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Ask Slashdot: How Can I Build a Private TV Channel For My Kids?
Long-time Slashdot reader ljw1004 writes:
I want to assemble my OneDrive-hosted mp4s into a "TV channel" for my kids -- so at 7am while I sleep in, they know they can turn the TV on, it will show Mr Rogers then Sesame Street then grandparents' story-time, then two hand-picked cartoons, and nothing for the rest of the day. How would you do this? With Chromecast and write a JS Chrome plugin to drive it? Write an app for FireTV? Is there any existing OSS software for either the scheduling side (done by parents) or the TV-receiver side? How would you lock down the TV beyond just hiding the remote?
"There are good worthwhile things for them to see," adds the original submission, "but they're too young to be given the autonomy to pick them, and I can do better than Nickeloden or CBBC or Amazon Freetime Unlimited."
Slashdot reader Rick Schumann suggested putting the video files on an external hard drive (or burning them to a DVD), while apraetor points out many TVs now play files from flash drives -- and also suggests a private Roku channel. But what's the best way to build a private TV channel for kids?
Leave your best answers in the comments.
"There are good worthwhile things for them to see," adds the original submission, "but they're too young to be given the autonomy to pick them, and I can do better than Nickeloden or CBBC or Amazon Freetime Unlimited."
Slashdot reader Rick Schumann suggested putting the video files on an external hard drive (or burning them to a DVD), while apraetor points out many TVs now play files from flash drives -- and also suggests a private Roku channel. But what's the best way to build a private TV channel for kids?
Leave your best answers in the comments.
Well I would start with a system like Plex and build a custom play list for them. I just say use plex because that is what I use but there are any number of plex like systems that would accomplish the play list part.
I"m not sure how you would do the timing.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The unfair and unconstitutional infringement of infant's right to information will be strongly opposed by the Alliance of American Advertisers Astroturf Organization.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'd recommend Kodi with the PsuedoTV Live plugin, which lets you set up channels from your library with various rule sets to determine what is shown and when.
I did something similar with a Raspberry Pi, a simple BASH script, and OMXPlayer. I loaded tons of old 80's Christmas shows/movies on a USB thumb drive and plugged it into an old 13" crt television. The Pi played all my shows 24 hours a day during the xmas season. Whenever I turned the TV on, I could enjoy an old classic. I did have to reboot the Pi once a day but other than that it works perfectly as a homemade tv station.
I got a media center, put all the acceptable / 'parent-approved' stuff in a network share, and then gave the media center the credentials for that share - and NOT the shares with the more adult stuff on them.
It didn't take long for them to figure out how to turn on the box, navigate to their share, and select a file. Kids aren't dumb, they're ignorant... and they have nothing else to do but learn so they're pretty good at it if you give them even half a chance (and don't just do it for them when they whine).
Put the stuff on a USB stick and stick in in your TV.
Make a media center PC with XBMC installed on it, load the shows and movies up on there.
Mr Rogers then Sesame Street then grandparents' story-time, then two hand-picked cartoons
I will not be complicit to this child abuse.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I find it amusing that one of my friend tries to lock down his kids phones so they don't play too much. So far they've found at least the ways around the nanny software. I on the other hand just told my kids that they are allowed to play a certain amount a day and if they go over the limit, they'll lose phone privileges for a certain number of days. They learned pretty fast, they have a clear set of rules which they can choose to break off they want and, incredibly even to me, they report their own infractions, voluntarily putting away their phones for a day or a week, if they overstep the mutually agreed limits. Why not try to build trust instead of immediately looking for a technological solution
How much would a 30 second spot right after Mr. Rogers cost me?
Do you have ESP?
Better still, print out each frame onto postcard sized stock, and install into a what-the-butler-saw machine. That way your kids get exercise turning the handle too. Win!
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
Why do the shows have to play in order? That was something we put up with when we were kids because we had no choice. Dump a bunch of kids shows in a folder, put it in a Kodi library and let your kids explore on their own.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Ask any /. member who's not a parent - they'll tell you that what you're doing is BAD parenting!
You need to be watching every second of every minute of what your kids are doing. What if one of the kids uses the remote to change the channel? You need to make a custom remote for them that only has one button. What if your kids have a question about something they're watching, or oh my gosh, what if they misunderstand something or misinterpret something? You have to be right there, hovering over their shoulders, to make sure they don't turn into terrible people. What if your neighbor sneaks into your house and slips some adult-related content onto your flash drive? You wouldn't want to subject your kids to that, and we all know how many predators there are hiding in every bush and just waiting to permanently warp the minds of your precious young children.
