[WhiteRavenCoatL]

Bingo.
Ok, so that would involve getting the site-owners to code a special search engine?

[isamu.dragon]

WOW... way to miss the point entirely!

First off, I'm not arguing about profiles, use profiles to limit content available sure, fine, great... we're not talking about that.

I'm talking about a source of information, not a form of segregation... the control METHOD is COMPLETELY beside the point. I ask for a phone book and you tell me how you set up a speed dial... It's completely irrelevant!

I also don't care about when the MPAA ratings were adopted, because that is also irrelevant. I don't use MPAA ratings at all because they have NEVER been consistent or reliable. MPAA ratings are made by an anonymous group of industry puppets and rarely have much to do with the content of the film at all. If you want further confirmation of that fact, just watch "This Film Is Not Yet Rated".

I'm talking about KIDS-IN-MIND.COM ratings which are ENTIRELY and COMPLETELY separate. The reliability of MPAA ratings has nothing whatsoever to do with the reliability of Kids-In-Mind ratings... NOTHING. Don't care.

I'm not talking about what you do with content after you have determined its acceptability level, I'm talking about getting acceptability level information BEFORE viewing. I'm talking about another tool to sort content with, NOT WHAT TO DO ONCE YOU'VE SORTED YOUR CONTENT. And no, I'm not afraid to do a little work, obviously, since I'm looking all this stuff up by hand right now, but it would be NICE to have a scraper to do that for me, and for the thousands of other parents who use this system.

Sometimes I let the kids watch things that are beyond their age level (while I'm with them for guidance) but I like to have some idea what I'm getting into ahead of time. I do not have the time to watch everything BEFORE my kids, then WITH my kids. Anyone who thinks that that is a practical solution for all parents in 2011 is ... [censored].

first I've heard of that site.
I mentioned I don't have kids, but I'm setup for them.

In the future, you might want to change the name of this thread from
Kids-in-Mind
to
New Scrapper: Kids-in-Mind.com

The Information I gave is based on what has been discussed in the MANY "parental controls" threads in the past.

As an Uncle, My rule of thumb is this:
"If I haven't seen it, and/or the parent hasn't. Then the kid shouldn't."

Plus for movies the basic ratings that the MPAA are a decent guideline (PG-13 or Higher and its no way kiddo). Older movies are where you have to be careful. Kids rarely want to see anything older than them. (Personal experience, introducing my niece and nephew to Abbott & Costello)

And TV Ratings are quite accurate. (TV-14 and up = No way kiddo)


Edit:
Tested the Site with an Adult Movie from 1970 (Not Porn) called "Fritz the Cat", your site had NO information on it. (It was the first animated movie to get the NC-17 Rating). Tried again with "The Green Berets" from 1968. NO information. None on "The Dam Busters" from 1955. None on "Tora! Tora! Tora!" from 1970.

That site is less Accurate than IMDB, MPAA, or theMovieDB on ratings

Edit: Die Hard, Die Hard 2, Lethal Weapon, and Lethal Weapon 2 are also not present on the site. These movies received a "R" rating.

[RockerC]

Would probably have helped your point if you linked to the kids-in-mind.com website about and methodology pages

http://www.kids-in-mind.com/help/about.htm

http://www.kids-in-mind.com/help/methodology.htm

also just saying out right that you want a XBMC meta data scraper for that specific website and a way to filter once those ratings have been scraped into the video database.

Bingo. Ok, so that would involve getting the site-owners to code a special search engine?

MeediOS have a Kids In Mind importer, and they call their meta data web scrapers for "importers" but they perform the same job as scrapers does in XBMC

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Scraper

so you could probably try to give it a go yourself by porting the Kids In Mind Importer from the MeediOS project into a scraper for XBMC

http://meedios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6841

I wrote an import plugin for the Kids-In-Mind website. At the moment, there are only two settings: Full Title field (library field that contains the full title of the movie), and Release Year field (currently expects a 4 digit year). The importer will add 3 ratings (KIM_Sex, KIM_Violence, and KIM_Profanity) and 3 detailed descriptions of the ratings (KIM_SexText, KIM_ViolenceText, KIM_ProfanityText). Of course, this information isn't displayed by any theme (yet!), but hopefully I can convince crn to add it to Evolution. The information can also be used for filters.

The plugin creates a KidsInMind folder in the data directory and stores all scraped files there (can be used for re-importing). There is also a "temp" folder that will contain a log file detailing the import.

KidsInMind - Import movie ratings from Kids-In-Mind website
http://www.meedios.com/OpenMAIDOS/detail...21EC533626

[WhiteRavenCoatL]

Thanks RockerC, I'll see what I can do. I'm still not very familiar with the internals of XBMC, but that's a solid start.

