Jeff D
08-27-09, 01:35 PM
I have a DVD-1940ci and I hope this functionality is only present on this player, because it's stupid. Long story in the long format...
We had configured the 1940 to lock out material from the kids. This is the only player at a "kid level" so we just wanted to be sure they don't pop in Pulp Fiction or something else from the library.
Setup was pretty easy, you pick a password and a rating limit. Things appeared to be fine. Fine until I was off at work and get a call from my wife telling me the "dvd player has a message it can't play the disc". Now, we have 6 DVD players and I had no idea which one she was talking about, I'm not sure she could tell me if I asked, they are all "black boxes" to her.
Turns out it's the 1940 she was using and she's got a purple screen that says it can't play the disc. Not being too good with the ol' trouble shooting nor remembering the "easy password for her to remember" she gave up. I set her to use a different player.
Checking out the player when I got home I was stupefied by the parental control implementation, and I'm sure there are not many people who would choose to use it because of this design.
Here's the Denon parental control logic flow...
Insert a disc, check the rating and see if it is below the selected limit. If so, just display a message and that's it.
If you, the adult, want to watch the movie at this point you're pretty much screwed. There is no temporary override by entering the password. There is only one option to get the disc to play... reconfigure the player to disable the rating limit. You must navigate back through the menus to get to the right menu, enter your password, change the rating level to ALL then save your changes. You've have now permanently disabled the rating limit and can play your disc.
Now, if you've got the memory of an elephant you'll remember to reset the rating limit after you are done watching your R-rated movie. But, I'm not an elephant brained user, and chances are I don't remember to do this.
Before having kids I would have never given this a second look, but with kids it's a different story. This has got to be close to the dumbest design I've ever seen on any CE device. And having been in the industry, I've seen some dumb ones.
Have any other denon DVD owners experienced this behavior, or is it specific to the 1940ci? I sure hope it's specific to the 1940, but I doubt many other use the ratings limits....
We had configured the 1940 to lock out material from the kids. This is the only player at a "kid level" so we just wanted to be sure they don't pop in Pulp Fiction or something else from the library.
Setup was pretty easy, you pick a password and a rating limit. Things appeared to be fine. Fine until I was off at work and get a call from my wife telling me the "dvd player has a message it can't play the disc". Now, we have 6 DVD players and I had no idea which one she was talking about, I'm not sure she could tell me if I asked, they are all "black boxes" to her.
Turns out it's the 1940 she was using and she's got a purple screen that says it can't play the disc. Not being too good with the ol' trouble shooting nor remembering the "easy password for her to remember" she gave up. I set her to use a different player.
Checking out the player when I got home I was stupefied by the parental control implementation, and I'm sure there are not many people who would choose to use it because of this design.
Here's the Denon parental control logic flow...
Insert a disc, check the rating and see if it is below the selected limit. If so, just display a message and that's it.
If you, the adult, want to watch the movie at this point you're pretty much screwed. There is no temporary override by entering the password. There is only one option to get the disc to play... reconfigure the player to disable the rating limit. You must navigate back through the menus to get to the right menu, enter your password, change the rating level to ALL then save your changes. You've have now permanently disabled the rating limit and can play your disc.
Now, if you've got the memory of an elephant you'll remember to reset the rating limit after you are done watching your R-rated movie. But, I'm not an elephant brained user, and chances are I don't remember to do this.
Before having kids I would have never given this a second look, but with kids it's a different story. This has got to be close to the dumbest design I've ever seen on any CE device. And having been in the industry, I've seen some dumb ones.
Have any other denon DVD owners experienced this behavior, or is it specific to the 1940ci? I sure hope it's specific to the 1940, but I doubt many other use the ratings limits....