Better yet, why are you letting your kids watch electronics at all? We all know that's the tool of the devil, used to churn out lazy, mindless morons who don't contribute to society, or worse yet, watch too much PBS and become SJWs. Why not make your kids read a book? But not the wrong books, you should look over their shoulders and read every page they're reading, to make sure they're not putting a "My Little Ponies" book cover over a book with more salacious themes. But wait, why are you letting your kids have any entertainment time at all? As a parent, you should be supervising your children 24/7, and you need to make sure they're doing something productive like homework all the time. As any non-parent /. member, they'll tell you how to do it.
I think that, maybe, the OP wants to stream a playlist *once* then stop. My kids would watch their favorite shows over and over again. So the playlist needs a tiny bit of intelligence.
Only way I can think to do this, without hacking up a custom Plex plugin, would be setting up a time limit. Maybe a tinydlna server brought up by a cron job, then another job that kills it after two hours or so?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I've gotta say, the BBC have done this for me/us. Cbeebies is great for kids from about 2 until about 8-9-10 or so. The iPlayer Kids app is also an excellent idea - basically, you can load that up on an tablet and let them loose on making their own choices, sharing with siblings and whatnot and know that 100% they won't see any adverts for shit toys you don't want to have to buy or even have to deal with explaining to your kids, and they also won't see anything other than fairly reasonable content with some semblance of education thrown in.
I realise we shouldn't leave kids unattended with a tablet or a TV (which we don't), but even the likes of YouTube, TinyPop, NicJR, and even Netflix etc can't get close to what the BBC offers (mostly because those sources are heavily Americanised, so have 'wrong' accents and words for stuff, or just have really low-quality content).
As for what you can do yourself, getting the content is of course the hard part. Playing content directly on a tablet, or via a Kodi media client on a TV or whatever is pretty easy (again, it means your kids can choose what they want to watch, within your 'walled garden'). Getting enough variety and keeping up with whatever-the-other-kids-at-school are watching is the hard part - and trying to integrate streaming services into one usable entity is just futile.
Ironically that was indeed simple. We had one of those TV with the DVD integrated, when you insert a cassette it would play right away... no input to change or sound bar to open. Dead simple.
Best thing my father ever did was sell the TV set, back in the 80s. Forced us kids to go and make our own entertainment, and I think I had a much more enjoyable youth as a result.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I am using app.beyourkid.com to make my own video collection. Then by downloading the BeYourKid app I am sure that my kid will only see videos from that collection without receiving any weird recommendations by YouTube. It’s pretty fun because I can also find new and safe content in the ‘Safe Lists’ tab, or search for my YouTube favorites and add them in personal collection!
If the answer is yes you should be able to do a one liner bash script that plays the files in sequence fullscreen in a video player.
Actually come to think of it you could make a .m3u playlist and then load it into VLC.
The problem is, kids being kids, assuming they're smart enough they'll inevitably work out some way to turn the TV back onto broadcast and watch Bill Nye and the like.
Thus any sufficiently smart kids must also fall prey to the degeneracy of modern pop culture.
Another aphorism occured to me. The reasonable man changes his home to deal with the degeneracy of modern pop culture. The unreasonable man changes the degeneracy of modern pop culture in order to protect his home. Therefore all progress depends on the later.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well the goal is to keep the kids occupied in the morning to keep them out of their hair while they can get the morning stuff done. Back in the olden days, we would use this time to have the kids, bring in firewood, feed the animals, take care of the younger kids, all the stuff that today would be considered abuse, and unsafe child conditions.
Also there is value in knowing about trade offs. If you are going to watch further or go pee, you can't have it both ways. Did the kid refuse to try to pee before the show started? That is useful lessons for growing up. Then there is just the risk of the kid playing their favorite part over and over again often playing the funny part and skipping the educational parts.
When you are are going to be active in the child viewing habits, giving them more access is great, however if you need to be passive (passive parenting has values too) at times, a more locked down safe viewing may be better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not have the TV as a babysitter. They just got up, no matter what time they went to bed. I could play with my lego or train or stay in bed if it was much earlier.
Wake up was 07:00 and before that you sleep.
The TV should not be seen as a babysitter.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Record a tape of those shows, and pop it in. Then all your kids have to do is hit "play". Sometimes old tech is better.
Pretty much any NAS has a media server now days, and pretty much every TV has some sort of player app. If not, a Roku stick is dirt cheap and works well. This one is easy, and there's so many options to make it, technically. The question, of course, comes down to ridiculous draconian licensing making it "illegal" to do so.
Or you could just leave some good books for them. (There is one in every crowd, and today, I am the one.)
More bonus points, with plex pass you can set up users with a pin and set content rating restrictions on each user, no more manually setting up libraries!
