Kids are smart. You may find that despite your best efforts using whole-home sharing controls, your kids are still watching programs from your bedroom DVR. A lot of parents keep a DVR in the bedroom for their own programming, while keeping family-friendly programming on the living room DVR. You can count on parental controls to do a lot of the work, but what if you just want to make sure that the receivers in your kids’ rooms don’t see any other programming, period?
If you’re a DIRECTV subscriber, the answer is the Band Stop Filter. Placing one of these between the coax line and the receiver will block all network activities but let the receiver see the satellite signal. This means no matter what, there’s no whole-home signal, period. You have three options for placement:
If you put it between the cable and your kids’ receiver, it will block all shared programming into that room, period. Of course the downside to that is that the kids can just disconnect it at will, and you won’t be able to tell.
If you put it between the splitter and the line into the kids’ room it will have the same effect but will be a little harder to find and disable.
If you put it between the DVR in your room and the cable, you’ll lose all ability to share programs between that DVR and the rest of the house, but you’ll be able to more carefully monitor the situation, making sure that your programming stays where it needs to be.
