In general, you can get to all of these TV viewing controls by pressing the MENU button on your remote and then toggling to PARENTAL CONTROLS, which is the easiest way for Cable Channel Guide. You can also use the app made by your cable company. This is another easy way to get to them.

Note that there are different parental controls you can use depending on your Cable Company, set-top box, and TV. You can also block programmes without a set-top box by using the V-Chip in your TV.

  • Block TV Channels

It’s easy for Cable Channel Guide to prevent someone from watching a certain channel for any reason. Through your parental controls menu, you can choose to block one or more channels. To see them again, you’ll need to enter a PIN number that you make. So don’t pick a PIN that your kids could figure out!

  • Program Block

As with TV channel blocking, you can choose to block whole programmes or even specific ones by date, time, and channel. For example, you might let your child watch a show they’re dying to see, but only on the weekend after they’ve finished their homework.

  • TV ratings block

Since the 1990s, broadcast and cable networks have issued parental guideline ratings on parental cable channel guide. We generally ignore them until we have kids. 

It’s easy to ban shows by rating, but newscasts, live sports, and public affairs programmes don’t have ratings.

Before blocking a whole category of programmes, you may want to verify a specific program’s sub-ratings, since various parents have different limits. TV-Y7 shows are sub-rated D for provocative conversation, L for vulgar or crude language, S for sexual circumstances, V for violence, and FV for fantasy violence (such in a superhero animated show).

  • Movies Can’t Get Stars

If you pay for a premium channel like HBO or Showtime (we can’t live without ours! ), you can use parental controls on cable channel guide to block all movies based on their MPAA rating (like R or NC-17). This way, your kids can watch a lot of the good kids’ shows on premium channels, and you don’t have to worry about them clicking over to see Ryan Reynolds in something called Deadpool. That…would be bad.

  • Adult Title Program Guide Hiding

If you block a certain programme, that title will have a lock icon next to it in your programme guide. But you might want to hide whole channels on cable channel guide, like those that are made for adults. This is another feature of your free parental controls that makes it so your kids won’t even see some of the, um, more provocative titles on some of those channels as they scroll through the guide.