InteracTV DVD System Compilation In-Pack
by Fisher Price
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Our Price: $69.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $29.99 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of InteracTV DVD System Compilation In-Pack
Customer Review: Save yourself the grief
Summary: 1 Stars
and take your dvd player to the store to see if the Interac TV controller is compatible with it... SERIOUSLY.
This was to be Santa's "special" gift to my 4 and 6 year olds, the kit and the additional Dora dvd. I didn't even have a Grinch costume to tell them that I was taking it back to the shop...
:-(
We have two dvd players.
The RCA is less than 6 mo. old and has about a dozen or so codes that we could try. The first appears to work, initially. Swapping activity cards leads to unpredictable results. It has an Elmo fixation with just a dash of Sponge Bob though abut 10% of the time we got Dora. The dvd player's menu keeps popping up everytime that you swap cards and I finally learned to get it to stop by double-pumping the card. The dvd with the kit stops during the Dora intro. Sometimes I can fast forward though the setup intro and sometimes I can't. The kids now leave the room whenever I try and get the machine working and on the three occasions that I thought I had it working I was not able to leave the room before it stopped functionning.
The 18 mo. KOSS dvd is worse. It has only one code which does not appear to work at all. Of course I shouldn't be surprised since that single code has an asterisk indicating that it's for a combo unit. Forget about manual programming. I've spent at least 20 minutes pressing that back button. There's no indication of the time you have to wait between presses and you'd need a display to show you which code you're trying. Did they really expect me to cycle through 10,000 codes?
The (800) number has disconnected me 5 times due to high volume... no wonder! [...] redirects you to a totally useless site.
It's a shame really since the people who got it working appear really enthusiastic about it. I hope that both Fisher-Price and Matel will have lots of egg on their faces due to this fiasco.
Customer Review: Fisher-Price knew about quality problem!
Summary: 1 Stars
The DVD in the main InteracTV box was defective. I couldn't get the DVD to play for more than a frame here and there in any of the 6 DVD players in the house.
I went ahead with the programming even without using the test card. When I inserted another InteracTV DVD I found the remote to work just fine.
I did notice something very interesting on the packaging that made me guess that Fisher-Price knew about the quality problem before these items hit the market. The two titles I purchased separately had a small taped-up slit in the plastic packaging and the DVD had obviously been replaced by a factory representative. In addition, the package had a sticker stating the DVD was made in the U.S. covering the printed label stating the DVD was manufactured in Hong Kong. The discs that had been replaced worked just fine, but the disc that shipped with the main remote control unit wasn't replaced and had the made in Hong Kong sticker on it's package.
I'm dissapointed that Fisher-Price sold me a known defective item just to make the holiday sale. When I tried to call in for service over Christmas, the office hours didn't allow immediate help. I called back Monday morning but received a recorded message stating that call volume was too high and it instructed me to call back later. There wasn't even an option to hold on the phone the automated system just hung up on me!
For the discs that worked, I thought the length of the program was too short for the money. In addition, the "interactive" portion of the program is poorly integrated. It looks like a regular program was chopped up and crudely voiced over by a bunch of kids. I'll try using the item with my son a few more times before writing the toy off.
In general, the toy is disappointing due to the defective setup disc and also due to the poor quality of the interactive portion of the programs.
Customer Review: InteracTV review
Summary: 3 Stars
Real quick and to the point:
1) My child really enjoys it
2) We have had many of the issues others have reported here about getting the controller configured. What's weird is we have one Norcent DVD player that it works great, but we recently bought my mother a GE and we just got a second one made by RCA. We have never gotten it to work with the GE and the RCA, thanks to a post here worked (finally after two days or fiddling with codes and on the verge of taking the player back) got it to work using the code mentioned "0-0-0-3" Strange, manual detect didn't work nor any of the listed RCA codes. Our new player is a 5-Disc DRC510N. 2 listed codes sort of worked, but always A-B-C or 1-2-3 across the top would not work. This was great news as I really wanted to keep the new player, but this game unit (Xmas present) would have to work in the family room where the DVD player is or else as our child does like it.
3) My main issue with the game unit is it is really more of a memory game. Once she has played through each title a time or two she remembers the questions, so it's just a matter of selecting the right number-pad. She can almost begin to do this without even watching the lead-in segments. I guess what I'm trying to say is that outside of the initial run through, I'm not sure how much is learned from it once it's been done a couple times. In fact, I can tell she has become a bit bored by the stories... she knows the answers already, it's just a matter of where it ends up on the pad to press. Therefore I'm not really sure if she's learning the meaning behind the answer or just memorizes the answer and then matches the location. This holds true even for the boughten packages for it too.
Anyhow, outside of the DVD player incompatibilies (FRUSTRATING!) she continues to play with it, so it must be of some enjoyment.
Customer Review: They love it!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those rainy day toys for us. The kids don't play with it every day, but when they do, they love it. We've set it up with about four different DVD players around the house and never have any problems with it working.
The kids usually use it with the TV in the bedroom. They sit all the way across the room in bed. I'm surprised it works from there because of the sheets and the angle of the DVD player from where they are, but it does; and when they occasionally have difficulty, they just try and move the sheets out of the way or pick up the InteracTv so that it points more directly to the DVD player.
My kids are 5 and 7 now and the 7 year-old still plays with it, even though it`s far too simple for him. We've had it since he was about 4 years old. My daughter was about 2 when she started playing it.
The DVD's feature episodes right out of the TV series. You know how Dora asks questions and the kids have to shout the answers back to the TV? Well, now the kids get to answer them! The answers are presented inside shapes on the screen. If the correct answer is in the square, for instance, the children press the Square on their InteracTv unit. They must choose the correct answer to move on. The children may choose to play games only or do the episode or they may skip forward and back. I thought at first the idea of choosing the correct answer by picking the corresponding shape might be a difficult concept for kids; but from watching my kids, the average 3 year-old should have no problem.
My 7 year-old recently asked for me to buy more game packs, so I went online to get Spongebob. We own about 4 other game packs and the kids play with all of them. This is a terrific educational toy for preschoolers.
Customer Review: Better odds at the casino
Summary: 2 Stars
Good luck programming this thing. You'll have better odds at the casino. My mother bought it for our daughter for Christmas and we'll be returning it this week.
Our main DVD player is our Xbox. Unfortunately, the InteracTV cannot be used with Xbox (or PS2). So we took it back to the bedroom where have a RCA TV/DVD combo. The instruction manual listed about 10 different RCA remote codes and only two of them were for combo units. Neither worked. So we tried some of the other RCA codes. One other code worked with the exception of the top left touchpad button, which I thought was odd. (I thought it may be a bad sensor on the pad but discovered it wasn't, as it had worked when we were entering various codes.) Needless to say, this made the system useless as you have to be able to use all of the touchpad buttons. I went to the Fisher Price web site to search for more codes. They had added a few additional codes but the unit WOULD NOT EVEN ACCEPT some of the codes. For example one of the codes was 1012. The unit would not accept the last digit of the code. The little light would light up when the first three digits were pressed, but not the last one. That digit worked at all other times (as part of other codes and later during gameplay) so I know it wasn't a defective touchpad. It just would not accept the code.
So we tried to play a little with the one button not working, but the games are somewhat repetitive; watcha little, press a button, watch a litle more, press another button. My 3 year old girl quickly got tired of it.
If the unit was more compatible then I would probably have a slightly more favorable review, but even so this unit is not all that Fisher Price makes it out to be. Stay away from InteracTV!