Tivo Announces Parental Viewing Controls

DVR company Tivo today announced a new solution geared towards helping parents control what their children watch on television. Dubbed Tivo KidZone, this new solution is scheduled to begin rolling out by mid-year to all new and existing subscribers with a TiVo(R) Series2 box and will be part of the standard service fee.

Tivo KidZone, Tivo said, “provides parents expert guidance and easy set-up to help them find and choose the television programming that is most appropriate for their family based on the individual needs and values of their household.” Tivo has partnered with groups such as Common Sense Media and the Parents Television Council “to create entire menus of recommended programming automatically provided right to the television set. Moreover, a child is able to use the television set to enjoy these selections and other parent-approved programming, while parents can still use the TiVo service to automatically record their viewing selections and enjoy their favorites when they are ready to watch.”

Features of Tivo KidZone will include a specific children’s space within the Tivo interface, parental passwords for controlling the lists of what their children can watch, the ability to add or subtract programming or channels to those which are viewable by children and the ability to lock out all other programming or channels which are not specified by the parents as kid friendly.

“Tivo’s promise has always been one of delivering “Tivo, TV your way” and today we are building on that foundation to further enable families to more easily find and display programming for their kids that reflects their family’s values and interests,” said Tom Rogers, President and CEO of Tivo, in a statement. “Families, public-policy makers and the media and entertainment industry have been grappling for decades with this critical and complicated issue of what our children can and should be able to watch on television. In creating Tivo KidZone, we are using the strength of Tivo’s unique technology to offer a powerful new solution that puts programming control in the hands of parents, guided by expert editorial recommendations that parents can choose from, and in doing so, creating a vast amount of television programming choices for kids to watch.”

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