Restrict Whole Channels

[rickgillyon]

Anyone know if any additions have been made to Parental Controls for v6? I'm getting an MVP and want to prevent my son getting to THOSE channels...

[BobPhoenix]

You could Look into using my Favorite Channel List plugin. With it you can restrict a client instance of SageTV to specific channels. It will also do it's best to ensure that you cannot playback something that was recorded on one of the restricted channels. If you want specific clients to have different restrictions then I suggest Local mode as apposed to Server mode. There are versions for SageMC as well as the Default STV.

BobP.

[rickgillyon]

Thanks Bob, I had seen your plugin, I was wondering if my (rather simpler) requirement was covered yet in Sage itself. I suspect your tool is the way forward...

Can you answer two questions?
Does it work okay with v6?
If I have the kids MVP set with channels 1, 2 and 3, and not 4, if they press Channel Up when on Live TV on 3, will they get 4 or back to 1?

Thanks!
Rick

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Thanks Bob, I had seen your plugin, I was wondering if my (rather simpler) requirement was covered yet in Sage itself. I suspect your tool is the way forward...

Can you answer two questions?
Does it work okay with v6?
If I have the kids MVP set with channels 1, 2 and 3, and not 4, if they press Channel Up when on Live TV on 3, will they get 4 or back to 1?

Thanks!
Rick

Yes it now works with V6 I had to update it to get it compatible however. What I updated was the code in ChannelUp/ChannelDown in the MediaPlayer to work correctly. What it does is what you are requesting. It will go back to channel 1 if 4 is not on the list of channels that you are allowing.

BobP.

[rickgillyon]

Great.

Friday I'll be able to set up the MVP, I'll probably bug you on the appropriate thread then...

[pschweig]

I think you should cancel those channels to be on the safe side

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by pschweig

I think you should cancel those channels to be on the safe side

But the wife likes them so much...

[bcjenkins]

I use Bob's plugin it works great. The trick is to use a different STV altogether if you don't want to be bothered by parental lock requests on all your channels. I use it to restrict my boys to about 10 channels of content. I have a different list set up for PS users which disallows HD channels. No use trying to transcode that on the fly.

B

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

The trick is to use a different STV altogether if you don't want to be bothered by parental lock requests on all your channels.

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what you mean by "use a different STV altogether".

Or maybe I should read the documentation first...

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what you mean by "use a different STV altogether".

Or maybe I should read the documentation first...

I use SageMC. I copied the SageMC.xml file to MVP.xml. Load the XML, turn on the parental controls, install the SageMC plugin for FCL, configure channel list, and restrict channels to the list. Only users of an STV that has FCL installed will have restricted channels. Other STVs like the default won't know what to do with the settings in the properties files. I don't do anything with parental controls other than turn them on.

Clear as mud?

B

[rickgillyon]

Oh cool, sounds really easy. Thanks!

[BobPhoenix]

Also if you like the other feature of the plugin you can just setup the restriction in Local mode and still use the plugin on other clients without the restriction. If you set server mode the properties are stored on the server and they will apply to all clients that have the plugin installed.

BobP.