Parental Controls

[ptaylor]

Just switched back to SageTV last night. One of my primary motivations for the move is the support for Parental Controls, as we have set up a PC for our kids to use and we want the ability for Sage client to run on that machine. We record things that might be scary for our kids (Supernatural, Medium, etc) as well as some shows with humor that we don't particular want our kids imitating...

Anyhow, we like the detailed level of control Sage gives us over exactly the kind of content our kids can view, but it has come to our attention that it's not the easiest feature to live with... For example, last night at about midnight (soon after getting up and running again), I was trying to flip through the channels... The Tonight Show required me to put in the parental code. Moving on to the next channel down, it required the code also... As did the next...

Is there the ability hidden away somewhere in the properties file (or perhaps for inclusion in the next version) to specify a "keep code" time? For example, if I set that value to 60 seconds and started to watch a pre-recorded show, entered the code, but within the first 30 seconds remembered that there was another show that I'd rather watch first, I could stop the first show, then proceed to watch the 2nd show (that would normally require the code), but since I had entered it less than 60 seconds earlier, it will skip the code request?

I thought about trying to write my own import file, but a quick look through some of the documentation (and other posts about parental controls) seemed to indicate that there was no way for the code entry to be bypassed via the SVT... (If I'm wrong on this, please someone let me know)

Alternatively, if there was a way to "unlock" a Sage client so that the entry of this code was not needed (just for this client), that would work also...

Thanks,
Paul

[ptaylor]

Does no one else use this feature?

[Opus4]

To unlock it for a period of time, you would probably have to look into some Studio modifications under the RequestToExceedParentalRestrictions hook -- have it remember when the last time the code was correctly entered and/or what the last limit was & then don't let it pop up the dialog until more time has elapsed.

- Andy

[ptaylor]

Actually, I've found that this isn't that big of a deal if you have the Mini-Guide option installed... I can see what's on other channels before switching to them...