A simple Parental Control (Mom's and Dads needed)
#1
Hi, I know, many users have requested this feature over the years and it has been many years since the first request. So lets keep the request alive as I am somewhat shocked that this features has still not made it into KODI while competing platforms have it implemented for a while.

Kodi has come far, however still lacks behind in the area of safeguarding our younger generation from viewing impropriate content. Kodi has transformed from desktop based usage initially by techies to "part of lifestyle" usage in everyday life on every flatscreen or projector in our houses. (Yes, it runs my house Blush ) However these environments have made usage of Kodi different as small adults are now picking up the monitor remote and start flicking through it. This has caused considerable stress among moms and dads as there is no simple way of preventing these young adults from seeing the wrong content.

I have seen all kinds of work arounds from adding manually movies and tv shows in age related directories and only adding that directory to the particular Kodi device till hooking up different age related directories to Kodi user profiles. To be honest all of this is unworkable, time consuming and incomplete. Imagine going through 2k movies putting all in age based directories. And in a living room, you use Kodi for all kinds of age groups, so changing Kodi user profiles is unworkable.

So why did any of the Kodi developers start putting this future on their agendas. After so many years of having Kodi around, surely some have young adult now walking around their homes?!

What we as Moms and Dads are asking for is a very simple Parental Control that will not need for us to change to age based directories or using different user profiles, but just uses the default profile (be honest, how many out their are using different Kodi user profiles on Home TV's and Projectors?) and before playing or showing any movie/tvshow/video will check the Kodi database what Rating as been provided for that particular video. The system than checks the Parent Control Settings to see what the maximal Rating for viewing is. If its below it, it will play it, if above, than it will ask to provide a 4 digit pin code which was set during the initial setup of the Parental Control feature. Thats all! Noting fancy initially.

Of course, The Parental Control feature will need to be password protected with the same pin, setup during enabling of it. And if lost you can retrieve it in the advanced settings.xml or maybe sources.xml so the Parental Control settings can be easily copied to all Kodi devices in the house using the advancedsettings.xml path substitution.

Also a simple Rate mapping should be made available in the Parental Control settings so that different ratings from different countries can easily be mapped to 1 User rating system. Lets call this Kodi's Video Rating (KVR). The Parental Control will show a list of all the Ratings available in the database and which have and havenot yet been mapped to the Kodi Video Rating. Any video that is added in the future which has a rating not yet mapped will be shown again to be mapped. If a video has no rating, or the rating is not yet mapped, it will be blocked from viewing automatically by the pin code. A user can add a missing Video Rating manually to the video and have it imported in the next library update.  The user can create a hierarchy of Ratings. E.g.:
  1. XXX
  2. 16-18yr
  3. 12-16yr
  4. 6-12yr
  5. All ages
And than map the different Ratings available in the DB to the Kodi Video Rating. E.g.:
  1. XXX <-- NC-17
  2. 16-18yr <-- R
  3. 12-16yr <-- PG-13
  4. 6-12yr <-- PG
  5. All ages <-- G
For example: if a mom or dad sets the KVR to 4 (6-12yr) than video content of 4 and higher will be played. If video content is 3 and lower, it will ask for the pin code before it can play. Its that simple.

So any moms or dad out their which have the same challenges as us, please bump up this feature request and lets make this trend so that the Kodi team considers this to become a feature. Thanks all!
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A simple Parental Control (Mom's and Dads needed) - by gotham2014 - 2020-01-15, 14:27
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