[seanfletcher255]

the multiple sources idea works for some but for me it would drive me crazy i don't like my files scattered were ever i like things organized my way

but this is my idea for limiting content use a profile but in the source's options/global options allow for "blacklisting" adult or other type content by

* Rating (e.g G or PG)
* Title, Plots, etc. (e.g does not contain sensuality, sex etc)
* Allowing manual additions that don't meet the above
* Allow for white listing certain content that was incorrectly filtered


so that if "unrated" etc. movies are showing that are inappropriate let the administrator add it to a list of inappropriate content

mabe allow for it to filter by reason for rating (e.g Rated R for Extreme violence) or what ever so

before anyone yells at me for being a bad parent i am not one; but i do have a neice and nephew though not yet old enough to even use my Media Server they will be soon enough; and i don't want them seeing movies and shows they are not mature enough to see or that their parents would not want them to see

as well i live with my parents (i am over 21) and we not exactly agree on what is an appropriate movie so i want to easily hide those they don't want to see

[isamu.dragon]

the multiple sources idea works for some but for me it would drive me crazy i don't like my files scattered were ever i like things organized my way

but this is my idea for limiting content use a profile but in the source's options/global options allow for "blacklisting" adult or other type content by

* Rating (e.g G or PG)
* Title, Plots, etc. (e.g does not contain sensuality, sex etc)
* Allowing manual additions that don't meet the above
* Allow for white listing certain content that was incorrectly filtered


so that if "unrated" etc. movies are showing that are inappropriate let the administrator add it to a list of inappropriate content

mabe allow for it to filter by reason for rating (e.g Rated R for Extreme violence) or what ever so

before anyone yells at me for being a bad parent i am not one; but i do have a neice and nephew though not yet old enough to even use my Media Server they will be soon enough; and i don't want them seeing movies and shows they are not mature enough to see or that their parents would not want them to see

as well i live with my parents (i am over 21) and we not exactly agree on what is an appropriate movie so i want to easily hide those they don't want to see

I like your idea better than a website telling me what is appropriate.
this in particular says it all

as well i live with my parents (i am over 21) and we not exactly agree on what is an appropriate movie so i want to easily hide those they don't want to see

People Disagree on what is appropriate.
the movie Below is a prime example:

Code:

[url=http://www.kids-in-mind.com/d/demolition_man_1993__376.htm]Demolition Man (1993)[/url]
[url=http://www.kids-in-mind.com/d/demolition_man_1993__376.htm]http://www.kids-in-mind.com/d/demolition_man_1993__376.htm[/url]

My Brother, and his wife (my sister-in-law) see this movie as appropriate for someone of 8 yrs or older (I was allowed at 6yrs). But this site is very alarmist, and reads WAY too much into the movie.

To define a movie as appropriate or not, the best strategy is to watch it (obviously without the kids present).

[seanfletcher255]

the idea of appropriate is very broad among users of xbmc so we need a content filter that matches that

personally i think MPAA gives a good first pass on filtering (see below) a library i would not let my 2 year old neiece watch an R rated movie for instance; most likely it would only be G rated movies until she is older.

but there needs to be customization available to block the non obvious content

library filtering teir as i would implment it
1. filter by MPAA Rating
2. filter out obviously inapproprate for children content by plots, descriptions,titles etc. (e.g anything containing sex or sex related terms those terms could be configurable to add more)
3. manual changes (addtions/deletions form filtered list)

manual changes like for example "Pirates of the Caribbean not inappropriate persay just not for a 3 yr old for example

does this make sense to anyone?

[zepfan]

But this site is very alarmist, and reads WAY too much into the movie.

I remember seeing somewhere that the group who does this is the same group of jackasses who run the PTC. If you haven't seen that hilarity check this out.
These people drive me nuts, instead of talking to their children try go get shows pulled off the air. No relevant comment to the topic, just a rant!

However, when (way down the road ) I have children I plan on the multiple accounts setup. It's easy, and you can set everything perfect for them. You can even change the skin and it's settings to be as child friendly as possible.

[ibixat]

I remember seeing somewhere that the group who does this is the same group of jackasses who run the PTC. If you haven't seen that hilarity check this out.
These people drive me nuts, instead of talking to their children try go get shows pulled off the air. No relevant comment to the topic, just a rant!

However, when (way down the road ) I have children I plan on the multiple accounts setup. It's easy, and you can set everything perfect for them. You can even change the skin and it's settings to be as child friendly as possible.

It's funny, the PTC is a bunch of whackjobs for sure. But they are not terribly incorrect on what is and isn't appropriate for small children. They are very misguided about what to DO about inappropriate content but they are not exactly wrong on identifying it. If you look at the ratings for the shows on their site they are pretty accurate as to what is family friendly, what is questionable and what is flat out not right. If that's all they did was categorize the stuff they'd be fine, but their crazy crusades to rip anything that isn't family friendly off the air is where they become whackjobs =P They need to advocate responsible parenting and not try to lay it all on the entertainment industry.

I may have been kinda harsh in earlier posts, I apologize btw, I just think we need to have some more options built into xbmc for filtering content that can help the less tech savvy users secure the system for kids. Multiple logins and password protected shares can do the trick perfectly of course, but not everyone is as capable of setting that up as the average forum dweller.

