Not too long ago, I was given the opportunity to review Transformers Prime: Darkness Rising for Kailani over at An Island Life.  (There’s a giveaway for that too, so head on over and enter.)  My boys loved it as did I.  For me, it brought back a lot of memories of shows I loved growing up.  I was a huge Transformers fan and always would beg my parents for a new Transformer to add to my collection.  The only rival to Transformers was He-Man.  I still have some of my old Transformers packed away somewhere.

Besides Transformers, the boys have been re-discovering some gems from the past.  They’ve watched Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on Roku via Netflix.  They don’t seem to get how cheesy it is and instead simply enjoy the superhero stories.  They’ve also watched Batman: The Animated Series and The Super Mario Bros Super Show.

It seems that some shows (or show concepts in the case of Transformers) don’t really age all that badly and kids don’t always need a flashy new show to be entertained.  Sometimes, an older show will entertain them just as much.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you have a show that you grew up with that your kids enjoy watching?

P.S. If you haven’t already, go visit FollowerHQ and let me know what you think of my Twitter application.

P.P.S. For a bit of fun, try my other Twitter Application, Rout. It’s a +F in Fun!

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #118

In case you haven’t heard, Father’s Day is coming.  Growing up, this meant buying my father a tie or similar piece of clothing.  (Techy gifts while I was growing up, either were beyond my monetary means or weren’t the kind of gift he was interested in.)  And while I appreciate a nice tie, my gift preferences usually skew towards the geeky side.  Sadly, though, we aren’t super wealthy.  I can’t afford to go out and buy every single piece of geeky

tech that makes me drool.  I need to prioritize and bargain shop and Walmart is always on my bargain shopping list.  Here, in no particular order, are some tech items that I’d love to get for Father’s Day.  All of these items were spotted during a recent stroll through our local Walmart.  They are also all available from Walmart’s Father’s Day electronics page or Walmart.com.

Video Games:

Playing video games is fun.  Playing video games with my boys is extremely fun.  NHL, while not a master, has learned how to operate the controls nicely.  JSL wants to work it right, but just can’t figure it out yet.  I think he just needs more practice.  Which means I need to play more video games with him.  Oh the never-ending chores us dads must undertake!

Roku

Yes, we already have two Roku players.  One in our living room and one in our bedroom.  Why do we need a third, you ask?  Well, our upstairs room (used by the boys as a play room) doesn’t have one.  In fact, since it only has basic cable TV (and a DVD player but the DVDs are kept downstairs), that TV would benefit greatly from a Roku player.  Plus, the boys could rock out with Pandora in the larger play room space.

iPad 2

Don’t ask me how we didn’t get a photo of this.  I drool over the thought of having an iPad to use.  Oh the web browsing I’d do.  The apps I’d download.  The Angry Birds I’d fling at green pigs.  Excuse me while I get my drool mop.

LCD Monitor

I recently inherited a desktop computer that my parents didn’t need anymore.  I want to set this up to be a print/file server, but I need a monitor.  I have two CRT monitors I could use but they are big, hulking affairs.  They work fine, but they take up so much desk space.  How much nicer would it be to have this slim number on the desk instead of the giant dinosaur?

Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Dad Central Consulting on behalf of Walmart and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

I’ll admit it.  As much as I thought I’d be the parent who wouldn’t let their child watch too much television, my kids love the TV.  They have a dozen favorite shows that they absolutely *must* see and are constantly asking us to DVR something else.  In addition, they’ve fallen in love with Netflix on our Roku player.  NHL, in particular, enjoys picking just which episode of which show he is going to watch next.  Of course, we prefer it when their television watching habits are educational in nature.  So when I heard about Ameba, I was intrigued.

Ameba is one of the many new channels that Roku provides.  Unlike others that show old movies or anime, though, Ameba shows educational programming geared towards children.  When we first browsed the selection of shows, I’ll admit that I began to get a little nervous.  Nowhere was Dora the Explorer, The Wonder Pets or any of the other “big name” shows that my boys are used to watching.  Would they take to these new shows or would they turn their noses up at them?

