Kid TV a YouTube Video Aggregator App of Cartoons
by Paul Wilks
Sep 1, 2011 9:43 AM –
Install
Kid TV is a Youtube video aggregator that brings together a colossal range of cartoons straight to your phone. This is great for entertaining children, as well as giving us older ‘kids’ a nostalgic glimpse back to our childhoods with a great range of cartoons from the 80s and 90s. There is everything here from Rocko’s Modern Life and Ducktales to Batman, Spiderman and Ben 10. The app is pretty easy to use but it lacks much in the way of options. This aside you get full episodes of superb cartoon fun.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Genuinely huge range of cartoons available, with long A-Z list.
- Most cartoons are very good quality, clear and load quickly via your Youtube app.
- Complete episodes rather than clips.
- Simple to use.
Cons
- Interface design is horribly basic, fortunately it is easy to use.
- Little or no options, this is a very basic aggregator of existing Youtube videos.
- Some videos don’t load and there are a number of force-closures when this happens, especially when not on HQ.
- Cartoon titles are based solely on the Youtube links, so you get things like ’2SD 107b Greg SSSS’ as the title of a Secret Squirrel episode.
Features:
Kid TV is basically a Youtube aggregator of children’s cartoons. I say ‘children’ very loosely because there is plenty of nostalgic cartoons from the 80s and 90s for us adults too! The main pull of this app is that the range and variety of cartoons listed is phenomenal. From modern toons such as Phineas and Ferb to cool retro titles like He-Man and Popeye. I was slightly disappointed that there was no Battle of the Planets, but there are very few cartoons that I remember from my childhood that are missing from this collection. You do get full episodes too, rather than just clips of these cartoons.
The app’s design and interface itself are pretty basic, I’d even go as far as saying horrible to look at. There are very few missing options- you cannot bookmark episodes, or mark as watched. You can’t save links until later. There is little in the way of search features other than an A-Z list and sorting options, and the app seems very simple and rushed together in format. Into this interface insert tatty looking adverts and you get a good impression. You really need to look beyond this to enjoy the app.
One option the app does give you thankfully is to use HQ video over standard quality. In HQ the cartoons do look pretty cool, but if you are away from Wi-Fi you can opt out of this. I can’t say lack of HQ diminishes the experience of watching some of the older cartoons much but then I have found that removing the default HQ makes the app unstable for much of the time. In a nutshell, the range of cartoons available is superb, but the framework of the app and subsequent delivery is very poor indeed.
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Kid TV – Scrollable list with thumbnail
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Kid TV – Ability to search via A-Z
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Kid TV – Really strange titles
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Kid TV – A-Z list
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Kid TV – From Casper to Charlie and Lola
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Kid TV – Ads to download other apps
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Kid TV – Settings
Usefulness:
For entertaining children, or for nostalgic kicks of your favourite childhood favorites Kid TV is a fun way of killing time. The app itself however, while basic lacks any real features besides listing the cartoons for easy searching.
Ease of Use:
The app is easy to use, mainly because it lacks many options of settings. On one hand this means cartoons are relatively straightforward to find and play, on the other it lacks any genuinely useful settings.
Frequently Used:
If you have children, this is a great distraction for them, as long as you don’t mind them playing with your Android phone. This then pretty much depends on the user, however- the fact the app offers very few options is going to perhaps makes you prefer to use either your Youtube app directly, or just use your computer.
Interface:
The interface is incredibly basic and of very low quality. This is just an aggregator and there seems to be very little attention given to user experience in terms of options and features. There are plenty of adverts too, so its not a particularly enjoyable experience until you actually get to the cartoons themselves- however, these are shown through Youtube, not the app itself.