Netflix has a kids section, as does Hulu. Amazon has pretty solid selection by age group too. At least on FireTV - you can lock most things down with pin access. I've got a 5 and 7 year old that can turn on the TV themselves and watch assorted kid stuff. The trick is they know they need to ask first, and that we as parents are in control of the TV. We say when it needs to be turned off. It's perfect for when we need an extra hour or so in the morning, or as we get ready and the kids have woken up a bit too early.
It's certainly not perfect since our kids can somehow find the most god awful shows in the mix. It's not that they are age inappropriate, they just kill braincells for any adult in a 10 mile radius.
You should be able to fully control the device via the hotel interface system available on many TVs. You can brute-force the same thing with an IR Blaster covering the IR receiver on the TV. A little bit of scripting on a Raspberry Pi to glue it all together and you are done.
killing TV entirely deprives your kid of a shared experience with their peers. Kids do 'water cooler' talk same as adults do, they just do it on the playground instead. Shared experiences are a big part of how people socialize. I'm not saying they should share 8 hours of TV a day but don't throw it out entirely.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How about a VLC Playlist, a cron job to start VLC, and an Amazon "RCA Compact RF Modulator" http://amzn.to/2FnqowT (Amazon Link) to pipe the output from composite to Coax.
Long live channel 3!
I think the OP didn't highlight and bold and triple-underline the most important part of the design -- the not showing anything more. He's looking for a solution that turns off after use.
I'm weary of media servers and the like, only because they are designed for unfettered access. Similarly, while the easiest solution is the usb stick in the modern tvision, there's no way to stop them from watching repeatedly.
What about something much much simpler.
Any old computer. No keyboard. Run a script at startup (batch, scripting host, local html file, whatever). Given a directory of hand-picked videos, play-a-video, delete-the-video (or rename or move or whatever), play-a-video, delete-a-video. A simple raspberry pi works just as well as a ten-thousand-dollar desktop.
That way, there's a limited number of your hand-picked files. They can only watch each once. No keyboard necessary. They can turn it off, walk away, turn it on again and continue from the last/next video (depending on when you rename the video, before or after starting to play it).
You'll have full control, and you can plug in a keyboard whenever you want. You can deposit another day of vids remotely -- FTP would seem to be the correctly named protocol, or the device can play the videos remotely from any network source.
So that's my recommendation. startup script, play, delete, play, delete, play, delete. Hell, you could just hard-code that script file with a time index into a local html file every day, and be done in five minutes.
Okay, new plan.
The device has nothing more than a web browser running on startup, with a home page of a local or local-ish html file. It plays the \\kidvid\video.mp4 in a simple tag. When the video ends (simple javascript event), it reloads the page.
Elsewhere, (or on the same device if you like), you script a javascript file that looks like this:
if time = 5am, copy \\allvid\mrrogers6.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4
if time = 5:22am, copy \\allvid\sesame283.mp4 \\kidvid\video.mp4
etc, etc, etc
You can easily add randomness, or schedule multiple days in-advance. They'll simply be able to watch video.mp4, and you'll simply be able to change what that is over time.
I think you can figure out the indian head interstitial on your own -- background-image comes to mind!
If this is an issue at all, a parent is well advised to cancel their cable subscription entirely.
If an adult can't go on living without the television shows they want to watch, then why on earth should they expect their kids to?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Is the goal to give your kids the most similar experience to growing up with a tv that you had? Why can't they pause grand parents story time if they have to pee? Because you didn't have time shifting when you were a kid? What's next, as teenagers are you going to scoff at them for texting their friends, and then tell your friends how the lost art of rambling in voice calls is a sign of the end times? I'm trying to be constructive here, your kids have access to technology that you didn't have as a kid, and that is a good thing. Why not just let them use a 5 year old cell phone with the Kodi/xbmc app to control a raspberry pi full of Mr Rogers episodes, and have enough faith in them that they won't spend the next 48 hours binge watching it like it won't be there tomorrow?
Submitter here. My children are aged 2, 2 and 4. For the past year, the eldest has had an ipad with Mr Rogers, Sesame Street, grandparents, and a few cartoons. She has chosen to ignore everything apart from the cartoons, and she gravitates towards the shallowest ones, the "candy".
More generally, children of these ages are all about testing limits, and they do so constantly. This is a good and normal and essential part of childhood development. I work hard to make sure that the limits they test are good constructive ones that will help them grow. I think though that limit-testing about when it's time to turn off TV or what to watch on it is singularly unhelpful - that becomes the kind of limit-testing that a drug addict does upon their friends.
