Ameba TV Review & Giveaway

I have never  had a problem with my daughter watching TV.  But the one thing I wished we would have had when she was younger was good quality educational shows on demand.

Sure we had PBS and Treehouse TV (we lived in Canada at the time), but to be able to easily download content to our TV when we wanted…priceless.

I know there are plenty of families who don’t have cable whether it’s for economic reasons or just because they don’t feel the need for it.  But at the same time they would not mind having shows they can choose, available for their children’s viewing on their own time schedule.

The Ameba TV (http://amebatv.com) system, has over 1,000 hours of commercial-free educational, music and multi language shows and gives parents peace of mind and kids the power of choice. Based in Winnipeg, Canada, Ameba TV was founded by a dad, Tony Havelka, who wanted high quality, commercial-free children’s shows for his own children.

Ameba TV allows the subscriber an unlimited number of shows for $9.99 per month (plus a $6 box rental or $129 box purchase), and you can choose the shows you want your children to view.  They have plenty of fine shows and enough content for children geared for ages 3-8(+).  Ameba is also available as a channel on Roku!

When the Ameba TV box arrived in our home, it came with almost everything we needed to get it all hooked up to our TV.  We needed one cable that wasn’t included, but we had that on hand so it wasn’t a problem.  My husband was the one who took charge of that and it only took a couple of minutes for the hardware setup.  We had pre-loaded a number of shows on the Ameba box from our account online before we even received it.  So once it was set up it downloaded those episodes to the box.  That took awhile because we had chosen over a dozen, but while you’re waiting you can see the progress of it on the TV screen.

We run the device in wireless mode.  The TV that it is hooked up to it is a new (purchased in summer) Samsung and it works well.  We have an issue with our internet connection and streaming to our TV through our PS3 and Blu-ray player, so the slow download of the shows was not completely unexpected.  Once they are on the device the quality of the shows is good, the ones we have watched are pretty close to DVD quality.

The Ameba box is an average size although not as sleek as our DVD player or game consoles.  Its design is made to appeal to children, brightly colored and branded, it does sort of ‘stick out’ compared to our other media devices.  The remote needs to be pointed right at the set top box for it to work, if you don’t have it right in line of sight you won’t get any response.  Since we have ours sitting on a lower shelf of our entertainment unit, we found it finicky to get the aim correct, and often were pushing the buttons with no response.  When it is positioned correctly though, it shouldn’t cause problems for use.

We’ve been using the box pretty consistently for the past week with the show ‘World of Wonders’ in our homeschool geography class.  Our daughter is a freshman in high school, but some of the show’s episodes have fit right into her Middle East studies on Turkey, Jordan and Egypt.  She found it quite entertaining to actually see on TV the places that she learned about in her textbook and found the short episodes (between 10 and 15 minutes) fun.  Ameba TV is a great addition for homeschool studies, especially for visual learners.  Since much of the content is geared for younger children, if you have mixed ages you could put on some ‘math shows’ for the younger ones, while the older ones are doing their math studies.

As for what I was expecting from Ameba’s website description to what we received, it works as advertised.  It was a painless process to get it up and running.  Setting up profiles for your children, and adding shows to them is simple.

Compared to the cost of cable and all the extra channels you have to get when you only want a few channels, the $9.99 per month (even taking in consideration the cost/rental of the set box) isn’t a bad price.  Just hook up the Ameba TV box and you have access to all the shows that they offer, commercial free.

I have to give credit to Ameba TV for taking time to make sure that the episodes offered are quality product.  This is the way TV for kids should be.

Ameba TV would like to offer two Play That Now readers an Ameba box with a complimentary 3 month subscription!

To enter the giveaway visit Ameba TV’s episode selections and tell me what show(s) you think your children would enjoy watching.  You can enter daily, but you must do the above first, and then each subsequent day you can comment with ‘daily entry’.

To earn an additional entry, do one (or all) of the following and leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Become a Google Friend Connect Follower of Play That Now (in the sidebar).

2. Like the Ameba TV Facebook page.

3. Like my blogs’ Facebook page.

4. Follow Ameba TV on Twitter

5. Follow Me on Twitter.

6. Tweet about this giveaway (limit one tweet per day) using the following: #Win an @AmebaTV box and 3 month subscription from @amebaTV and @threedifferent! ends 4/7 http://su.pr/1bENgu

7. Subscribe to the Play That Now feed via RSS reader and/or email updates.

8. Enter any of my other Giveaways one extra entry for each giveaway you enter.

Open to US & Canadian residents ages 18+, ends April 7, 2011 at 11:59 PM CST. Winner will be notified by email and have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. By entering this giveaway you are stating that you have read my **Privacy/Rules statements and agree to them.