How do the parental control and multi-rating features work

DVD includes parental management features for blocking playback and for providing multiple versions of a movie on a single disc. Players (including software players on PCs) can be set to a specific parental level using the onscreen settings. If a disc with a rating above that level is put in the player, it won't play. In some cases, different programs on the disc have different ratings. The level setting can be protected with a password.

A disc can also be designed so that it plays a different version of the movie depending on the parental level that has been set in the player. By taking advantage of the seamless branching feature of DVD, objectionable scenes are automatically skipped over or replaced during playback. This requires that the disc be carefully authored with alternate scenes and branch points that don't cause interruptions or discontinuities in the soundtrack. There is no standard way to identify which discs have multi-rated content.

Unfortunately, very few multi-rating discs have been produced. Hollywood studios are not convinced that there is a big enough demand to justify the extra work involved (shooting extra footage, recording extra audio, editing new sequences, creating branch points, synchronizing the soundtrack across jumps, submitting new versions for MPAA rating, dealing with players that don't properly implement parental branching, having video store chains refuse to carry discs with unrated content, and much more). If this feature is important to you, let the studios know. A list of studio addresses is available at DVD File, and there's a Studio and Manufacturer Feedback area at Home Theater Forum. You might also want to visit the Viewer Freedom site.

Multi-ratings discs include Kalifornia, Crash, Damage, Embrace of the Vampire, Poison Ivy, Species II. In most cases these discs provide "un-cut" or unrated versions that are more intense than the original theatrical release. Discs that use multi-story branching (not always seamless) for a director's cut or special edition version include Dark Star, Stargate SE, The Abyss, Independence Day, and Terminator 2 SE (2000 release). Also see multipath movies at Brilliant Digital.

Another option is to use a software player on a computer that can read a playlist telling it where to skip scenes or mute the audio. Playlists can be created for the thousands of DVD movies that have been produced without parental control features. ClearPlay seems to be the most successful product of this type. A shareware Cine-bit DVD Player did this, but it has been withdrawn apparently because of legal threats from Nissim, who seem determined to stifle the very market they claim to support. A Canadian company, Select Viewing, is releasing software for customized DVD playback on Windows PCs. A few similar projects are under development.

Yet another option is TVGuardian, a device that attaches between the DVD player and the TV to filter out profanity and vulgar language. The box reads the closed caption text and automatically mutes the audio and provides substitute captions for objectionable words. (Note that current versions of these devices don't work with digital audio connections, and don't work with DVDs without NTSC Closed Captioning.)