Home > Consumer Reviews > ClearPlay DVD Player with Free Trial Membership

We've owned 3 ClearPlay DVD players and have thoroughly enjoyed them. The library of movies that our kids can watch increased dramatically when we got our first one in 2002. There are many movies that are kid-friendly but have some bad language - Back to the Future comes to mind. ClearPlay eliminates that concern entirely by muting the audio at the specific moment the offending word is spoken. It has the ability to mute the audio for a split second if necessary. For violence/gore, it will (for example) show a guy falling down after he's been shot but doesn't show the actual bullet impact or associated blood. I know a lot of elitists like to say that you're not being a good parent if you rely on ClearPlay and you just shouldn't allow them to watch certain movies. That's nonsense. Sometimes people also wonder how movies like Saw get filtered. Well, they don't. ClearPlay only issues filters for movies that can be considered family friendly with certain things removed AND that the movie still makes sense with the potentially offending material removed. I have the filters stored on an SD-card permanently inserted into the player so when I put a DVD into the player, the filter is automatically picked up and used.

I'm hoping they will eventually adapt the technology to Blu-Ray and also allow the user to download filters directly from the web rather than having to copy them onto memory cards or USB thumb drives.

My husband got me this DVD player for my birthday. We had been talking about getting one for months and were excited to finally have one. After opening it we ran into problem after problem. First thing we noticed is although swearing, nudity, and violence are cleaned up blasphemy is still rampant in several of the videos we watched. After that we noticed that the first video played really well, but the second one would start pixelating about half way through the movie. The final straw was that the sound went out on the player completely.

The product itself feels and appears cheaply made. We experienced the same as a previous reviewer in that the remote worked sometimes and sometimes it didn't. Customer service was not the best. The website is frustrating to work in. All in all it was just a huge disappointment.

I purchased one of these from a local seller, and brought it home, hoping to fire it up and enjoy some movies with the kids.


No such luck. There was a horrible problem with the RCA audio out (may be fixed on one of the other digital audio out ports): it has a loud whine which starts as soon as the player powers up and continues even while movies are playing. It also makes noises on the audio out channel when the discs are loading up. I took it back and exchanged it and the second unit had the same problem.

I use my current dvd player to listen to CDs on my stereo, and that was impossible to do with this DVD player, since there was too much noise coming from it to hear the CDs the way I'd like.

Other things that were slightly poorly designed: unfinished screws sticking out the bottom of the unit (though there are a few rubber feet which raise the screws above the surface the DVD player is resting on, you'd still best not reach your hand under it blindly for fear of getting scraped); flaky power toggle switch that felt like it might break if pressed a few too many times; a not-too-responsive remote (sometimes you have to push a button three times before it's recognized by the DVD player, other times the same button works on the first try)...

There's obviously a lot going on in the software realm in this player, so it's entirely possible that many of these problems (saving the physical hardware problems) might be fixed with a future firmware release. If they do get fixed, I'd be the first to line up to re-purchase one of these: I think the idea behind the technology is awesome, but the implementation leaves something to be desired.

We were Clearplay "early adopters." We purchased one of the first DVD players that loaded filters from CDs. The player worked as advertised and our family used it about once a week or so. We loved the fact that we could watch movies (and some TV shows) that we otherwise never would because of the content. After several years of light to medium use, the player began to stop playing DVDs without coaxing and finally quit altogether. We were not happy about this, but reluctantly decided to purchase another, newer machine. We were told by ClearPlay that the new DVD machine was higher quality and improved interface. We purchased the new machine in December of 2007. The first thing we noticed was that the new USB "filter stick" was DOA. In order to use the player at Christmas time, I had to contact tech support and download the new filters onto a USB stick that I provided. The machine then worked OK, but had a constant low audio buzz. However, because we liked the filtering so much, we decided to live with the product. Now, it is a year and half later and the new machine has stopped reading DVDs! Of course, the company now says that "we're sorry, but you are past the warranty. Would you like to purchase a new machine and a 15 month subscription for $150?" A new machine would be our third due simply to poor quality. Frankly, we are not happy. This is a good concept. I hope that Clearplay improves the quality of the hardware. We can buy a cheap plain vanilla DVD player for $29.95 at retail. If the players are going to break so often, then their pricing needs to reflect that.

Purchased in January 2009. The player worked with one movie and then stopped working. It took 4 months to get a new player after calling customer service numerous times. When the new unit came,the box did not contain a filter stick. Called customer service again. I was told another filter stick would be sent out. Never happened. Customer service had no record of me calling for the filter stick. It is June and a still do not have a player that works. This company needs some competition.