Illustration: Ron ChanThe day I heard my three-year-old quoting the movie Bad Boys, I realized we had to change our family viewing habits. To an unfamiliar ear it probably sounded like he was saying "mother-father," but I knew better. I figured we'd be stuck watching Disney for the next decade--at least until the kids were in bed.
That was five years ago. Today I can watch family-friendly versions of many films, thanks to new technology that filters a movie as it plays, censoring the racy bits. Apex, Mintek, and RCA include this technology from such companies as ClearPlay and TVG Vision in newer players. Filters for new releases cost $5 to $7 a month.
I was doubtful. Could this censorware handle a movie loaded with lust, mock violence, and really bad teeth? To find out, I popped Austin Powers into an RCA ClearPlay-equipped player (at press time, RCA said it had stopped making such models).
Oh, Behave!
Actually, I started by inserting a disc that came with the player, which contained sets of filters for some 500 movies (including family fare like Shrek), and then picked the ones I wanted to install. As ClearPlay creates filter sets for new movies, you can download them from ClearPlay's site, burn them to a CD-R, and then pop that disc into the player. The list of filters for each film is rich with the naughty bits that ClearPlay claims to block: Among Austin's sins were strong action violence, crude sexual content, and "vain references to deity." All of the filters are turned on by default, but you can disable whichever you wish. The disc also lists themes identified in each film so parents can choose appropriate viewing material. The themes include smoking, alcohol consumption, implied premarital sex, nude fine art, dysfunctional relationships, and homosexual/lesbian characters, to name but a few.
I quickly discovered that watching Austin Powers with filters is like eating a ham sandwich without the ham. Censored words (like shag) were blanked out, scenes ended abruptly, and some of the best jokes (the endless urination scene, the Swedish "enlargement" device) were gone. The Fembots--robot vixens with machine-gun breasts--were also missing in action.
Untouched, however, were several gun battles, a nuclear explosion, and various torture scenes, though ClearPlay did truncate one where a character is killed by being dunked in a toilet. Apparently violence is okay unless a potty is involved.
I restored some jokes by clicking through a half dozen text menus, deselecting filters such as "Crude Language and Humor," and restarting the film to see whether the missing scenes reappeared. (Turns out ClearPlay labels the Fembots as "Sensual Content"--go figure.) I spent more time fiddling with filters than I did watching the movie. If I hadn't seen Austin Powers before, I'd have known something important had been chopped out, but I'd have had no idea what.
ClearPlay provides greater control over content than you would get by renting pre-edited movies from stores like CleanFilms. But the editing is far more amateurish, and you still rely on someone else's idea of what's acceptable. I would prefer a service that let me preview the worst of the dicey bits so I could decide whether my kids could handle seeing the film the way it was intended.
When Austin was over, my wife turned to me and said, "ClearPlay: Prude in a Box." Yeah, baby. And definitely not shagadelic.
Big and bulky is back--at least when it comes to satellite radio doodads. The $300 Model Sirius from Tivoli Audio will appeal to satellite radio fiends who are looking for a device that can sit in the den or on the kitchen counter, say, and stay there. Slated to ship this fall, the retro-looking radio sports a 4-by-2-inch digital interface, an AM/FM analog tuner, an alarm clock, and a teeny remote control. Homebodies can subscribe to Sirius's satellite service--monthly fees start at $10.
Contributing Editor Dan Tynan is one bad mother-father.
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