We looked through the Ages 2 – 5 section for a good program for JSL.  After awhile, we found Rainbow Fish.  This was a pleasant surprise because they love the Rainbow Fish book.  We watched an episode where Rainbow Fish and his friends need to welcome a new girl to their school.  A girl who doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the gang.  They both enjoyed this show.

After this, we switched over to the Age 6 – 10 section to find a good program for NHL.  I noticed Einsteinabot, a program which appeared to be about numbers and math.  NHL loves math so we tried this.  Once again, I began to get nervous.  The program had a fun song, but the look of the show wasn’t as polished as some shows on Nick Jr or Disney Junior.  I needn’t have worried, though.  NHL began singing along while JSL danced in his seat.  When the episode was over, NHL asked to watch the next one and the one after that.

It just goes to show that kids like fun shows.  They don’t care if the show uses the latest animation techniques or expensive computer generated imagery.  The shows on Ameba might not have big toy lines behind them like Dora or the Disney shows do, but they are fun and educational.  (Of course, the lack of a big toy line might be seen as another plus.)

Ameba costs $9.99 per month (though, for the month of April, they’re dropping the price to $3.99) and you can either get a set top box from them or purchase a Roku box for $60 to play it on.  I didn’t test Ameba’s box so I can’t say anything good or bad about it, but I highly recommend the Roku box for ease of use and availability of content.

Giveaway:

Thanks to Ameba, not one, not two, but three lucky winners will receive an Ameba set top box and a 3 month subscription to Ameba. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What education programs do your children watch or did you watch growing up?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.  (Don’t just leave one comment listing everything you did.)

• Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Follow @AmebaTV on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad, @AmebaTV and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: Stream educational children’s shows from the web to your TV. Win 1 of 3 @AmebaTV set top boxes from @TechyDad http://bit.ly/gMRdRH #Giveaway
• Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
• Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from March/April. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
• Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, March 31st and ends at Noon EST on April 14th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only.

Disclaimer: I was provided two month’s free Ameba service to review.  No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. Ameba is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.

Last year, I wrote about how I would love to cut the cable cord and stop paying for cable TV.  At the time, I assumed that DVD rentals/purchases (including services such as Netflix), in-home streaming (via purchased and ripped DVDs) and the Internet would pick up the slack from our loss of cable TV.  After all was said and done, I figured that cutting the cable cord would save us $15 a month.  Not much, really.

Later on, I actually won a Roku and tried out Netflix.  This resulted in a four part series titled Netflix, Roku and Cut Cable, Oh My!.  (Here are links to part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.)  During this series, I revised my estimates, including purchasing equipment to receive OTA signals and a TiVo box to record shows.  I also cut back on Amazon VOD and purchased DVD estimates.  At the end, I wound up estimating a savings of $40 a month.

Since it has been about year, I figured it was time for a follow-up.  First of all, our cable cord is still fully intact.  Despite our calculations of what we would save, it turns out that too many of the shows we like watching are on cable TV.  Still, our television landscape has changed dramatically in the past year and it doesn’t bode well for the future of the cable cord.

First of all, that three month Netflix trial turned into a paid-subscription.  Yes, this is $13.99 extra a month, but it is well worth it.  We get 2 DVDs out at a time and unlimited streaming.  Thanks to our Roku box, we can watch videos streaming from Netflix on our television.  The kids have taken to this the most and will watch the same shows over and over.  They even request “Roku” (by which they usually mean Netflix on Roku) over regular TV on a regular basis.

NHL and JSL have discovered classic cartoons such as Pink Panther and Rugrats and will watch their antics over and over.  (Note to Netflix and Nickelodeon: Please get more than just the first 4 seasons of Rugrats on streaming!)

Amazon VOD has gotten almost no use.  About the only time I’ve used it was when I had a credit to use up.  Even then, my purchase has gone unwatched since the boys love Roku so much.  Still, were I to cut cable, I could see buying Mythbusters this way, but not much else.  A season of Mythbusters on Amazon VOD would cost about $43.50.  At that rate, I might be better off waiting and buying it on DVD.  (I still wish Netflix could get the DVD season sets instead of the “random episode” collection DVDs.)

