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Thursday, May 27, 2010

Using The Xbox 360 Family Settings Will Generate A Safer Gaming Experience

By Steve B Lobston

In case you have acquired an XBOX 360 Bundle you might possibly be pleased to learn that the systems come with parental controls, called Family Settings, which are tools that permit you to restrict the type of games or films your young children may play based on their ratings. You can set them to allow or prohibit access to offline games based on the game rating and DVD movies based on the ratings.

You may also set them to restrict access to on-line content material and contacts in the Xbox Live environment.

With game ratings the system reads from each game's disc what game rating the game has. You can control the games you choose your child to play, from EC (Early Childhood) to M (Mature).

With DVD movie ratings the system reads the United States' Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings that are encoded in most DVDs. When they don't have the encoding they will play by default. You can set Xbox 360 to play R, PG-13, PG, or G-rated films.

Please note that original Xbox games do not include the same kind of encoded data so the system can not figure out the game ratings. That is why, you can either disallow or allow all of them.

Because little ones are becoming more and more savvy ! you can log in with your Passport Network account to set a password to help make certain that you're the only one who can change the settings you've selected.

Xbox Live settings

After you sign up you can decide if your child can play Xbox 360 games online as well as original Xbox Live-enabled games that are Xbox 360-compatible.

You can approve your child's online friends. You can let your child communicate with any one, or only with their buddies; determine who can see your child's personalized gamer profile; decide whose gamer profiles your child can see; and manage who sees your child's online or offline status.

You can select "Everyone" to allow your child to communicate with anyone on Xbox Live, choose "Friends Only" to allow your child to communicate only with people on their friends list, or select "Blocked" to block everyone from communicating with your child.

A content control helps you set limits on the kind of downloadable items your kids can access. You can decide to allow your child to go to Xbox Live for downloadable game updates, demos, and other for-fee content, as well as whether or not your child can download member-created content from other Xbox Live users.

While no security tools are foolproof, the Xbox 360 Family Settings will help protect your kids while they game.

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