TV Guardian DVD Player with HDMI Reviewer's Comments
|
You may also be interested in these review sites...
|
Let your guard down and stop worrying about unseemly, vulgar language spewing from the movies you watch with your children. Let our “TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award” award–the TVGuardian DVD Player with HDMI (high definition multimedia interface), take over guard duty.
RCA manufacturers the DVD player and Principle Solutions, Inc. manufacturers TVGuardian® “The Foul Language Filter™” technology. Together, they create an excellent product for filtering out offensive language from DVDs; however, TV Guardian does not filter out objectionable scenes.
The HDMI connection provides an exceptional picture quality for high definition televisions; however, your television doesn’t have to be equipped with HDMI to use the DVD player.
Ironically, you cannot buy the players from the manufacturers. You can however, purchase the TVGuardian DVD Player from the Family Safe Media website.
TV Guardian DVD Player with HDMI Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Features Set:
The TV Guardian DVD Player with HDMI will filter out offensive language based on parental settings that include tolerant, moderate, strict, word specific and sexual references. You can also choose Religious Programming; this setting instructs the DVD player to ignore references to Deity, which would normally be interpreted as a vain reference.
To filter out objectionable language, TVGuardian reads the closed–captioning signal coded on the DVD. However, this filtering technology will not work with DVDs distributed by Universal Studios because they do not include closed–captioning. If you are unsure about the existence of closed–captioning on a DVD, look for the (CC) symbol on the DVD packaging.
When the TVGuardian filters dialog, the entire phrase or sentence containing the offensive language is muted instead of just individual words (so curious young minds won’t figure out what was said) and a cleaned–up version of closed–captioned text displays on the screen so viewers don’t miss out on the storyline.
The TVGuardian DVD Player does not filter out objectionable scenes such as extreme violence and sexual situations.
Ease of Use:
Access the parental settings and establish a password with the DVD player’s remote control. Your TV screen will display all relevant menu options. If the player is in progressive scan mode or set up with an HDMI connection, the sound will mute, but the closed–captioned replacement text will not display.
Ease of Installation/Setup:
The TVGuardian DVD player comes with an S–video connection cable. Simply connect the player to your television like any other DVD player. For televisions equipped with HDMI, connect the HDMI on your DVD player to your television for a high definition picture.
Filter Accuracy:
The filtering accuracy for offensive language such as curse words or language containing sexual content is 95%. Technical problems and human error in the closed–captioning system may miss a word or two, but it is atypical.
Help/Support:
The RCA website has a list of FAQs and email contact information; however, our email was not returned. The TVGuardian website has a long list of FAQs and will return your email within 48 hours. We also emailed Family Safe Media and they returned our emails with helpful answers within 24 hours.
Summary:
The TVGuardian DVD Player with HDMI is an excellent DVD filtering product for sexually charged language and curse words. The filtering accuracy is 95%, the player is easy to setup and the Family Safe Media website offers good customer support. However, the DVD player does not filter out objectionable scenes.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
