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There’s no shortage of ways to stream videos to a TV these days. For $50 or less you can plug a Roku, Chromecast, or Amazon Fire TV into your TV to access content from Netflix, YouTube, HBO, and PBS, among other sources.

But if you’re looking for a kid-friendly option that should keep your toddler from stumbling across inappropriate content when their stream of Peppa Pig ends, now there’s a new option.

The PBS Kids Plug & Play is a $50 media streaming stick… that looks like a toy car. Unsurprisingly, it lets users stream content from PBS Kids, but it also comes with pre-loaded content that lets you use the stick even without WiFi.

For example, when you check into a hotel, you can plug the stick into the HDMI port of the TV in your room and your kids can sing along to songs or play games without the need for a WiFi connection.

When you do have internet access, the PBS Kids Plug & Play can access more than 100 hours of on-demand videos from PBS Kids, as well as the PBS Kids 24/7 channel live stream.

According to the press release, games include Rail Riders, Sound Box, and Road Trip Adventure, and you don’t need a subscription to access the on-demand content.

The PBS Kids Plug & Play is available from Walmart.com (although it’s currently priced at $60 instead of $50), and should be available at the streaming stick should be available in stores and at other locations by May 24th.

The media streamer features 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, micro USB and SD card slots, and an HDMI connector. It supports WiFi and Bluetooth and comes with a wireless remote featuring direction and select buttons.

If you ignore the pre-loaded content, the PBS Kids streaming stick actually does less than similar devices from Amazon, Roku, and others. But this may be a case where less is more, since the idea is to provide access to curated, kid-friendly content and nothing else.

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6 replies on “PBS Kids Plug & Play is a $50 streaming stick with some pre-loaded media”

  1. Has anyone figured out how to play MP4 Videos via the Micro USB slot on the PBS Plug & Play? We’re having a hard time getting it to work.

  2. As a father of 2 toddlers, I love the idea of curated kids’ content. I’d say 90% of my television viewing is for the pre-school crowd. However, the kids also love shows on Nick Jr. and Disney Jr… and Netflix Kids (which also curates only kids content). It’s hard to explain to a 3-year old the difference.

    Maybe there’s a niche of 5-6 year olds who can use the stick and are still interested in shows like Odd Squad. I’m one of the biggest fans of PBS Kids, but I don’t think I can find a reason to buy it.

    By the way, leaving this comment was very difficult. ReCAPTCHA said my browser (the latest version of Firefox) wasn’t supported. I turned on Flash (I have a plugin to disable it) and my browser was suddenly “supported.” Before that I tried to use my Google account, but went through several screens of language like “are you sure you want to link this account to the website FOREVER?” (I’m exaggerating, but that’s what it felt like.) Even after I clicked yes a couple of times, it asked me to re-enter my username and password (Google had previously confirmed that I was logged into the account). I think the average internet user would think that it is a phishing scheme.

    1. Thanks for the feedback. ReCAPTHA can be quirky at times… but it works far better than the default Captcha used by our comment system. But we’re constantly looking for other ways to discourage spam and may reconsider the solution in the future.

      Also, thanks for commenting about your thoughts on kids programming and the relative merits/disadvantages of this type of streaming stick!

      1. As a website owner, I understand. Fighting spam is a never-ending battle.

        I would hope that previously-approved commenters might be able to escape the need to have Flash. You probably know this stuff better than me, but if there was a way of saying, “As long as the supplied email address has [x] or more approvals, we can accept it without requiring the person to click on pictures of ambiguously-looking gas stations.” Since I had already typed up the comment, I didn’t get to point out that the pictures are small and zoom is distant. It was genuinely extremely difficult for me to say what was a gas station and what were cars parked at a school.

    2. Awesome post. I really wish the device at least had 2GB of RAM but as a kids device, this should be interesting. If it’s running on android,hopefully there will be a way to sideload apps like Netflix and YouTube Kids.

Comments are closed.