Paid rentals and DVD purchases have gone virtually extinct.  Yes, we’ll buy the occasional DVD, but this is a rare event.  Meanwhile, our trips to the library to take out DVDs have become a nearly weekly event.  The boys get excited to go to the DVD section and pick out 1 DVD each.  Then they can’t wait to get home and watch it over and over until it is time to return it and pick a new DVD.  This is quite a deal since it is essentially free.  “Essentially” because it is paid for via our taxes, but I can think of worse ways to spend tax money than beefing up our public libraries.  Besides, the boys almost always get books while there too.  We’ll leave with three or four DVDs and a big bag full of books.

Still, there are cable channels that we just love watching too much to cancel.  If these shows were available in a streaming model (say, via Hulu Plus, Netflix or some other provider), we would gladly subscribe to those and ditch the cable cord.  Until that happens, though, I don’t think the cord will get sliced.  Of course, as more content goes streaming and as we watch less and less non-streaming content, the cable cord’s lifespan seems more and more limited.  I’d probably be safe to declare that we won’t cut it in the next year, but I wouldn’t be as sure about the next 3 – 5 years.

When we moved into our house, our computer systems went upstairs. Over time, though, we found that we were using the downstairs more. This was aided by the addition of a wireless router and our laptops. When we added our Roku and CinemaTube, we hooked them up to our wireless network. This was a fine solution, but wireless is slower than direct Ethernet hookups. Unfortunately, running network cable throughout our house wasn’t an option due to the age of our house and type of walls it has. That, plus we had enough home repair bills without drilling through walls just to run cable.

Enter the LinkE. The LinkE, from Brite-View, uses Powerline Networking technology to connect your devices to your router. Put simply, the traffic flows through your router, into the LinkE bridge, through your house’s power lines, through the LinkE switch and to your device. If that sounds complicated, all you need to know is that you plug the bridge into an electrical outlet near your router, connect it to the router and then plug the switch into any other electrical outlet in the house. After connecting a device to the switch, you have Internet access.

I took the LinkE out of the box and plugged one unit in downstairs near our TV. I plugged the other unit in upstairs near our router. I was actually expecting more setup than that. I figured that I’d need to log into some administrative panel and fiddle with some settings or something. Instead, it was literally plug and play. When I hooked it up to our Roku, our Roku was able to tell that it was connected to a wired network and could use that instead of the wireless network. Before you could say “powerline networking”, Netflix movies were streaming through our power lines and onto our TV.

This was highly convenient, but it wouldn’t be much use if the speeds didn’t meet or exceed wireless network speeds. Brite-View advertises speeds up to 200Mbps, but, since my ISP doesn’t give me that much bandwidth, I didn’t expect to reach that figure. Still, I wasn’t dissappointed. The Netflix loading seemed to go faster and, when I connected it to my computer, my web page load times seemed to shrink.

Of course, I’m too much of a geek to accept “seemed to.” I want hard numbers. To quantify just how much of a boost I got, I ran six speed tests at DSLReports.com. First, I ran three using my wireless connection. This resulted in an average speed of about 1984.7 Kbps down and 988 Kbps up. Next, I ran three tests while connected via LinkE for an average of 2414.7 Kbps down and 1000 up. (I cleared my browser’s cache after each test to avoid any influence there.) The upload speeds were comparable, but the download speed improved by 22%.

Wireless Speed Test Results:

LinkE Speed Test Results:

I would definitely recommend the LinkE for connecting home theater equipment to the Internet. Nowadays, many electronics (Blu-Ray, Roku, CinemaTube, etc) come with ethernet ports. Not all come with wireless built-in. Instead of buying wireless adapters for each of these, you could hook up one LinkE and network all of our devices. The LinkE can be purchased from Brite-View. The 1 port bridge + 4 port switch model that I tested retails for $84.99.

