[DanielEis]

I recently set up an XBMC live system for some friends who have kids. A parent conrol is the function, that they are missing (the parents, not the kids). So here are my thougts on the subject.

In my optinion there are three things, that need to be controlled:
1. The Library
In the library xbmc could block (= hide) the movies with an MPAA rating over the one thats been set up. The simplest solution to show all the movies would be a button like "age control" that switches the view, if the right pin was entered. That way you have to enter the pin just one time and you could switch back to "default mode" without to enter a pin.

2. Filemode
Browsing the videos in filemode has to generally be pin protected. Again an option "parent mode" would grant access to it after the right pin was entered.

3. Setup
To setup the parent control we need a page, that is pin protected, if the protection is enabled. There you could enable the protection and enter the desired age limit for the movies / shows that should be shown by default. And you could enter different pins for different age limits between the default (= for everyone) and the master (= show me everything). The master pin needs to be validated by entering it a second time and then the protection is acive.

One thing, where I'm not sure about: The foreign language xbmc users, that don't scrape there movies/shows with the mpaa rating need the xbmc support for the foreign ratings, like the german fsk. That means that XBMC needs to support all different ratings.

[falafael]

I got round this by using a different profile, and then all the movies my daughter likes i have put in folders only accessed by that profile.

[blubberx]

I can only agree to this request.
It would be great if there would be a way to set up a profile which would only pull/show videos from the library that match the age/rating level set up in the profile.

This way one could create a Kids and an adult profile and the kids one would only show e.g. Videos rated teen
Needless to say that this feature should also support other regions ratings like Germany's FSK and so on

[Eisi2005]

Hi,

did anyone of you works with profiles and suspend mode ? After suspend mode xbmc starts with the last used profile. But i personaly need a profile selection after suspend. Have anyone a solution to get profile selection after suspend ?

Greets
Eisi

[pecinko]

I log out before sleep.

[rygle]

I modified Steve Evans' python code (from a previous post in this topic) to log XBMC into a Kid friendly account with no password instead of just logging the user out after a timeout and leaving XBMC at the login screen. I did this because sometimes I had issues where it would log out of an elevated account but still ask for a password before allowing the Kids to login to their account - particularly if the computer went into sleep mode.

I also found that the "exit()" command seems to end this script, and as it runs with each user login it is only needed again if you login to an elevated account - Adults in my case.

I left it logging out of the elevated account before logging in to the safe account just in case it needs a password etc - that's what the "prompt" variable does. I found information on this command on the wiki - http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Lis..._Functions

I can't presently figure out how to use python variables to replace the Profile name in the same way that the timeout is assigned at the top of the script and then used further down. It would be better than manually having to replace the "Kids" twice manually.

Still a work in progress, but slightly better IMO.

Code:

import xbmc,time

# idle time in minutes
IDLE_TIME_MIN = 5
s = 1
while s > 0:
    # get idle time
    it = xbmc.getGlobalIdleTime()
    #calculate sleep time in msec
    s = ((IDLE_TIME_MIN * 60) - it ) * 1000
    # sleep for IDLE_TIME_MIN if playing
    if (xbmc.Player().isPlaying()): s = IDLE_TIME_MIN * 60 *

1000
    #print("autologout: Sleeping for %d ms" % s)
    if (s > 0): xbmc.sleep(s)

# Load "Kids" profile
# Change "Kids" to a Kid safe profile name (it's case sensitive)
# in the first and third lines below
    if xbmc.getInfoLabel("system.profilename") != "Kids" :
        xbmc.executebuiltin("System.LogOff")
        xbmc.executebuiltin("XBMC.LoadProfile(Kids,prompt)")
        exit()
# otherwise quit this script (not XBMC)
    else:
        exit()

[MassIV]

Blocking based on MPAA rating is NOT the way to go. For reasons already mentioned, such as:
-Not all content has a rating.
-There is still access through files
-Leaving the program gives the option to access the source.

If pressing Alt+Tab is all it takes to circumvent it, its not very good is it?
The only way to truly lock it, is to set a password on the adult folder in the OS with a program that has an api we can use.

Then again, programs should not nanny your kid. You should be the password by keeping them in sight.

Little thing i would like to see in master lock:
Locking the settings of a plugin, like youtube.
Locking the opion to go into movies -> files.

(I tried setting "Lock File Manager" but that did not lock me out of the sub menu "Files". Maybe because i only use a http source?)

[oneadvent]

Blocking based on MPAA rating is NOT the way to go. For reasons already mentioned, such as:
-Not all content has a rating.
-There is still access through files
-Leaving the program gives the option to access the source.

If pressing Alt+Tab is all it takes to circumvent it, its not very good is it?
The only way to truly lock it, is to set a password on the adult folder in the OS with a program that has an api we can use.

Then again, programs should not nanny your kid. You should be the password by keeping them in sight.

Little thing i would like to see in master lock:
Locking the settings of a plugin, like youtube.
Locking the opion to go into movies -> files.

(I tried setting "Lock File Manager" but that did not lock me out of the sub menu "Files". Maybe because i only use a http source?)

Hey I'm not trying to be mean but you are not thinking this through. Everyone knows you can get around ANY lock, the idea is to make it clear you are getting around a lock when you do it. And it has to be easy to maintain.

Take my example: I have a 5 year old with a RPi running in his room. He has my movies available to him. Now I do not have adult movies, but there are things he still shouldn't be choosing, say Fight Club for instance. For him I would like to lock everything "unrated" and "PG-13 and above" and it should work fine. There is no question that a 15 year old can get around it but not a 5 year old.

