DVD player with built-in parental controls
Wal-Mart and K-Mart will both begin selling DVD players within the next two months that automatically edit out offensive content. The DVD players, which are built by Thompson Inc. and sold by RCA, contain an editing technology developed by ClearPlay Inc. The DVD players will automatically skip offensive material, such as violence, profanity, and sexual content, and will mute out offensive language. This is a step up from other parental control systems that only edit out offensive language.
The editing can be set for one of 14 levels of offensiveness, but the DVD player will only include editing information on "over 600 DVD releases" (ClearPlay has a list of its edited movies). Apparently ClearPlay has to program the information into the unit in order for the player to know when to skip forward and when to cover the audio. New edits are released every week.
The DVD players will be available at Wal-Mart and K-Mart for around US$79.
The DVD players will be available at Wal-Mart and K-Mart for around US$79.