Starting February 4 next year, the ACMA has decreed that all devices with a digital TV tuner must include a parental lock feature that will allow parents to lock off certain programming for younger viewers.
The most important element of this decision isn’t that ACMA has finally started thinking of the children, but that the feature isn’t compulsory to use – most likely because they simply can’t. So come February next year, your new TV or STB will probably have the feature sitting in the TV’s menu system, deactivated by default and never ever switched on by anybody ever. Just like console parental control options.
I hate to think how much time, money and effort was put into this idea…
[ACMA via Lifehacker]
[Picture by wwworks]
Stefan Chochowski
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 3:20 PMFor a second there I thought we all might have to watch G rated shows forever!
And yeah these things will never work unless parents are educated. Even if parents know about the feature to them it will be too much of an inconvenience locking and unlocking the tv.
matt
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 3:39 PMnaw, just wait till Conroy hears about it… it will be on by default… opt out… then a week later you won’t be able to turn it off… then it will come to light that you can circumvent it wearing slippers. really easy to do – thus making it completely pointless – so you get a minor inconvenience and lots of wasted money for no reason!
seriously, WTF is the point of making it mandatory to implement if its not mandatory for parents to use it!!!
Chris McMahon
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 3:54 PMSo once these “lockable” TVs are widespread, does that mean we can have “R” and “XXX” rated programs broadcast?
Or will the Government continue to treat everyone as children?
Thepengwin
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 4:37 PMWell considering they can search your international luggage for porn, id say they will treat us as children.
sparecat
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 5:00 PMWhat’s the point of that??? For lazy parents, obviously… Get up and turn it off or supervise your kids properly instead.
How about a tv dross lock that blocks ACA, TT, 20-to-1 and anything involving Darryl Somers?
Greg
Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 5:08 PMWelcome to 1996. Foxtel has had this feature for over a decade, and it’s enabled by default for R18+ programs. Honestly, it’s not that hard to implement.
So it looks like FTA is still stuck in the 20th century, in more ways than one.