You say "have enough faith in them that they won't XYZ". That misses the point. They don't spring out of the womb with fully-fledged good instincts. My job as a parent is to develop the right instincts in them, teach them over the years how to make the right decisions, so that by the time they're older then I'll be able (as you say) to have faith that they'll make the right decisions. I can do that now with the oldest using the potty, and choosing what clothes to wear, and mostly resolving conflicts with her friends. She's not quite there with TV. And when it comes to homework, assignments and studying for exams, I'm going to spend many years with her in middle-school and high school helping her plan it out and develop her own autonomy so that by the time she's in college then I can have faith she'll do the right thing herself -- not just fall off the edge of a cliff.
I think TV is a particularly difficult example. One the one hand she has the full weight of generations of behavioral-scientists and billions of dollars poured into the question of how to make shows that are addictive eyeball-catchers. On the other hand she has... what? Sure I can create experiences for her myself that are more compelling. But I'm not always going to be there. I have to give her creative mind space to come up with her own play that's more compelling than TV. She's getting there, but she's not strong enough yet to develop these faculties against an onslaught of on-demand cartoons.
Buy one and get a hard drive. Then grab Noobs or BerryBoot and unpack it onto the SD card. When you turn it in, you will have a lot of operating system install options. Pick OpenELEC. This will basically to the Raspberry Pi into a Kodi box. With the hard drive, you can just add episodes as needed. No reason to pay and risk privacy for PBS shows. Matter of fact, I'm pretty show Kodi has a few PBS addons. Free and open source is the way to go. It also should have parental controls in the settings or password protection for things at the very least so if they turn it on while you're not around, you don't have to worry.
If the kid can turn on the TV they can fire up Plex and pick the shows they want. I think you need the Plexpass if you want users with limited libraries etc. but it's what $5 a month or $150 for a lifetime one these days (mine was a lot less).
My three year old niece can do it, even shows Grandma when she is doing it wrong; lots of "no Grandma you need to push that button". Funny really I think it's because at Grandma's they are not allowed to put the TV unless Grandma permits it.
My nephew and niece seem to flit around a lot. They might bing on something when it's new but it does not stay that way for long then they go around watching different stuff. Quite a lot of Highway Rat and PJ Masks at the minute. However lots of other stuff too. My niece still cycles through Peter Rabbit, Peppa Pig, Swashbuckle and Postman Pat for sure.
You could give them an analogue TV set and use an RF modulator to broadcast a single channel on VHF. Then, in another room you could use a Raspberry PI with the composite out, or even a cheap DTV receiver with the ability to play the files in the usb drive in a loop. Retrocasting with a Raspberry PI
I believe sg_oneill has discovered what he thinks is an XY problem and is trying to solve the underlying root issue.
... babysitter.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
As a single parent father, my 12 year old doesn't even want to watch TV. She is in two bands, one choir and is currently in my practice Forex account.
In a couple years I might consider handing over the keys to daytime trading whilst I semi-retire and take over the EMEA market hours.
If your child isn't earning you a million a year, you've done something wrong.
You can do the same with Emby
How did you fit a cassette in the DVD Drive?
Assuming you have a DVR, you can record on it some shows for the kids to watch, then unplug the cable input before you go to bed. When the kids wake up they will only have access to what is already on the DVR. When you wake up, plug in the cable and you're good to go. The downside is that nothing you have scheduled will record overnight. But it would work and costs nothing.
The Flixtape feature will let you build a "playlist" of up to six titles. Even include "cover art" for the list. It's not automated, you'll have to build the list yourself first... but at least it would play through up to six episodes of whatever you want in the right order. I like the idea of a virtual channel too. Pick the shows I want, in the order I want... each day they just "advance" by one episode per show.
I have Kodi installed on my PC in my room... (Windows 10) Hooked up to my TV (HDMI), with this I run a UPNP server through Kodi - (Kodi has the capability built in) - UPNP allows for computers using Kodi (or other UPNP players) that are hooked up online through the same network... to share audio and video media. Then in the kids room I hook up the computer to the TV and run Kodi. then from there I can control what I want in the library the children can view. In my room I have movies and shows they cannot watch, in their room I limit it to only what they can watch. My 6 year old knows what to do when I tell him that I have added movies and shows to Kodi.... He goes and opens the Kodi app on the windows based PC hooked up to his TV It is not a channel, but it is something that might work for you.
I like your style here, but what do you do to provide pee breaks? Loonie Tunes shorts, maybe? Some kind of functional equivalent to commercials, where you can be away for a few minutes without missing anything important.
You seem to have forgotten to schedule ads for Unhappy meals etc.
Requiem for the American Dream
Remember "hammertime!"?
Install a media tank with what you want on it and password lock out the cable box. Job Done!
NRRPT/RCT