This morning I saw how commonplace Porno Video of frankly crude conduct has become. The "movie channel" had at 730 am- prime time for kids getting ready for school- a pornfest. Folks- usually we see stuff of this sort on the camslut torrents not on any "non pay" media. Suffice to say it was *NOT* ok for singledigit age kids to be watching. But they COULD if someone were not both aware of the issue- and empowered to control; it! So my porno surprise hatched a question. And let me preface this by admitting that I have never used Tivo or ANY of the PVR type systems personally. So I plead ignorance of their capabilities or limitations. Thus-
Can the Linux projects for PVR media centers be used to create a personal content firewall?
It's at first an almost oxymoronic application question. Then again- the issues are as usual, in the details. My initial core concept is starkly simple yet nontrivial to make simply easy. I want to have some method of recording kid safe content and -an ability to audit anything questionable if ratings or other rulesets make that indicated. So the only content that the kids see is as censored as practical.. My stepdaughter has 4 kids under 10 years old. So she's become the target customer for my application question. She does NOT have time to either hand censor all the kids'content in real time, nor the computer skills we do to even semi automate the task. Can we offer any help?
Let me close with my overwhelming reasoning for posting this.
The only person having final veto over what their children watch is their parent in control. And we can create an instrumentality of that control.
Can the Linux projects for PVR media centers be used to create a personal content firewall?
MythTV doesn't have this functionality yet to my knowledge, but there is a page with suggestions for the developers at:
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Parental_Controls
Oren Beck wrote:
I want to have some method of recording kid safe content and -an ability to audit anything questionable if ratings or other rulesets make that indicated. So the only content that the kids see is as censored as practical.. My stepdaughter has 4 kids under 10 years old. So she's become the target customer for my application question. She does NOT have time to either hand censor all the kids'content in real time, nor the computer skills we do to even semi automate the task. Can we offer any help?
I've had a couple ReplayTV boxes for years, have started using my linux box as a media server, and can suggest a few options.
First, realize the complexity of your solution will depend a great deal on the technical savvy of the target 'controllees', as well as their desire to circumvent the rules.
At the simple end of the spectrum, you can 'deprogram' the offensive channel(s) from the TV, and/or enable the parental controls. This may work, but could be fairly easily circumvented.
We're currently using our ReplayTV to 'screen' television. It's setup to only record the shows we want to watch, and we pretty much never watch live TV (the cable line doesn't even go to the back of the TV anymore!). This works for us, but my children are 3 (ie: not yet capable of easily driving the remote solo), and there's a mix of "adult" content (Amazing Race, Survivor, etc., which still manage to have quite a bit of foul language) and stuff for the kids (mostly from PBSKids).
For children capable of driving the remote solo, you'll probably need to make any offensive content go away (ie: inaccessible). If you don't watch live TV, you can do this by making a 'play-only' media system with a separate record/filter system that provides content. Options for the play-only system include (but are not necessarily limited to:
- Network capable ReplayTV/Tivo
- Off-the-shelf Network Media player (I like the Mediagate MG-35, as it plays ripped DVD's complete with menus, but there are *LOTS* of other options)
- Roll-your-own linux/windows boxen
Now you need to setup some means to acquire content...it should be fairly straight-forward to setup a media server system that contained only 'approved' content, and configure the playback-only system (and other network security settings) so that *ONLY* content from the approved share is playable.
You could grab content with a video capture card, another networked DVR (perhaps in the parents bedroom with full access to all channels), via bit-torrent downloads, or whatever. Adding content could be part automatic (ie: record all Curious George episodes from PBSKids) and part manual or semi-automatic (ie: automatically record some shows, but require Mom/Dad to copy them to the approved area for general watching).
Before we all break out the tinfoil hats, I thought it might be a good idea to check the Movie Channel's schedule. I know it wouldn't be the first place I'd look for any gratifying pornography.
