On my WDTV: Find an old friend on Sesame Street

Update: Mediafly is no longer available on WDTV because they have stopped the Mediafly service altogether. Some of the videos mentioned here is available at the Sesame Street website and at the Sesame Street Podcast

My kids don't know what Sesame Street is and that is a crime. While there are many educational shows on TV right now, all of them owe some sort of debt to the pioneer of education on TV, Sesame Street. I tried finding Sesame Street on the cable channels and it was impossible. All I ended up was with Elmo. I have nothing against Elmo but I prefer the whole gang on the street, from Big Bird to Cookie Monster to the Count. I also prefer the original format with the many shorts on letters and numbers. These are works of art in themselves, ranging from stop-motion animation to skits with the various characters (Kermit the reporter!) and plain old cell animation.
On a whim, I tried looking in Mediafly on my Western Digital WD TV Live  Under the section Kids and Family, there it was, the Sesame Street podcast.
My kids loved it. It was something different than the hard-action, constant motion cartoons they were used to seeing. It also didn't talk down to them, sound condescending or involved too much overacting. But it didn't last long, 10-15 minutes I think. My kids were clamoring for more. I went back, tried scrolling down and trying to find another episode. There was a lot of other podcasts but no more Sesame Street. Rather then disappoint, I played again the same episode. They didn't mind but I knew I would have to wait for another podcast to be posted for them to see another episode.
The podcast itself was a bit smaller than the screen on my TV. I pressed Options on the WDTV remote, looking for the zoom option. As I was scrolling through the options, there it was, the View Episodes option. I clicked on it and it brought up the previous episodes. I chose one from the list and it showed another episode. My kids were ecstatic.

Sesame street probably has enough material to create a service that can make offer episode on-demand. Enter a letter, a number and the amount of time you want the episode to be and it would assemble the correct number of shorts that matches the time roughly. I think it has that much material.
The short skits and animations are entertaining to both the kids and the adult watching together with them. Quality may not be as sharp for some of the older clips but the content quality is as fresh as ever. And that is not an easy feat.