Children of all ages are increasingly comfortable with the idea of ‘on-demand’ TV, deciding (and in our sons’ cases, demanding vociferously) what shows to watch, when they want to watch them.

It’s the iPlayer or Netflix generation depending on preference. Now there’s another alternative called Hopster, which launched today here in the UK as an iPad app.

“Hopster is the brand new TV app that you can feel good about giving to your kids - it’s packed with all their favourite TV shows, plus stimulating games, in a totally safe, ad-free world,” explains its App Store listing.

Favourite shows? Among the “hundreds” of episodes are shows like Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom, Paddington Bear and 64 Zoo Lane. You get a few of them for free, but the idea of Hopster is that you subscribe to the full service for £5.99 via in-app purchase.

The “stimulating games” part is also a key part of Hopster’s potential appeal: educational mini-games to complement the shows, with a view to making parents feel happy that their kids are doing and learning, not just watching.

There’s a mission statement on the App Store page. “We built Hopster because we wanted to make kids TV better,” explain the developers behind the app.

“Don’t get us wrong. We LOVE great kids TV shows. The best ones are warm, funny, beautiful and teach our kids some important lessons about life. But there were some things about TV we didn’t like so much, and we built Hopster to try and fix them. So we built a service that combines games and video, to keep kids stimulated.”

It’s a very interesting idea, but very early days in figuring out whether Hopster will appeal to parents. Of those existing rivals, the BBC’s iPlayer app has all the CBeebies shows available to stream, while Netflix is starting to do more with children’s TV, including commissioning brand new shows. Fierce competition, but Hopster’s gaming aspects could be its trump card.

Hopster is a free download for iPad from Apple’s App Store.