RCA pulls family-friendly ClearPlay DVD off the shelves
By Peter Rojas 
posted July 16th 2004 10:26AM
posted July 16th 2004 10:26AM
Roughly five seconds after they introduced it, RCA is pulling the DRC232N, their "family-friendly" DVD player that uses Utah-based ClearPlay's software to automatically edit out pretty much anything that anyone anywhere would find objectionable (i.e. basically it takes already bad films and make them really not worth watching). We figured it'd have something to do with Quentin Tarantino finally tracking them down over mangling his art, but the more immediate cause was a company called Nissim filing suit claiming that ClearPlay infringed on their patent for a similar parental control system called CustomPlay MediaCenter.
Can you set it to only play the dirty bits?
That way we can avoid all the boring exposition, and skip right to the sex and violence.
I will not sink to your level of sarcasm and criticize or belittle you just because your views of ClearPlay technology differ from mine. All I can say is that it has done a lot of good for me. Now I don't have to reach for the remote control to fast forward movie content that I find distasteful. B. Money's un-funny remark proves that ClearPlay's filtering system is not for everyone. However, I enjoy it, and I hope it returns to store shelves very soon.
From what I've read of the patents there is probably a lot of prior art. I expect most or all of these patents will probably be proven invaild because of prior art. Even if they stick, clearplay or something just like it will be available.
My friend's got one, and it doesn't work as well as it says it does. Sometimes it misses things & sometimes it just cuts out huge chunks of the movie that didn't all need to be cut. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that someone thought the product could survive on the market (well, on the market outside of Utah, that is).
According the the clearplay website, clearplay is coming out with their own DVD player this June.
how in the #$@%%$$$$$ do you get clearplay's
filters off your dvd player so you can watch a dirty, possibly violent, movie? (since you dont want to use your computer for such stuff)
how in the %%$$#@#$ do you get clearplay's stupid-ass filters off your dvd player?