TV & MVP in kids room (6 & 4). Good idea or not?

[IVB]

Yeah, that would be pretty simple to do.

But, I had what I thought was an even more brilliant and simpler idea. I got shot down BIGTIME by the wife & inlaws though.

I thought that it would be good if, anytime the MVP went into Play mode, that the whole-house audio speakers came on announcing "Kids TV turned on, now watching <insert show name here>". That way, no matter where we were, we could tell everytime they turned it on, and what they were watching. This would literally take no more than 60 seconds to setup given that I already have the whole damn house automated.

Brilliant, right? Uh, no. The wife & inlaws looked at me and said "you are psychotic" and went back to their conversation. That's it. No justification, not even entertainment of that as a valid idea.

On the upside, by the time I work out a mutually acceptable solution, the kids will be old enough to not the "too young to play by rules" concern invalid.

[QueOnda]

That's a little overboard if one of the children finds out. Like if one is out of the room and hear it. You could how ever have it text your cell phone (and don't need the wifey know).

[IVB]

Well, I read an article yesterday about this, and found something I couldn't argue against - having a TV in their room makes them think of watching TV more often, which will lead to more TV watching. And, as another poster above mentioned, they're a little too young to learn adequate self-discipline if it's constantly thrust in their face.

I know, sounds incredibly dumb that I didn't think of that before, but my focus was on solely teaching my kids self-discipline. I still have every intention of doing this, but I think i'll wait until my kids are 6 & 8, or maybe 7/9 so they can truly learn to withstand temptation.

Given that I live in a city (Oakland), I really want to teach them that lesson before they get much older than that as there's temptations much worse than TV everywhere, and those temptations won't wait until you're 15 to seduce you...

[Serra]

I'm coming in here a bit late, but I'd say it is a really bad idea. One of the worst thing you can do with children is to get them to spend time in their room. A PC or a TV will pull them away from the common area and they will spend a lot of time in their room.

This can have very negative effects you may not consider. First, in they are in their room, they miss all of the family conversations about mundane things like bills, buying a new car and all those important things that parents and older siblings talk about in common areas. This limits their ability to understand budgeting and relationships and all kinds of things.

Plus, if they spend time in their room alone, they begin to want privacy. Privacy should be very limited for children and non-existent for teenagers.

[sic0048]

IVB - I need to get with you to see how you are logging the TV shows. That is pretty slick. Now that I have gotten my Sage set up, and the CQC driver working as expected, that is something I might want to look into.

It's pretty cool the things you can do with CQC!

[IVB]

Serra - you have points I agree with (encouraging time in their own room away from family is bad) and disagree with (expectation of privacy), but given that I've decided to hold off for a few years yet, it's a moot point.

Sic0048 - Just logging the shows is trivial. Add the following drivers:
1) SageTV TCP driver, using the Extender MAC
2) Datalogging db driver

In the datalogging driver, and this is going on memory, set it to wake up every minute to see if the value of SageTVExtender.CurrentMediaTitle has changed from the prior run, if so it'll auto-log it.

If you wanted to announce it or auto-on the speakers/set receiver, you'd setup a trigger on the CurrentMediaTitle or PlayMode field. When CurrentMediaTitle changes, or PlayMode is set to Play, then do whatever you want.

I have a trigger setup for PlayMode on my HTPC, so that as soon as I start a show it deals with the Denon3805 setup for me, i don't gotta worry about anything. It's pretty nice as I don't have to alternate between CQC & SageTV, or go look at the Denon in the closet to see if it's on or not.

[sic0048]

Why use the trigger vs. using a "on click" command in the play button widget. I suppose with the trigger, the event will kick off regardless of whether play was pressed in the CQC IV or via the Sage remote. Is this why you went with the trigger over the widget command?

I plan on putting my extender in the media closet and distributing the output via my autopatch. So use of the remote will be zero and everything will be controlled through the CQC IVs. So I think I can get away with using widget commands rather than triggers.

Any Sage wisdom (that's wisdom from a smart guy as opposed to wisdom about the SageTV system) as to which method is better?

[Serra]

Originally Posted by IVB

Serra - you have points I agree with (encouraging time in their own room away from family is bad) and disagree with (expectation of privacy)

Well, you can give them privacy, as long as they don't EXPECT privacy and privacy is not guaranteed. Its difficult to enforce basic rules if the child has Dexter's lab built into his room.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Why use the trigger vs. using a "on click" command in the play button widget. I suppose with the trigger, the event will kick off regardless of whether play was pressed in the CQC IV or via the Sage remote. Is this why you went with the trigger over the widget command?

No such thing as a play button widget with an OnClick CQC command on the extender/Sage UI. (yet - Beelzerob is working on it).

I plan on putting my extender in the media closet and distributing the output via my autopatch. So use of the remote will be zero and everything will be controlled through the CQC IVs. So I think I can get away with using widget commands rather than triggers.

Any Sage wisdom (that's wisdom from a smart guy as opposed to wisdom about the SageTV system) as to which method is better?

Sure, that'll work, but requires UMPCs in the room or centrally located. My goal is to have dedicated HDExtenders, either in the room itself or centrally located. The downside is that I can't distribute my megachanger, the upside is that it's simple & cheap.

If you have a megachanger and the autopatch and don't mind the UMPC, component distro is fine. Keep in mind that you'll have to either put in local IR receiving, whole-house IR/RF remote (ie MX850), or look down at the UMPC to change channels/volume/etc. Not so WAF-friendly. But, you do get physical DVD distro, which is very nice.

For me personally, I could live without physical DVD distro (for now), so I went with the local HDExtender route, which meant trigger usage.