Parental controls

When a user requests that a content or channel is played, what the client app needs to do depends on the applicable parental rating body.

For standard deployments, the client needs to:

1. Determine the age rating on the content (for VOD) or channel (for live TV). See Determining the age rating for a channel, event, or content.

2. Determine the age ratings for which it needs to prompt for the parental PIN (that is, the age rating threshold that is set for the account). See Getting the rating thresholds for the account.

3. Compare the two and prompt for the parental PIN if the age rating for the content/channel is greater than the defined threshold.

For deployments where the rating needs to be checked per broadcast event (for example, for the German ratings body, FSK), the client app needs to:

1. If no parental ratings threshold (that is, the rating at which the user will be prompted for the parental PIN) has been set (for example, if this is not done as part of provisioning, then client application should prompt the user for a threshold as part of the initial setup and then call the appropriate endpoint to set the threshold. See Setting/updating the rating threshold.

2. When the user tunes to a channel, the app needs to:

   1. Determine the age rating on the content/event. See Determining the age rating for a channel, event, or content.

   2. Determine the age ratings for which it needs to request PIN entry (that is, the age rating threshold that is set for the account). See Getting the rating thresholds for the account.

   3. Check whether it needs to request PIN entry:

      • For VOD content and non-free-to-air channels, the client must prompt for the parental PIN if the rating of the content/channel is the same or greater than the defined threshold.

      • For free-to-air channels, whether the client should prompt for a parental PIN depends on:

        • The account's age rating threshold – see Getting the rating thresholds for the account

        • Whether the channel is free-to-air – see Determining whether a channel is free-to-air

        • The rating of the event – see Determining the age rating for a channel, event, or content

        • The time of day

      This is explained in the table below.

      Account threshold	Time of day	Event rating
      		FSK 6	FSK 12	FSK 16	FSK 18
      FSK 6	06:00–18:00	Prompt	Prompt	Prompt	Prompt
      	18:00–06:00	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt
      FSK 12	06:00–20:00	Don't prompt	Prompt	Prompt	Prompt
      	20:00–06:00	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt
      FSK 16	06:00–22:00	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Prompt	Prompt
      	22:00–06:00	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt	Don't prompt

      For a DVB broadcast channel, a client app running on an STB will typically have cached EPG data that it obtained from MDS / Content Discovery Facade. Because schedules can change, the app should not rely on checking the cached EPG to see which event is currently being broadcast (and therefore whether it needs to prompt the user for the parental PIN).

      Instead, the client app should match the event ID from the Android TV Input Framework (TIF) with the broadcastEventId that MDS / Content discovery facade provide in their event metadata to get the correct event metadata.

      See:

      • The Content Discovery Facade's pre-defined EPG queries include broadcastEventId in their responses:

        • Retrieving events for an EPG window – pre-defined queries
        • Retrieving previous/now/next programmes – pre-defined queries

      • If you want to retrieve a specific event by its broadcastEventId, run an advanced query with this field as a filter. See Retrieving events for an EPG window – advanced queries.