A dear friend once gave me some excellent parenting advice. She would use this story with her children to illustrate a very important life lesson. The story told of making a batch of yummy brownies then going in the backyard and getting a very, very small sample of Buster's business and mixing it in the brownie batter. Still looks pretty good, probably even still tastes pretty good. But you get the point...a little bit of bad ruins the whole thing. This principle can be applied to many aspects of our lives, but if there is one area that it really shows it's movies. Have you ever watched a potentially great film just to be turned off or disappointed because of one word or one scene? Worse yet, were your children in the room at the time?
I don't normally do product reviews, but I recently came across one of the best family-friendly products I've seen in a long time and it addresses this exact problem. It's called ClearPlay and it's a DVD player with a built-in content filter. It works like this: you install the "filters" from the ClearPlay website onto a USB drive. When you insert the USB drive into the ClearPlay player it recognizes the movie you're playing and applies the filter settings accordingly. Here's the cool part - you can choose the level of filtering desired in multiple categories. So you can filter out all offensive language or just the really bad words. All sexual situations or just flat-out nudity. All bloodshed or just the really gory scenes. The really nice part is that the editing is virtually seamless. Offensive language is simply muted so it's obvious by the temporary loss of audio, but when entire scenes are cut the ClearPlay people really do a great job of splicing things together nicely. On rare occasions, I've noticed a slight blip in the action, but certainly not enough to complain about.
They do this by painstakingly marking every scene and questionable word in the movie. Then, during playback, the DVD player knows to skip a certain section based on the filter for that title. Quite ingenious, if you ask me. New filters are released every day as new movies come to market. And there are thousands of older movies already in the database. You can go to ClearPlay.com to see a list of all the movies available. Prices start at $119 for an HDMI compatible player. Filter updates are done by monthly membership. Again, you can check it all out at their website.
As a parent I'm concerned about what my children see and hear. I am also acutely aware that I set the example to them of what is appropriate behavior. By lowering the standard and letting junk into our homes and childrens' minds are we not being irresponsible? As a healthcare provider I tell my patients that it's no different than telling our kids to "say no to drugs" and then setting the example by medicating every ailment that besets us. Mixed signals, don't you think? This is just one strategy that I think you'll find helpful. I encourage comments, suggestions and similar strategies from fellow parents. Because we can make a difference.
Now, if I can just get ClearPlay for Uncle Eddie's mouth...
