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I agree with the sentiment that parental controls should be added. Given that it's been a requested but unimplemented feature for 6 years indicates that the developers don't have children or don't want to listen to a request to add a relatively simple feature. Are there any add-ons that implement this if the xbmc team is against the implementation of parental control mechanisms for philosophical reasons?
Noone is suggesting that parental controls take over from good parenting. However, use of a parental control to hide things innappropriate for young users is just simply a good idea in my opinion. My son, 8, is pretty responsible I think but there are some things I'd rather he didn't see. Heck, even some DVD covers can be a bit scary. I like XBMC for all its features but this seems to be a point where it's lacking.
I read over the things about adding different profiles and what-have-you. Talk about using a hammer to crack a nut. It seems so awkward. With that it still doesn't allow me to selectively enable/disable content. The xbox 360 parental control system is pretty slick, I think the xbmc devs would do well to play with it. You set a level you're happy with allowing access to without a password, accessing content 'above' that level means you get prompted. If you enter the password you can select to enable permanently for that particular item. Works well and is a valuable tool I think. When the kids get older, you bump the level up.
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What "level" is that? Ratings are not international is the main sticking point there. Some content (music for instance) has no rating metadata associated with it. Other content (porn) may have no need for rating metadata as it's ALL of a particular rating (it may have no real metadata full stop).
Rating doesn't stop you accessing videos from other places (browse the disk) and so on.
This is why we use the hammer to crack the nut.
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Indeed, profiles are the key to controlling content. It's then easy to organise content on the server as that suitable for adults vs that suitable for all using distinct sources.
This does require however that the concept of a profile is secure, hence my patches and auto-logout script.
Steve
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Well I've been using Mythtv for sometime and have been considering migrating to XBMC for the frontend. This thread has shown me what a bad idea that is. Clearly the developers do not live in a home with teenagers or pre-teens. Separate profiles? Log out and back in again? Really? You honestly think this stops kids?
This is a perfect example of the "Don't press the big red button" syndrome. While many aspects of the mythtv frontend are appalling and the music playing interface is as bad an interface I've ever seen on anything the ability to have a single library aggregating all sources into on combined interface hiding inappropriate content is far superior. When I update my library, metadata is automically pulled in and the MPAA rating imported, I can set 3 different pins to allow my 12 year old daughter access to content inappropriate to my 10 year old son so that they can in separate rooms watch content from the same library that is age appropriate while allowing me to store films that are inappropriate to them out of sight. The main thing you have to remember is to set the pin change page to be pin protected or it all falls down. Keeping the pin secret is the trick and not letting them see me enter it of course.
Such a shame really.
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@pauldsmith
Could not agree more. Profiles are thought well but very very unconvinient to use in practice. Myth like solution would probably mean new library approach in order to get implemented.
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With profiles you get to enter your pin once, rather than for each film as would be the case with per film filtering. This only really works with auto-logout though, so perhaps such functionality should be part of profile setup rather than requiring a separate script?
Steve
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@pauldsmith you have the right idea here. It needs to be something that can easily be setup. Blocking based on MPAA rating is the way to go. Then you could also have some settings or rules that could be enabled for movies/shows that don't have any rating. Those could be auto blocked. Would be nice to be able to go into the "more-info" view for items manually too and tell it to block.