I went to the TiVo event yesterday in New York where they announced their new KidZone parental control features. The service itself is just a basic sandbox that creates an adults-only interface to the box. Pretty useful stuff, and a far more elegant than most current parental controls, but the really interesting part are the third party filters.

TiVo announced deals with the Parents Television Council and Common Sense Media to provide third party filters/recommendations for television content. Go to the PTC section and you can view all the PTC-approved programs and schedule them for downloading. The choice of these two groups for the launch is not accidental, the PTC is very conservative and Common Sense is more progressive. Check out their sites and you can see both these groups have a clear point of view on the world. The customization of KidZone lets you pick the group you agree with and basically share their programming choices.

Right now, this is all about helping parents make better choices about what kids programming, but this technology scales well beyond that. What about a Mormon Church- approved content? Or MoveOn.org-certified lefty programming? And what is Warren Ellis watching these days? More than just a DVR, TiVo could be come a platform for users sharing and, hopefully, discussing their programming choices. Like Flickr for video. The possibilities are endless.