Disclaimer: I recieved the LinkE 1 port bridge + 4 port switch model complimentary from Brite-View to test. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own.

It Slices! It Dices! It Cuts Cable Cords In Two!!!

Thanks to the one two punch of Netflix Online and Roku, I’m pretty confident that my kids would survive a cut cable cord without too much screaming.  So where does this leave cable in our household?

For now, it hasn’t been cut, but don’t confuse being uncut with being safe.  We’re currently looking into many options ranging from cutting to going with an alternative service like DirecTV.  (Any DirecTV reps out there who want a technologically savvy daddy blogger to do a review on your service? )

My original conclusion, meanwhile, has been revised.  Previously, I determined that we would save about $15 per month if we cut cable.  However, I soon realized that that relied on two erroneous assumptions.

The first was that we would buy $15 in DVDs every month.  We really don’t buy many DVD movies because we tend to watch them once or twice and then add them to the stack.  Kids movies get a bit more play, but there’s only so many times you can let your child watch a show before you go insane.  Now, we tend to rent our DVDs via Netflix or our local library.  DVD purchases happen pretty much only if a deal is extremely good or for a Chanukah or Birthday present.  Our total DVD purchase budget is probably closer to $30 per year than $15 per month.  This increases the Cut Cable savings to $27.50 per month.

The second assumption was that we would frequent Amazon VOD.  Apart from having Mythbusters episodes, I just can’t see spending a lot of money on this service when I get essentially the same thing "for free" with my paid for Netflix subscription.  (Yeah, I know Netflix isn’t free, but you know what I mean.  I don’t have to pay $1.99 just to see another episode of Heroes.  It’s right there.)

The only thing I might pay for is the aforementioned Mythbusters.  (TechyDad want big boom!)  At $1.99 per episode and an average of 25 episodes per season, I’d only be paying about $24, or $2 per month, for this Amazon VOD.  This is far short of the $26 a month I initially assumed and raises the Cut Cable savings to $51.50 a month.

I’ve also re-thought my setup.  I don’t need to invest in a media streaming setup.  I just need to manage our existing DVDs better.  So I’ve used EMDB to catalog all of my DVDs.  I plan on making a list out of it and laminating it for the kids to refer to.  This way they’ll be able to point to an item on the list and have B or I put it in rather than wondering just what we have to watch.

The only tripping point at the moment is how we would hook our existing TVs up to receive over the air broadcasts (do we need to buy any equipment for this?) and what DVR to buy to replace our cable company issued one.  TiVo is a possibility, of course, but the monthly fee ($129 per year) would eat into our Cut Cable savings.  Still, even after TiVo, we would have over $40 left per month in savings.  The first six months of savings would pay off the purchase price of TiVo.  After that (and possibly a few months paying off equipment to receive digital OTA signals), we’d be in pure savings mode.

Alternatively, we could switch from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV.  The one year locked in rate would save us $28 per month over cable.  Either way, money talks, especially in this economy.  Unless things radically change, I don’t think our current cable connection has much of a life left in our household.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Heeeere’s Roku!

When we last left our intrepid Cable Cutting hero, he was talking about Netflix streaming devices.  There are many of these on the market, to be sure, but my favorite is the Roku box.  This small box, and I’m talking palm of your hand small, will easily fit into any home theater arrangement.  It is easy to set up, navigate and has plenty of content available on it.

Once your Netflix Instant Queue is set up, the titles appear nearly instantly on your Roku box.  If your title includes multiple episodes, say because you’re watching The Addams Family, you can jump to a specific episode easily .  Fast forwarding and rewinding, though inexact, are simple to master.  Simple enough, in fact, that my 6 year old figured it out quickly and now is not to be trusted near the remote.  Not because he’s going to mess something up, but because he *will* fast forward/rewind/change the video when I just want to watch what’s playing.  In fact, all of the controls are easy to master.  If I hand NHL the remote, I can be certain that he will find a show that he wants to watch and will be able to play it with no problem.

