Still, it makes me hunger for the educational shows of yesteryear. I think kid's educational programming has been sliding violently downhill since Barney the Dinosaur reared his ugly head and headed his ugly rear on PBS. The expansion of cable based kid's shows at the time was no help either. Take it from someone who's on a muppet board. I hear the same old "Elmo sucks" rants a million times, but at least the guy behind the puppet has talent (he's one of my favorite performers, actually).
The Dora show, from what I've seen, has terrible acting. Just simply terrible. If there's one thing I cannot stand on a kid's show, it's bad acting with cheap voice actors. I can accept they don't think enough of the children they entertain with the stuff they cover, and how they cover it. But when they say, kid's don't care about great voice acting, that's a slap in the face. One of the things I praise the new Curious George cartoon about is the fact they use some pretty high end voice actors. Jim Cummings, Frank Welker, Jeff Bennet.... The show even sounds good.
So yeah, a live action one with actors may very well be an improvement.