Kid-safe alternate versions on DVDs [TILTS]

There are a lot of great action movies I would love to watch with my kids. Unfortunately, they are usually rated PG-13 or R which means there’s at least one or two scenes in each movie that make me a little uncomfortable. Not to mention a handful of other things I don’t want my kids to see or hear.

A few years ago, I praised a company called ClearPlay that created a DVD player that used a USB thumb stick that you could use to download filters from the Internet for a specific movie. Great idea but the DVD player itself was a piece of junk and it was a pain to have to download the filters. I never understood why didn’t they build Wi-Fi right into the player so it could automatically download new filters.

So my only remaining choices are to not let my kids see the movie or to cover their eyes and ears or fast forward through “the bad parts”. Not exactly a good set of choices.

“Edited” versions included right on the DVD

So I ask you. If they can make “edited for tv” versions of movies, why can’t they include these on the commercial DVDs? Here’s how I picture it. Each PG-13 or R rated movie comes with multiple versions on the DVD. When the menu comes up you choose which version you want to watch. The original version or the edited version.

Even better would be the ability to choose what you want filtered but I would be just fine with an “edited for tv” version without having to make any choices.

And if there’s not enough room on the DVD for multiple versions of the movie, then come up with a way to use a real-time filter so you wouldn’t need a special player and a USB stick that required downloading filters from the Internet.

Forget DVDs altogether

Or why not just forget the whole DVD complication and sell downloadable versions of the movie? When I go to purchase (or rent) a movie online from Amazon Instant Video or Netflix, offer me the original version and the edited version and let me decide which one I want.

What am I missing here? What’s complicated about any of this?

Disclaimer: Technologies presented in the Technology I’d Like To See (TILTS) series are based on my original (and sometimes delirious) thoughts. I present them here to the public only because I can not afford to implement any of them myself. If you ~~steal~~ borrow one of my ideas and end up filthy rich because of it, please remember where you got the idea and throw a little love my way. Something like a BMW or a big fat check would do just fine.