So Walking Dead season 1 was a welcomed recent gift, it isn't The Sopranos but it's not bad. But it's pretty graphic. With a couple of hundred hours of Left 4 Dead 2 I don't mind but I don't think it is suitable for children.
Is there a means to hide either selected video, or ideally, all episodes of a show in iTunes?
Failing that are there third party apps to achieve this that are still good for playing and watching video? I'm thinking along the lines of Comic Zeal which does a great job for comics – drag and drop iTunes syncing, great organization tools etc. The difference would be that if older son switches away from the game I said he could play to my app, without an extra password the videos would either be unplayable or just not appear at all.
Disabling iTunes isn't an option because sometimes I'll want to hand over the iPad so he can watch a video that is OK. So global Parental Controls options won't really work.
Best Answer
I feel that this is absolutely third-party app territory. One that fills your needs well would be OPlayer HD (not a Universal Binary, iPad specific), chiefly due to it's capability to password protect content, with a few very notable caveats:
Put the 'safe for everyone' videos in iTunes, sync it and use the Videos player for those.
Use OPlayer's sync mechanisms (iTunes Document Sync, WiFi Transfer, etc.) for getting the restricted videos into the app, and then password protect it.
First, note that OPlayer does not support a simple pin/passcode, instead you have a full keyboard to type out a password. (You can always make your password a simple pin, I'm just stating that the input interface uses the full keyboard and not a "ten key" digit mode.)
Second, note that OPlayer's password protects the WHOLE app. Not just specific videos. This is why I suggest you split up the videos between the built-in player/iTunes housed videos, and OPlayer specifically.
Lastly, and perhaps most annoyingly, if you are done using OPlayer you should absolutely double-tap the home button and manually close OPlayer when you're done with it. If the app is running at all, even "suspended", you will NOT be re-prompted for the password when you return to the app.