Parenting in the 21st century comes with some new challenges. One of those I wasn't expecting is how much kids will argue over the TV, change their mind seconds into starting a program or worse - get distracted on the way to navigating to the program they asked for asking for 3 different programs before you manage to click the play button. Brain rot is a real phenomenon too, your kids can be happily watching nourishing content one minute and the next it pulls up something with all the noise and bright colours that are like crack to the under-developed brain. Try to come between them and you're in for a lot of arguments. Your only option is to sit there and watch with them to make sure the experience stays on track, sensible but with a house under constant need of maintenance, not very practical.
Being of the Xennial generation, with the bad back to prove it, I can reflect on my youthful days in the mid-1980's, when we had 4 channels and children’s TV came on for but a couple of hours each day. There wasn't any arguments because there wasn't any choice to argue over, until VCRs started to catch on. This was the seed of an idea to try to replicate that experience for my kids, limiting access to on-demand TV and introducing a channel of parent approved programming.
A small amount of research brought up a project called DizqueTV which was surprisingly easy to set up. DizqueTV lets you create channels and configure their schedules using content from Plex and other sources. You then add it to Plex as a IPTV service using the URL you use to access the DizqueTV web UI. It discovers the channels and you can set which ones are made available. DizqueTV produces an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) in XMLTV format which can be read by Plex to present a schedule of programs.
Using DizqueTV I create my first channel "Kid's Retro TV", this plays a range of older programming from the late 80's and 90's that my kids really enjoy a lot and benefit from having been made before kids programming was distilled to toxic levels of stimulating sounds and colours. Next was the "kids Movie Channel" (I'm creative I am), and finally the "Bedtime Channel", this is one which starts at 5pm and finishes at 8pm, after the retro channel is configured to shut down. It has a more limited set of programs that are low-stimulation so they don't disrupt the winding down process before bed.
I was having a lot of fun building these channels so my next one was just for me: "Daddy's sci-fi channel". The title is self-explanatory but after making it I popped it on the big TV while I was pottering about the house and it was playing an episode of the Expanse, one of my favourite shows. Although I joined it half way through I quickly got drawn into watching it, to the annoyance of my household chores. I probably wouldn't have decided to pull up that particular episode but because it just happened to be on it presented an opportunity rarely found on broadcast TV today, something you actually want to watch! The next program in the EPG looked great too, of course it was, its from my personal collection! If I play by the rules of the game, I need to wait until that next show starts, that feeling of anticipation isn't immediately snuffed out by changing the program on-demand, instead it's slow-release, it's a feeling I never realised I was missing.
I then started thinking about what programs I'd like to see on this channel and I created a mental list of programs I'd like to collect on DVD for later addition to the schedule. For example, I'd like to put Stargate on there. I probably wouldn't buy the DVD collection, I like the show, not to the level of fandom that I would own the box set to binge watch, but I would like to see it sprinkled throughout my channel here and there with a low/medium weighting, a configurable in DizqueTV, so it's actually something I'd like to buy. I'm not bothered about the highest quality either because that isn't what this watching experience is about. Much of the programs my kids watch are ripped from VHS cassettes so the quality is below that of late-90's real player video, but that doesn't put you off for a reason I can't explain.
My wife now wants a channel of her own, she suggested the general theme, so I'm getting to work on that next, I'm thinking of calling it "blankets and ice cream", you get the idea.
On a technical level it's very low on resource use, it obviously tracks the schedule but unless someone is actually watching then it doesn't do anything with the media files, so I'm happy to leave it running in perpetuity waiting for someone to come along. It has been a hit with my kids, they took a minute to understand they couldn't just demand a different episode or program but they seem happier for it, more invested in what they get, and that was the whole point all long. Highly recommended.