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August 9, 2008 10:07 AM PDT

Clearplay: Watching movies on your own terms

by Matt Asay
  • 18 comments

There's a rich irony in Hollywood today. If you look at where Hollywood makes the most money, the vast majority of its cash comes from PG-13, PG, and G-rated films. R-rated films? It's hard to find any in a list of Hollywood's all-time highest grossing films at the box office.

Indeed, within the top-25 highest grossing films of all time, only one rated-R film even makes the list, The Matrix: Reloaded at number 28. If you include the top 50, only one other R-rated movie (two total) makes the list. In the top 100? Only 11 R-rated films.

So why are more and more movies (perhaps intentionally) laced with content that guarantees an R rating and poor attendance?

I don't know. I can't imagine it being anything other than a cynical, smug Hollywood attitude that insists on adding "that one scene" in the name of art, pretending that it knows what audiences really want.

For those interested in watching movies on their own terms, or who have children that you'd really like to see Saving Private Ryan, for example, but you think the gritty violence may be too much, you now have a choice.

It's called Clearplay, a 100-percent legal DVD player and software service that edits movies on the fly without actually altering the physical DVD. As such, it gets a free (but begrudging) free pass from the Directors Guild of America, which successfully sued into oblivion Cleanflicks and other DVD editing services (though it's still possible to buy edited DVDs online).

How does Clearplay work, and why would you want to use it?

... Read more
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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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