I’ve never owned a Blu-ray player until about a month ago. We bought one from one of my girlfriend’s co-workers, who won it at a company raffle. Needless to say, it is the most basic, cheapest player there is.
This thing has some limited parental control. We want something better: parental control that applies to the unit, period. When turning the thing on, it should ask for the password; if this isn’t supplied, the player can’t be used at all. I’ve looked around online, but when looking at a model, if parental controls are mentioned at all, they appear to be limited.
Okay, I knew I’d wind up giving the background information anyway, I guess I should have just done it in the OP…
Girlfriend’s 12-year-old daughter is ADHD and slightly autistic. She has no impulse control. If we don’t disable the Blu-ray player, she’ll come out of her room after we go to bed and watch movies all night. We could punish her over and over (and over and over), and eventually it might sink in that she shouldn’t be doing this. In the meantime, there will be lots of screaming and heartache, over something that isn’t really that significant. We’ve been down this road hundreds of times, and the best way of dealing with things like this is to prevent access in the first place.
Our old setup was a computer on the TV, which was password protected. We decided to get the Blu-ray player so we could move the computer into her room, so that we wouldn’t have to be constantly yelling at her to be quiet while she was playing her games, while at the same time we are trying to do our work and/or homework.
The TV/Blu-ray player are in the family room, so there’s no door to lock. The TV has no parental controls at all. I should probably also note that we don’t have cable.
Or lock her door from the outside. Maybe it sounds cruel, but she probably shouldn’t be given the chance to wander freely about the house at night if she can’t behave properly. I mean she could wind up getting into the knives in the kitchen and hurt herself or any of a hundred other things. Sounds like the Bluray player is just a symptom and you need to treat the whole problem.
If for some reason that’s out, it should be trivial to disconnect the bluray player and take it into your room (or someplace else she won’t find it) at night.
Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll just make an appointment with the doctor and have that ADHD thing cleared right up.
We currently remove the video cable. We’d rather just enter in a password when we turn the thing on. This is what I asked about in the OP, not for advice on my step-daughter’s behavior.
TBG didn’t say that this girl is a danger to herself or anyone else. Locking a door from the outside could lead to her death if there’s a fire, and what if she has to go to the bathroom?
What would probably be best is a locking a/b switch. This is a small box that connects your cable and dvd player to your tv. And some of them have a lock and key so you can’t switch your tv to the player without the key.
Unfortunately, while I found some companies that used to sell these in the past, I can’t find any that currently offer one.