to their child's development stems from something they build in the lab but your children are only young for such a short period and taking time away from them to build a custom electronic solution seems narrowminded and selfish.
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
I didn't read that connotation into it, but maybe in your social circles people have a problem with homeschooling?
> maybe in your social circles people have a problem with homeschooling
In general I think it's a very American thing, and considering the education problem the US suffers from, probably explains a part of that. Most other countries have very limited amount of homeschooling even allowed, because of all the drawbacks with it.
I find it quite a nice feeling to put a CD into CD player. That's something my kids were deprived of, but I'm trying to re-teach them.
I would say that feeling that we have everything at the tip of our fingers does not make our brains value it for some reason, but I'm not sure if it's true, and can't support it with any arguments others than anecdotical.
Floppy disks are getting hard to come by, and will soon be too expensive.
A good option would be to have the same data printed as QR codes in labels glued to small domino sized wood blocks that could be inserted in a slot in a box and read by a cheap camera module.
Someone else posting to HN used cheap flash cartridges for a "music player" like this. There is something to be said about having a ROM or ROM-like media that can store even a few megabytes of data rather than QR codes being relatively bandwidth limited and so often needing a URL to data or more URLs.
The article points out there is a useful lesson in accidentally destroying/losing a physical object in the way that floppies or VHS tapes were easy to accidentally destroy and taught young childhood lessons. QR codes are a bit harder to destroy, which can be a benefit, but also loses this tiny lesson.
They are currently $1 per disk, are reusable, and last a very long time.
It is likely they are still being manufactured, too.
Even if the price were to double, I suspect that someone with the skills to make this has a sufficiently well paying job that the price of a hundred disks per year would not be a problem.
I think so! As far as I can google, it seems like everything available is new-old-stock or recovered discs.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-s...
Interesting little read I fell into while looking this up!
You could wire in one of those small phone vibration motors and get similar noises out of it. Experimenting with different ways of mounting the motor so that it makes metallic or mechanical noises would be fun. If you really wanted to get the full audio experience you could also add another motor that spins a small, disk shaped load that you could ramp up and down for the steady whirring noises.
It is fascinating to think that after we moved everything online, we keep finding uses for physical media that needs to be read by a player.
Yes, it is not efficient, but physical media looks to like it kind of meet some higher levels of needs in the Maslow hierarchy. It is ergonomic, it is human, it is tangible, countable. It is embodied in a world that is less and less embodied by the day.
I loved the tactile feel of 3.5" floppies (especially coming from the - actually floppy - 5.25"s). Great choice. In particular, the spring-loaded metal shield was very satisfying to play with, unfortunately those are missing on the disks in the picture (apart from one, which seems to not have the closing spring)! Possibly a casualty to the three year old user.
I love these ideas. Another great implementation I've seen on here is someone using NFC/RFID chips to do something similar.
For my toddler, I've started the process of hooking up my TV with a Mac Mini, Broadlink RF dongle, and a Stream Deck. I'm using a python library to control the stream deck.
I'm configuring the buttons to play her favorite shows with jellyfin. End goal is to create a jukebox for her favorite shows/movies/music. Only thing I have it wired to do right now is play fart noises.
This is a fun setup, I have a child due in March and have been thinking through all the things to help make things not instant for learning patience as well. While I may still to DVDs for viewing, as I kept my collection building. I do have a floppy drive available and like this idea.
For those talking about not using TV much, or that the UI is slow, my setup is a cheap projector hooked into my sound system and hooking up a laptop when streaming as necessary. Really dislike the smart anything that can be used in other ways for the reasons I already saw mentioned, but it is hard to lag something that has no Internet by looking for ads and updates for sure.
Generally it is better not to show kids those cartoons. I have 3 kids already and trust me: Stick and some piece of thread is much better. 3 hours of watching anything for the entire week is more than enough.
> 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?
An easy at home setup is Raspberry Pi running Batocera and Zaparoo with NFC cards. If you buy a three ring binder you can neatly organize the NFC cards.
Bonus: it is an arts and crafts project to put on the stickers for the cards.
I've been thinking of making something similar for my kodi setup for a while, possibly with NFC "disks", or SD card "cartridges", similar to this https://youtu.be/END_PVp3Eds, but I didn't think about using floppies. If I can get my hands on some, that could make a nice "physical library" too. Also a good tip about the arduino floppy drive library, I'll probably make use of that to debug my floppy drive to see if it's the problem or some configuration in my computer that isn't working
For people looking at OSS, Phoniebox seems to be the popular/mature project: https://phoniebox.de/index-en.html
(My partner and I are building one for our daughter)
I love these physical mechanisms for controlling the software that surrounds us. Not enough physical UX out there; all the industrial designers seem to be in love with single button controls or touchscreens or capacitive panels. I presume they're cheaper than switches with a nice thunk or dials with a nice clicky feel.
Unfortunately, it takes a fair bit of time and skill with microelectronics and fabrication to build these things.
My 7 year old has figured out the Roku app pretty well and can play stuff on PBS Kids or turn on the Nintendo Switch without any guidance. His 3 year old brother, not so much.
Responding to the title: Made me think of Star Trek TOS food synthesizers (the precursor to replicators). They used floppy-disk-like cards as their main interface: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Food_synthesizer?file=F...
In particular what brought it to mind was a scene in one episode with a bunch of kids being shown how it works, same episode as the page's title image.
Cool project! There was something quite similar but with RFID cards showed on HN a few months ago:
https://simplyexplained.com/blog/how-i-built-an-nfc-movie-li...
Which can be a useful lesson sometimes (as the article mentions teaching that lesson with accidentally destroyed floppies). With burning one's own DVDs you potentially balance that fragility with easy replacement (just burn another copy).
This reminds me of a card swiping video game system I made years ago.
> 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. ;)