DVDs not only offer viewers a cleaner picture when watching a movie. In some cases, they offer a literally cleaner movie.
At least that's the goal of ClearPlay, a company started in Utah County in 1998 (it's soon relocating to Los Angeles to be nearer the entertainment industry and the attorneys who understand it) to find a way to give parents more control over mainstream Hollywood movies by removing gory violence, graphic nudity and profanity.
ClearPlay is part of a growing trend as tech companies tackle what some see as a dearth of wholesome Hollywood fare by creating the equivalent of a TV or airline version of popular releases.
A Utah County video store faced the threat of a lawsuit from a major movie studio a couple years ago when it started "cleaning up" popular movies like "Titanic" by cutting scenes and language that might be objectionable from videos. Studios said that illegally altered the movie and destroyed the artist's vision.
There's still no high-tech solution for VHS format tapes, shy of snipping them. But with digital technology, it's different.
ClearPlay doesn't alter the DVD, but rather the viewing experience, said Matt Jarman, founder and now vice president of production. "Movie Guides" for more than 200 individual movies — they'll have 500 by year's end, he said — can be downloaded on the computer that will play the DVD movie. A guide automatically mutes or skips over material that might be objectionable, including language, nudity and violence.
"The neat thing in this technology," said Jarman, "is it's regular DVDs. We're never copying the contents or altering it permanently."
But Jarman admits the technology is still evolving. "Now it's an on/off switch," he said. "Eventually, we will get there where it's as customized as we can possibly make it." That means people who don't mind a little swearing, but can't stand the sight of blood, will be able to select options that leave language in but take gore out or any number of other permutations.
The DVD, of course, doesn't have to be viewed on the computer screen, though it must be played on the computer. It's pretty easy to connect a computer to the television, if that's where you want to view the movie.
And the program will in the next few months be combined into some DVD players as a functionality feature.
ClearPlay makes money by selling subscriptions at $9.95 a month. Then the movie viewer simply downloads the "Movie Guide" for whatever DVD movie has been rented or purchased.
It's meeting a big demand, Jarman said. Research that Wirthlin Worldwide did for the company shows that nearly 60 percent of people it surveyed would be interested in a product that would allow them to "tone down" movies. And a 2000 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll found that most surveyed think movies contain too much violence (82 percent), profanity (80 percent) and nudity (72 percent).
"There's a strong public demand," said Bill Aho, chief executive officer. "For us, it was a question of finding the right technology to fit it."
By the end of 2002, the company expects consoles that include the DVD player with built-in ClearPlay capability at a very affordable price; he's estimating well under $200, available at popular chain stores.
The Deseret News asked people in a local video rental store what they thought of the ability to filter out objectionable material and found that most liked the concept. A few, though, like Karen Jensen of Salt Lake City, suggested that people who felt strongly that a movie was inappropriate probably shouldn't be watching it at all.
Nationally, the debate has been similar.
Some say Hollywood regularly edits its own films in a similar fashion to make money from television and airline versions, so the "artistic merit" is not sacrosanct. Money is still made on the sale or rental of the movie.
Others, like Jeanine Basinger, head of the film studies program at Wesleyan University, see it differently. "We're talking about works of art that were created for a specific purpose and go about that in a specific way," she told the Los Angeles Times. "We're not talking about Silly Putty. We're talking about icons that represent some of the best our civilization has to offer. I think this sets an extremely dangerous precedent."
"I'm glad they're doing this," said Tom Masters of Salt Lake City. "There are a lot of movies — some of them important movies — that I want to see. But I don't need all the gratuitous stuff that gets thrown in nowadays."
More information on ClearPlay is available online at ( www.clearplay.com).
E-MAIL: lois@desnews.com