Parental controls block TiVo-to-TiVo transfer!?

Archived from groups: alt.video.ptv.tivo (More info?)

I have three TiVo Series 2 standalone units, connected to a
home LAN, with transfers permitted between all the boxes.

Last week, I decided to try enabling the "parental control"
facility, in order to keep our 11-year-old son from watching
inappropriate material (e.g., TV-14 with D or S).

I soon discovered one serious problem. When parental controls
are enabled on a TiVo, it appears that ALL attempts to transfer
any program TO that TiVo (from another TiVo in the house) are
blocked -- regardless of the rating of the source program or
the level of control specified on the target TiVo.

As an experiment, I tried enabling parental controls in the
living room -- but then went through all the detailed settings
and enabled everything (all TV ratings OK, all subject matter
categories OK for all TV ratings, all movie ratings OK, all
unrated material OK, no blocked channels). When I browsed
another TiVo from the living room, all of the other TiVo's
programs were blocked -- including TV-G and non-rated shows.
The only way to get around this (other than by entering the
secret code) was to disable the parental controls entirely
(either temporarily or permanently).

We do a lot of transferring of shows in our home -- for example,
one (and only one) TiVo is hooked up to a digital cable box so
that we can pick up shows on digital stations (e.g., Discovery
Kids) while the other units are connected directly to analog
cable outlets.

Has anyone else run into anything similar? Has anyone brought
it up with TiVo; and if so, what did they say about it?

Rich Wales richw@richw.org http://www.richw.org