Kids are very high-energy people and they can often get quickly out of control. While all parents understand that controlling children around the clock is just not possible, they do want to have total control over the materials they might watch or listen to while at home. This includes what they see on their televisions. This can be pretty tricky because so many parents work full-time, and also because many modern kids have all kinds of technological equipment in their bedrooms…including televisions.
Luckily for parents with such concerns, there is satellite television. This is the very industry that created and implemented the famous "V Chip" technology and that also makes a nice range of alternate controls available to customers who want to limit what appears on their televisions.
For example, a satellite provider will make a customer's account accessible to them online. Through this connection the customer might be able to pay their bill, order a pay per view movie or event, read a newsletter, check to see what's coming up on their favorite network, program their DVR to record a few shows or movies and, best of all change the settings on parental controls.
Parental controls allow the user to log on using a secret password and PIN (personal identification number) that makes it almost impossible for a child to figure out and change on their own. Through the controls the parent, or parents, can review each channel that they receive and, one by one, decide if that channel is allowed to play on their television or not. For instance, if parents have three televisions in the home, they can determine which of them displays a movie network or any other content that their children might not be mature enough to view.
Of course this can make it difficult if a parent themselves wants to watch movies or other programs, but it is the ultimate in controlling the stations and programs aired. Alternately, they can also be a bit more general and use their remote control to activate the V Chip programming. This reads the embedded FCC (Federal Communication Commission) rating in the program's signal, and understands whether or not it is a rating that a parent finds acceptable.
For example, most programs on networks designated for children's viewing will open with a "TV-G" icon in the corner of the screen. This is the FCC rating for family friendly shows. Parents can simply use their PIN and their remote control to determine if any of the FCC ratings are "off limits" for their television set. This, of course, is not fool proof because many modern kids are savvy enough to guess their parent's PINs correctly. So the combination of the V Chip and parental settings online is always recommended.
Because we cannot always be with our children as they watch television, the satellite providers have done all that they can to allow parents as much security and safety as possible where their children's viewing habits are concerned.
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