How do I block YouTube via Music, Photos & More?

[minckster]

There's a menu item for YouTube in "Music, Photos, Products & More" (MPP&M), which I first noticed today. I can't seem to block access to YouTube via this route by either disabling video downloads at tivo.com or enabling parental controls. How can I block access to YouTube via MPP&M?

Disabling video downloads blocks YouTube if one accesses it via "Find Programs" > "Download TV, Movies, & Web Video". It seems that the account preference for video downloads should block access to YouTube via the MPP&M menu too.

[wmcbrine]

Nah, because it's streaming, not downloads.

They say that YouTube is blocked if you enable KidZone (not just parental controls). I haven't tried it myself.

[minckster]

Are you saying that YouTube is downloaded if I access it by choosing "Find Programs" > "Download TV, Movies, & Web Video" > "YouTube", but streamed if I access it by choosing "Music, Photos, Products & More" > "YouTube"?

To be clear, disabling downloaded videos at tivo.com:
prevents access to YouTube by choosing "Find Programs" > "Download TV, Movies, & Web Video" > "YouTube", but
allows access to YouTube by choosing "Music, Photos, Products & More" > "YouTube".

Edit to add: Going off-topic (I am the original poster after all), does anyone have a brief comment on why TiVo has both Parental Controls and KidZone? I never noticed that they're two separate things and they appear redundant to me. I had never clicked on KidZone before today.

[bpurcell]

YouTube is a streaming HME that doesn't download anything to your Now Playing List, regardless of which way you access Youtube.

I use Kidzone and not Parental Controls. Kidzone opens up TiVo as a kid friendly area. It only shows the Now Playing List and blocks every other part of TiVo. Within the NPL, only shows that are age appropriate to your settings will show up, and in LiveTV only age appropriate channels and shows will show up.

Inside Kidzone, there is absolutely no access to Youtube.

[minckster]

Well, this kind of stinks. I don't want to use KidZone, so I guess I'll have to switch back to dialup. :(

[ZeoTiVo]

Well, this kind of stinks. I don't want to use KidZone, so I guess I'll have to switch back to dialup. :(

Kidzone is easy though, you eneable it and give 4 digit code

when you as adult want to do more than now playing, you just hit any remote combo that wouldtake you out of now playing and it asks for the 4 digit code, you enter it and off you go to do your thing

when done you can manually hit the now playing entry to go back to kidzone or after 4 hours it defaults back anyway.




another way to go is to blcok the streaming youtube domain on your router.

[minckster]

Thanks for the replies, wmbrine, bpurcell, and ZeoTiVo!
another way to go is to blcok the streaming youtube domain on your router.I've been trying that. When I blocked "www.youtube.com" and "youtube.com", all that happened is that the YouTube screen came up only after a long delay. Once it did, the videos played normally.

My guess is that the TiVo tried those two URLs, timed out, and tried something else (IP addresses?). The log file shows lots of access to IP addresses that "whois" shows as belonging to Google. I can't find a way in my router to block IP addresses, just URLs. It's a Linksys WRT54G, ver. 6.

Despite the semantics, I suspect that most people who choose to disable downloaded videos, wouldn't want streamed videos either. In fact, I had downloaded videos enabled until the appearance of YouTube. Blocking YouTube was my objective in disabling downloaded videos.

[minckster]

Aha! It kind of looks as if URL blocking doesn't actually work for my router. http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Routers&thread.id=13131&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Oh well. All that swearing at TiVo, when Linksys should have been getting their fair share!

[bpurcell]

Out of curiosity, why are you determined to remove Youtube? Is it a kid access issue? If so, I again stress that Kidzone works great and it EASY to get in and out of. It also prevents your kids from wandering around the TiVo pages and possibly messing something up, like deleting Season Passes, changing Network access, rebooting the box, etc.