Modern parents know how many different things can over stimulate their kids. There are television programs, video games, portable and mobile devices and movies that can get them “all wound up”. Unfortunately there are also programs and movies that are far beyond their level of maturity and which they shouldn’t see, but the problem is that it can often be difficult to monitor every single second of children’s television viewing time.
Luckily the advent of modern computer software has made it simple for the satellite television industry to provide parents with several powerful tools that can allow for a great deal of control and protection over children’s viewing. While traditional computer equipment can have simple programs installed that block all kinds of content on the Internet from reaching their children’s eyes, satellite television companies provide parents with several different routes to use in order to protect kids.
What might surprise some parents and consumers is the fact that it was the satellite companies themselves the designed and implemented the technology we know as the famous “V Chip”. This was designed to understand or read the ratings of every single television show as determined by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) scale. For instance, most regular television viewers would recognize the small “TV-14” that appears in the corner of the screen at the beginning of many night time programs. This is an indicator of the type of viewership the FCC recommends for the show. The V-Chip can be set to prevent kids from watching whatever range of ratings their parents would like them not to see.
As an example, consider a few children watching a family movie on a Sunday afternoon. This program opened with “TV-G” in the corner, and the family’s V-Chip knew it was acceptable. The movie comes to an end and the next program is a movie with a bit of violence and this has a “TV-14” rating. The V-Chip reads this from the signal and blacks out the program. This makes it much easier to know what a child will be able to see and protect them from any inappropriate experiences.
Of course this is operated through a PIN (Personal Identity Number) and some kids are savvy enough to break the code and unlock the system. To combat this even further, most satellite providers also allow the owners to register their account online and from this secure location parents can do a channel by channel assessment and entirely black out a network if its programming is not acceptable. For example if there is a teenager in the home along with a seven or eight year old, their programming needs will be dramatically different. Parents can entirely lock those channels that the teenager might put on in spite of parental concerns about the younger child.
Clearly, satellite providers are working hard to provide the safest and most healthy programming options for their customers. They deliver excellent methods for control into the hands of concerned parents and make them simple to update or change as required.
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