I just want an easy way to keep it in control. He likes turning on his own movies and shows when I'm not there and he can't read (yet) so he has to guess sometimes till he gets it right. All my shows and movies are going to the same place so it is much easier to control it on XBMCs side of things.

[gabbott]

Blocking based on MPAA rating is NOT the way to go. For reasons already mentioned, such as:
-Not all content has a rating.
-There is still access through files
-Leaving the program gives the option to access the source.

If pressing Alt+Tab is all it takes to circumvent it, its not very good is it?
The only way to truly lock it, is to set a password on the adult folder in the OS with a program that has an api we can use.

Then again, programs should not nanny your kid. You should be the password by keeping them in sight.

Little thing i would like to see in master lock:
Locking the settings of a plugin, like youtube.
Locking the opion to go into movies -> files.

(I tried setting "Lock File Manager" but that did not lock me out of the sub menu "Files". Maybe because i only use a http source?)

Hey I'm not trying to be mean but you are not thinking this through. Everyone knows you can get around ANY lock, the idea is to make it clear you are getting around a lock when you do it. And it has to be easy to maintain.

Take my example: I have a 5 year old with a RPi running in his room. He has my movies available to him. Now I do not have adult movies, but there are things he still shouldn't be choosing, say Fight Club for instance. For him I would like to lock everything "unrated" and "PG-13 and below" and it should work fine. There is no question that a 15 year old can get around it but not a 5 year old.

I just want an easy way to keep it in control. He likes turning on his own movies and shows when I'm not there and he can't read (yet) so he has to guess sometimes till he gets it right. All my shows and movies are going to the same place so it is much easier to control it on XBMCs side of things.

Why not sort videos at the source to different directories? Movies appropriate for your 5 year old and then the rest... this way one can use profiles... source locks...

I have 4 kids ranging from 3 to 13, and multiple xbmc setups in the home. Having movies sorted on the server in folders that I determine the ratings appropriate for the age group is, IMO, a much better solution. Not all movies have a rating (including children's films).

I don't think it's as easy as some people think to just implement a ratings filter right into xbmc.

[oneadvent]

I'm not saying it is easy. But it is simpler for the user. Last I checked couchpotato (or similar programs) do not sort based on ratings. That means you have to manually move them. And in your situation, do you rate things and group them and then give tiered access? Like give the 13 year old access to G, PG, PG-13 while the 3 year old only has G? Seems hard to maintain, and no way to quickly deploy new boxes.

[gabbott]

I'm not saying it is easy. But it is simpler for the user. Last I checked couchpotato (or similar programs) do not sort based on ratings. That means you have to manually move them. And in your situation, do you rate things and group them and then give tiered access? Like give the 13 year old access to G, PG, PG-13 while the 3 year old only has G? Seems hard to maintain, and no way to quickly deploy new boxes.

That's pretty much how I do it, yes. All kids movies are in a G folder and so on. It is some work to setup at first, but I have over 1200 movies and about 90 TV shows and it's not hard to maintain once it's done, the new stuff just goes into a staging area on my server and I then move to the appropriate section. Deploying new boxes isn't too hard either.

And I'm not saying something within XBMC couldn't be implemented, but I don't think it's very clear-cut how it can be done and what some people want now can be in some ways achieved, just takes a little work on the backend of the setup.

[rygle]

I have an 11 year old who wants to watch stuff that's above his maturity level to cope with and I believe his desire to be grown up and watch grown up stuff (without my knowledge) was genuinely causing him anxiety issues. I took the bull by the horns and separated my TV and Movies into separate folders - "TV Shows", "AdultTV", "Movies" and "AdultMovies".

In XBMC I made a separate profile for Kids and Adults - the Kids profile only picks up the "TV Shows" and "Movies" folders, while the Adults profile picks up the others as well. Also changed the backgrounds in the menus to something I can recognise as being for the adult profile just to distinguish, and set all the settings to require a pin.

In Windows, I set the Adult folders as hidden and set Windows to hide hidden folders. It's a little bit awkard to access these folders as I have to click in the navigation bar and manually type the last bit of the directory name, but I think it's worth it to let my kids be kids. My 11 year old is pretty clever and knows where the usual files are stored, but I just don't go into the Adult folders when he's around and he hasn't figured out he can set Windows to show hidden folders. Over the past month his anxiety levels have dropped notably.

I also did a similar thing for a similar reason with Steam because he was wanting to play games that were inappropriate for his maturity level. I just made the kids each a non-administrator ("standard" in windows speak) account and then set the permissions for the folder where the game is stored so that they can't see it's contents. You have to login as administrator and set it so the appropriate user can't access the folder - right click on it and then click Properties -> Security -> Edit - then click Add, add their username and tick all the "deny" boxes.

Works great for me on Windows. Should work in a very similar way on Mac and Linux.

Just to clarify folder locations - in my case on Windows the folder location for most games is "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\{gamename}" and "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\{steam username}\{gamename}" for some of the steam engine related games (Portal, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Codename Gordon). Obviously your Steam folder isn't likely to be in the same spot as mine. Just find your main Steam folder and the folder locations for you should be "{Steam folder}\steamapps\common\{gamename}" and "{Steam folder}\steamapps\{steam username}\{gamename}" respectively. This will likely vary slightly on Mac and I imagine Linux versions of Steam will have a structure something like this inside your Wine profile folder (in your home directory normally?) until the upcoming Linux version of Steam comes out soon.

[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.

[SebBoulet]

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.

Does your add-on secure the Movies and TV Shows libraries as well or does it just restrict plug-ins?

[rblack]

Does your add-on secure the Movies and TV Shows libraries as well or does it just restrict plug-ins?

Just video plugins unfortunately. XBMC doesn't supply the hooks I would need to restrict content on shares.