Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

The new Clearplay DVD player has made its debut at Target (apparently only in stores, not on-line) for just $59.95.  In the last month, I've been by three times to pick up the player.  I finally picked one up on Saturday and fired it up. 

For those of you not familiar with Clearplay, it is a Utah-based company that sells a player that plays DVDs with objectionable material filtered according to settings that you choose.

After unpacking the player, you need to download the filters for the films you want to watch, which requires that you sign up for a membership plan.  I chose a prepaid plan for a year that I think was $50.

Then I set my viewing preferences on the DVD player.  For instance, you could choose to watch a romantic comedy with all of the sex and nudity but you could filter out the "mushiness."  That would probably make for a shorter film and one that guys would generally enjoy more.

Personally, I chose to use light to moderate filtering and watched two movies, "The Last King of Scotland" and "Flags of our Fathers," the former with moderate filtering and the latter with light filtering.

During "Last King" I kept feeling I was missing plot points, so I actually went back to watch parts of the movie without the filter.  It appears to have been the actual movie editing and not the filtering that was confusing me.  During "Flags" the filtering worked perfectly.  I got to watch sailors without sailor's language and got to watch battle scenes without watching heads getting blown off, etc.

While one can debate the relative merits of my choice to watch the films that way, one thing I would point out is that I would not have watched them at all without the filter.   The directors may not be happy with me, but they are better off financially because of me and my Clearplay DVD player.

One final note: ClearPlay launched a PC based version that I used years ago.  It was hysterical.  Just a moment before every objectionable phrase in the movie, Clearplay would mute the sound to prepare you for the assault, which then sounded so much the more objectionable.  Of course, there was some sort of a glitch.  No glitch in the new system.  Give it a try.

For the record, Clearplay is not a client nor do I or my firm own any stock in Clearplay.  I've known the CEO in his capacity as CEO for many years; it is great to see the current success.