[Roadie2000]

My kids are starting to get older and a little bit more tech savvy, so I'd like to give them free reign of my HTPC with the exception of R rated movies and TV shows with mature content (they are only 8 and 10).

What would be the best way to do this? I know XBMC now allows multi users (running Gotham 13.2 right now I believe) but it didn't look like it was password protected, I'd like something with a little bit of security.

Or should I do it through Windows? I'm currently running Vista on that machine, if I gave them their own Windows login and set up XBMC with just kids stuff would that work or would it keep the same settings for all users?

Any other ideas?

[kyungrak]

My kids are starting to get older and a little bit more tech savvy, so I'd like to give them free reign of my HTPC with the exception of R rated movies and TV shows with mature content (they are only 8 and 10).

What would be the best way to do this? I know XBMC now allows multi users (running Gotham 13.2 right now I believe) but it didn't look like it was password protected, I'd like something with a little bit of security.

Or should I do it through Windows? I'm currently running Vista on that machine, if I gave them their own Windows login and set up XBMC with just kids stuff would that work or would it keep the same settings for all users?

Any other ideas?

XBMC has been supporting multi users sessions for years, and yes, it is password protected.
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=profiles

[black_eagle]

You can do it from within XBMC using profiles (wiki). Note that you can use a master lock to stop your kids changing their settings and getting access to stuff you don't want them to

[Roadie2000]

My kids are starting to get older and a little bit more tech savvy, so I'd like to give them free reign of my HTPC with the exception of R rated movies and TV shows with mature content (they are only 8 and 10).

What would be the best way to do this? I know XBMC now allows multi users (running Gotham 13.2 right now I believe) but it didn't look like it was password protected, I'd like something with a little bit of security.

Or should I do it through Windows? I'm currently running Vista on that machine, if I gave them their own Windows login and set up XBMC with just kids stuff would that work or would it keep the same settings for all users?

Any other ideas?

XBMC has been supporting multi users sessions for years, and yes, it is password protected. Have you even tried that feature before posting?

Like I said I know that but could not figure out how to apply a password. If you aren't going to be helpful please do not reply.

[Roadie2000]

You can do it from within XBMC using profiles (wiki). Note that you can use a master lock to stop your kids changing their settings and getting access to stuff you don't want them to

Thank you, that is helpful. Not sure how I missed the lock settings or just didn't realize that's what it did.

Now how would you recommend separating out child-friendly movies and/or hiding the mature content? I tried to make a playlist for PG and G rated movies but for some reason it doesn't seem to recognize the MPAA rating tag. I must be doing something wrong. And with TV shows there is no rating so not sure what to do there.

Any tips?

[whitebelly]

I keep 'grown up' and 'family' movies & TV shows in a separate storage directories, and add as separate sources. Makes it easy. Smart playlists are easy to set up based on that as well.

[black_eagle]

+1 for what whitebelly said.

What I have done, is all the media I want to be available for everyone is shared via SMB. So I have a 'Kids-movies' and a 'Kids-tv' directory shared via smb. I also have a 'Movies' and a TV' directory shared via NFS. Smart playlists to separate out the media based on file sources are then easy to implement.

I also don't have to worry if I set up another client, in that (S)MB is (S)afe and (N)fs is (N)ot.

[awilliam]

My kids are starting to get older and a little bit more tech savvy, so I'd like to give them free reign of my HTPC with the exception of R rated movies and TV shows with mature content (they are only 8 and 10).

What would be the best way to do this? I know XBMC now allows multi users (running Gotham 13.2 right now I believe) but it didn't look like it was password protected, I'd like something with a little bit of security.

Or should I do it through Windows? I'm currently running Vista on that machine, if I gave them their own Windows login and set up XBMC with just kids stuff would that work or would it keep the same settings for all users?

Any other ideas?

XBMC has been supporting multi users sessions for years, and yes, it is password protected. Have you even tried that feature before posting?

Like I said I know that but could not figure out how to apply a password. If you aren't going to be helpful please do not reply.

You never said you couldn't figure out how to apply a password, you said "and it didn't look like it was password protected." Not only did he inform you that, in fact, it is password protected but also gave you a link to the wiki so you could look up exactly how it's done. Given the information you provided in your OP, I'd say he was more than helpful. If anything you should clearly state the facts and not leave it up to us to guess what problem you're having.

[Roadie2000]

I keep 'grown up' and 'family' movies & TV shows in a separate storage directories, and add as separate sources. Makes it easy. Smart playlists are easy to set up based on that as well.

Thanks, I might try that. I finally got a smart playlist set up based on MPAA rating. Turns out I had to type in "Rated PG" instead of just "PG". Then in the skin I just set up the movies node to go directly into that playlist. The only problem is there is nothing stopping them from accessing the main movies folder if they click [...] a few times. But at least they're not right in front of them.

Creating separate folders for "Grown up" and "Family" would likely solve that problem because they'd probably never figure out how to add a directory, but it would take some time to move all of those movies around.

Ideally I'd also like to make R rated movies password protected or something like that. Is there a way to do that?

[slip.cougan]

I use the profiles method myself - I have two profiles:
Kids & Not Kids.

Media on my NAS is organised as follows:
\videos
--\movies
----\Family Movies
----\Over 18 Movies
--\tv shows
----\Family TV Shows
----\Over 18 TV Shows

I set up sources on each XBMC profile thus:
Kids - no password
TV Shows - only points to Family TV Shows
Movies - only points to Family Movies

Not Kids has access to all media and is password locked.
I then enabled password lock on setup so they can't tinker with the system settings. I'm running Aeon Nox as the skin on both profiles. Nice thing about AN is that in File mode the Add source button is not shown unless you log in as master user.

Finally I have set up permissions on my Synology NAS.
Kids are in an 'under age' group and I have applied restrictions to this group so they can't browse to this content on their laptops or tablets.
Once they 'come of age' I can simply remove them from the 'under age' group and they then have access to restricted media.

-slip