The only problem we ran into was constant wireless network connection losses.  However, considering I’ve been experiencing these on my laptop as well, I think this is more of a problem with my network (more specifically, my router) than with Roku/Netflix.  Even when the network is acting funky, though, reconnecting is as easy as clicking "OK" a few times.  Assuming that the network cooperates, that is, but you can hardly fault Roku or Netflix for not being able to connect to a trouble-making router!

Since introducing them to the Roku, my children’s viewing habits have changed.  Whereas before their "default" choice was Noggin, The Disney Channel or possibly PBS Kids, they have rapidly made Roku one of their favorite choices.  Why, after all, bother with waiting until their favorite show is on when you can just click and play.  JSL has learned to ask for "Wiggle Roku" for his favorite Wiggles videos or "Bobby He Can Build It Roku" (Bob the Builder on Roku) and NHL has found enjoyment in some of my old favorites: Inspector Gadget, Super Mario Brothers and The Pink Panther.

Previously, I had mentioned how Netflix wasn’t resting on their laurels.  Well, Roku isn’t either.  While Netflix on Roku might be enough to justify the $80 – $130 price tag (depending on which Roku box you buy), Roku also offers access to Amazon Video on Demand, which has some great movies and TV shows, and Major League baseball.

Those offerings require extra purchases, however.  Amazon VOD requires you to pay for each video while MLB insists on a yearly subscription fee.  To increase the value of your Roku box, they are branching out to other content providers, most of which will be free for all.  Their Channel Guide allows you to customize your channel listing to include Motionbox, Mediafly, blip.tv, twit.tv, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Frame Channel, Flickr and Pandora.  These options just came out, so I haven’t explored them fully.  Still, I got a taste for how much more content they have just made available via Roku and I like it.  Clearly, Roku is trying to position itself as the go-to box for streamed media content.

Coming up next, will the cable cord survive being cut?

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Watching Movies At Warp Speed

Previously, I mentioned that Netflix is keeping up with the changing rental climate.  One of those changes is online viewing.  I’m a big believer that the future successor of DVDs isn’t going to be Blu-Ray or some other super-incredible-ultra-high-resolution disc, but no disc at all.  All of the pieces are in place or nearly so.  Internet speeds are fast enough in many areas to support video streaming. Video codecs can alter video quality to account for changes in bandwidth.  Wireless technology allows for devices (*cough*Roku*cough*) to stream Internet videos without needing any wires (save for the power cord). Read more of this article »

Yesterday, Revision3 announced that they will have a "channel" on Roku boxes. If you don’t already know, Roku is a small, $99 set top box that can play Netflix Instant Queue movies, Amazon VOD movies and even Major League Baseball games. Roku had promised 10 new channels announced by the end of the year. MLB was one of them. Blip.TV was a second. Revision3 becomes the third. However, during the video demonstration of Revision3 on Roku, I noticed something odd. Here’s a screen capture, tell me if you notice it too.  (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Did you notice the Pandora and Flickr channels?  If these are released, then you might soon be able to listen to your Pandora music and browse photos by family and friends via the Roku.  These would be channels four and five.  Add in a rumored YouTube channel and we might have six.  It remains to be seen what other channels will come up, but I for one am excited at the future prospects of Roku!

With the economy the way it is, everyone is looking for ways to save money. For awhile now, I’ve thought about how much our cable TV costs us per month and whether/how we would do without it. We currently have Time Warner Cable’s All-In-One package (Internet, Phone and Cable) with two boxes. One is a DVR and one is a plain cable box. The phone line and Internet we would need to keep. (Ok, technically we could cut our land line and go cell phone only, but that’s a thought experiment for another day.) Switching to Time Warner’s “Surf & Talk” plan would save us about $65 per month.

Of course, our cable TV doesn’t go unwatched every day. NHL and JSL watch it. B watches it. I watch it. So we can’t just rip out the cable line and pocket the monthly savings. Some kind of entertainment is going to need to replace the cable TV loss at or below the cost of cable TV. In doing research on this, here are some of the options I’ve come up with:

Read more of this article »