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How to create an ATV with kid-safe content?

ascender

ascender

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 8, 2005
4,962
2,855
I'm looking to have an ATV in one of the rooms which only has stuff for the children on it. At the moment we've got a few ATVs dotted around which are served from a Mac Mini with an external Drobo. I've got a very old ATV here and also a spare ATV2.

So, what are my options? As there seems to be no way to restrict what content is played on the ATV2 I was thinking I could either:

Upgrade the HDD in the ATV1 to get more space. Connect to the network when I want to copy more content to it.

Setup a separate home-shared iTunes account somewhere on the network with the kids stuff on it.

Or are there any other options I'm missing?

Thanks!
 
H

hipnetic

macrumors 65816
Oct 5, 2010
1,266
562
You could jailbreak it and install XBMC. You would put all of the kid-friendly movies in a different directory (or multiple directories - just don't co-mingle any non-kid-friendly movies in the same directories). You would then add that directory in XBMC.

If your child has an iPod Touch or something, you could use the AirVideo app on that, which will let you point it to a specific directory/directories and it supports AirPlay for streaming the videos to the ATV2.
 
obsidian1200

obsidian1200

macrumors 6502
Jun 19, 2010
359
0
Albuquerque, NM
You can go into settings>general>parental controls and enable the controls, which allows you to limit access to the services the ATV provides as well as content streamed from your computer based on the content rating present in the metadata tags. The caveat here being that your content needs that rating tag for this to work. I know this method works on the newer ATVs, 2 and 3, but I'm not positive about the first generation (I can't imagine why it wouldn't).
 
G

GeekGuys

macrumors regular
Mar 13, 2009
146
5
I use ATV 1 for the kids tv. I have set it to only play sync'd content from iTunes. This mean it only has kids movies. 160gb is enough for loads of kids films and tv.

I also set parental controls on main tv (ATV2) and all my content is rated, so this works ok.

It also means the kids movie work, even if there are network issues! Local content only.:rolleyes:
 
ascender

ascender

macrumors 601
Original poster
Dec 8, 2005
4,962
2,855
Thanks for the suggestions, will look in to them today.

I'm guessing the downside to the parental controls is that you'd need to remove them every time I wanted to watch something which was rated more mature than the restrictions.
 
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