Get control with Parental Controls, part 3: Dish Customers

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Dish network users have a powerful set of parental controls as well. On Dish Network receivers they are referred to as “Locks” and you can get to them easily by going into the menu and choosing “Locks.”

Dish receivers can also lock by rating and stop you from buying Pay-Per-View movies without permission.

In fact, all of the ratings locks are on one easy to use screen and you have lots of control. You can even ban based on things like language or nudity. That’s more control than you get on most televisions and because it’s all on one menu it’s probably easier than it is on DIRECTV receivers.

Channel locks are done the same way. Check and uncheck the channels you want to block.

Dish receivers have the added option of letting you completely hide locked channels. This is probably helpful for small children who don’t know what they’re looking for but there’s so much information on channel lineups available on the internet that most older kids are not going to be stopped by this for long. Still, it’s a nice feature to have and it’s very unlike DIRECTV receievers which generally show everything and don’t give you an option to hide anything but adult channels.

Unlike DIRECTV receivers there is no option for time locks.

Important! After you make a change and press “Done” make sure to lock the system because if you don’t, the parental locks don’t take effect at all.

Remember, choose a PIN that your kids won’t guess. Good PINs are easy to remember but stay away from things like your phone number, house number, your kids’ birthdays, your anniversary, etc. Those are very easily guessed.

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.