[isamu.dragon]

Agreed, even though the multi-profile isn't noob friendly, it is more effective then most consumer parental controls (usually 4-6 character all numbers). Maybe an option on first run to setup profiles, or a section in Settings for Tutorials (All Video files) showing some of the FAQs that a noob may have to aid. May be more effective than even the forums for noobs.

[rblack]

I have written a parental controls plugin for XBMC that will filter content from video sources. I have kids and I've been using this plugin for several months and it is working very well.

It can be downloaded from https://github.com/killdash9/xbmc-parental-controls

Select the video plugins you want to protect and the ratings you want to allow. Supports both TV and Movie ratings. This plugin will ask for an unlock code before granting access to any content you have blocked. It works best with video plugins that supply an MPAA rating such as the bluecop hulu plugin. Video plugins which don't supply an MPAA rating will require an unlock code to view any content. Entering the code unlocks the parental controls for 5 minutes.

[Sinopsis]

I joined just to post this reply...

The arrogance of the team members in their reply for "better parenting" is astounding...Everyone's situation is different.

For example, my ex-wife had an auto accident that left my son paralyzed from the neck down...so I've setup his computer that he can control with a chin-joystick to be a remote for his tv, that tv can play content from my DLNA server.

I have my DLNA server in my media room with all the content added as sources. I personally would love the ability to restrict which content a DLNA client can see based on rating or some other criteria. You can't tell me to organize my stuff differently just because you don't think its necessary. There is obvious demand for it, and the "better parenting" bullshit you gave earlier doesn't apply. Since my son can basically only watch tv, I obviously will not be spending every waking minute with him.

I haven't been using XBMC for very long, and I think it has a lot of potential, but just because it is free, doesn't mean people will continue to use it if you ignore their needs. Especially for something as simple as this.

I mean seriously, the DLNA client initates request for content, XBMC checks an access list to ratings hashtable, either deny or allow the request.

[schumi2004]

Actually setting it up for kids isn't that hard (after spending the needed hours tweaking it myself).
Multiple profiles is a suggestion were i used a script so my kids can't power off system , no matter what they do they will always end up in user selection screen, master account has a password so they can't access that.

Further more, using the parent controll plugin in combination with smart playlist works like a charm, my skin suggestion is confluence modded, disable everything you don't want your kids to access which leaves them in my case with only 2 buttons, 1 for livetv and 1 for movies combined with series.

My thread i started some time back http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=143607

[da-anda]

I'm sorry to read about your wife and kid chadmccune - you have my commiseration. (hope that's the correct wording)

I have to admit that the instant answer from Ned wasn't a good one, but the thing is, XBMC has a small base of active developers - and unfortunately none seems to have the interest of adding better parental control features and we can't force one to do so - can we? That's all - nothing more. If there is a coder out there interested in better parental control features for XBMC, he's welcome to help.

Should we have better parental features - probably yes. Will they be added soon - can't tell - depends on a developer willing to investigate into it.

About your usecase/demand. What do you use as UPNP server and client? XBMC in both cases? If so, the solution for you should be a smart playlist. First upgrade both to the latest version as we improved UPNP there a bit. Then go to your XBMC "server" and create one or more smart playlist(s) that will only contain movies/tvshows suiteable for your kid - be it based on tags, genres, ratings, whatever. Then switch to your XBMC "client", go to "Videos -> Files", add a source ("add videos" button) browse the UPNP share of your server there and go all the way down to your custom playlist (Video Library -> Playlists -> Your playlist). Done. Now you kid does only see movies/shows that you allow him to watch. You ofc have to lock the profile your kid is using so that he can't browse the raw upnp share (you can do so in profile settings IIRC).

Is that about what you needed or a suitable workaround?

[endlesslyonline]

I wanted to give me 2cents in support to WhiteRavenCoatL, something like this would be beneficial. I also want to add, that I think most people in this thread is running in the opposite direction, or maybe don't understand what WhiteRavenCoatL has suggested.

According to me the problem is not the parental controls with him, and I too have the same "routine". My HTPC is not password protected and I only use one profile. The fact of the matter is, my daughter does not use the HTPC on her own, we switch it on for her, and she selects her her cartoons that she wants to watch (which is separated with smart playlists).

The problem comes in watching a movie at night, the fact is, you can have 2 movies, rated PC13, for say sex. In one, you would find a man and woman sharing a kiss, to disappear in to a locked room, this is fine, she can watch this. The other, however, will show them, under covers (no nudity) but clearly the act of sex can be seen (This she cant watch). Same with violence, same rated movie for violence, in one there might be a slap, or a fist fight. In another, there might be knife fight with blood. Some movies is rate quite high, because the actors are seen smoking or drinking, and I am okay with her watching something like that.

According to me this is the direction WhiteRavenCoatL was going with this thread. To get a scraper, depicting those scenes is a movie. I personally go onto IMDB/parentalguide before watching any movie with my daughter, but having this feature inside XBMC would be very helpful.

Of course, as indicated by members here, parenting stays with the parent, and that is exactly the reason why this is needed.

Hope this sheds some light on the issue.