I was very skeptical when I stumbled across this new product/service called Clearplay. It was a fluke that I saw it as a banner on a site I accidentally ran across. I usually don't click on banners but something seemed appealing about this.
Reviews We checked around the web and found favorable reviews. Apparently there were many legal hurdles to this kid of technology until Congress passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act in 2005.
What it is Their website says: "ClearPlay is a fancy DVD Player that can play regular DVD movies -- but without profanity, violence and nudity. Wow! How does that work? It's really quite ingenious. We create filtering information on a movie by movie basis, and then put those "filters" into the DVD player. This way, the DVD player knows when to skip or mute while the movie is playing."
Playback ClearPlay Playback is not choppy but scenes can end abruptly as it progresses into something that has been filtered. Some movies obviously would not be well suited as the plot would be incoherent and the movie only 20 minutes long. Those would movies you wouldn't want the kids watching anyway.
Choice This thing works with regular DVD's! They create filters for movies then you use regular DVD's in their player. They have thousands of filters set up too. ClearPlay works with new movies as they come out.
You have the choice to use the filter or not but then you have further choices as you can use the default settings or customize it to your preferences. What you want to edit for your 5 year old will probably be different than what you filter for your 13 year old. You can choose the language settings
Filters ClearPlay offers 16,000 different configurations on their filter. The four major categories are:
Sex and Nudity
Language
Violence
Other.
There are sub-categories for each as well so you can choose to allow crude language but shut off cursing or sexual references.
Some Examples Do they even make rated G movies anymore? Makes you wonder when they recommend Parental Guidance for a movie named "Firehouse Dog".
300 R
Sopranos, The: Season One NR
Firehouse Dog PG
Robin Hood Men in Tights PG-13
Last Mimzy, The PG
Starman PG-13
Bridge to Terabithia PG
Fantastic Four PG-13
The Final Word We like what we see a lot and that is what got this product here. Well, that and watching Spiderman with my five year old and felt uncomfortable in a couple scenes. These superhero movies really appeal to little kids but are not written for them and that is just one example. Please send us your feedback on ClearPlay as we test on out end as well.