It appears that what Orin calls a "pornfest" was either "New York Doll", a documentary about the reunion of the glam-rock band New York Dolls (6:20 a.m.), or possibly "Night of the Comet", a zombie flick (7:40).
You may safely return your children to their video games.
On 3/14/07, Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org wrote:
Before we all break out the tinfoil hats, I thought it might be a good idea to check the Movie Channel's schedule. I know it wouldn't be the first place I'd look for any gratifying pornography.
It appears that what Orin calls a "pornfest" was either "New York Doll", a documentary about the reunion of the glam-rock band New York Dolls (6:20 a.m.), or possibly "Night of the Comet", a zombie flick (7:40).
You may safely return your children to their video games. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
Nope. DirecTv has a slightly different schedule. As my wife gets both east and west coast feeds, your program guide may be different. As for the NSFK movie? Would you let your kids watch this :
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0835851/
And it's even worse than the reviews indicate.
Oh, you'll want to watch out on Thursday, March 22, there's another TVMA ("Erotic Retreat") on at 4:20 - 5:45 Pacific, which will be 6:20 - 7:45 here.
On Wednesday 14 March 2007 04:47:13 pm you wrote:
Nope. DirecTv has a slightly different schedule. As my wife gets both east and west coast feeds, your program guide may be different. As for the NSFK movie?
Ok, The movie is "Sexual Indiscretion", rated TVMA, showing 4:30 - 5:50 on the Pacific feed then. While it appears from the very brief descriptions available to be pretty much about sex, it should be noted that other programs rated TVMA include Schindler's List and some episodes of South Park, The Shield, Rescue Me and so-on.
I personally don't think there's any harm in children knowing as much about sex as they might observantly learn on a working farm, I understand that there are reasons you wouldn't want them to watch this program.
I don't feel that children should be allowed to surf around and just watch anything that strikes their fancy anyway. Parents should actively manage what their kids watch, selecting programs with some knowledge of their content, not just passively accepting whatever spews out of the tube.
If you have DirecTV, you have parental controls that will block any TVMA programming regardless of time slot; you can block the West Coast feeds of the premium channels during their "night" programming. It's not TMC's fault you were greedy about your feed, they took reasonable measures not to have that on at the time you saw it.
We don't need nannyvision to solve this problem though - we need parents to parent.
On 3/14/07, Jonathan Hutchins hutchins@tarcanfel.org wrote:
On Wednesday 14 March 2007 04:47:13 pm you wrote:
Nope. DirecTv has a slightly different schedule. As my wife gets both east and west coast feeds, your program guide may be different. As for the NSFK movie?
Ok, The movie is "Sexual Indiscretion", rated TVMA, showing 4:30 - 5:50 on the Pacific feed then. While it appears from the very brief descriptions available to be pretty much about sex, it should be noted that other programs rated TVMA include Schindler's List and some episodes of South Park, The Shield, Rescue Me and so-on.
I personally don't think there's any harm in children knowing as much about sex as they might observantly learn on a working farm, I understand that there are reasons you wouldn't want them to watch this program.
I don't feel that children should be allowed to surf around and just watch anything that strikes their fancy anyway. Parents should actively manage what their kids watch, selecting programs with some knowledge of their content, not just passively accepting whatever spews out of the tube.
If you have DirecTV, you have parental controls that will block any TVMA programming regardless of time slot; you can block the West Coast feeds of the premium channels during their "night" programming. It's not TMC's fault you were greedy about your feed, they took reasonable measures not to have that on at the time you saw it.
We don't need nannyvision to solve this problem though - we need parents to parent. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
With all due respect.
I never suggested anything beyond the statements of two seperate facts.
1. That the content in question was VERY not kid safe.
2. I explicitly took pains to make clear the concept of creating or using PVR tools as ENABLING parents to control the things kids watch.
OH, the comments about other shows using the same TVMA rating? That's why parents or those responsible for similar guardianship need to prescreen content and NOT blindly trust ratings etc.
-
Charles Steinkuehler -
Jonathan Hutchins -
Kyle Sexton -
Oren Beck