Understanding Movie rating systems

Understanding DVD Parental Control

All or part of a DVD disc can be encoded with a Parental Management Level (PML) numbered from one to eight. Eight is the most restrictive level (adults only) and one is the least restrictive (all ages). The idea is to prevent children from watching adult content without parental consent, while allowing adults to watch child-safe content. In the United States and Canada, the levels map to the rating system of the MPAA (G, PG, PG-13, NC-17), but this is not the case in other countries or regions.

PML	Rating	Description
1		PML Level 1 (unused)
2	G	Suitable for general audiences
3	PG	Parental guidance suggested
4	PG-13	Parental guidance suggested, unsuitable for children under 13
5		PML Level 5 (unused)
6	R	Restricted, violence, adult language and situation unsuitable for young viewers
7	NC-17	Adult theme or content, not suitable for children under 17
8	Adult	Adult content, hardcore sex

Because chapters can exist logically within a parental block, there may be two versions of the same chapter in a title, each assigned a different PML and in a different parental block. For example, a child who logs in and plays the disc would see one version of Chapter 3, and an adult who logs in would see a different version, assuming that the application supports PMLs.

A title or chapter can also contain temporary PMLs, whose content is rated higher than the PML for the title or chapter as a whole. This means that a title may have more than one parental level. Temporary PMLs are generally authored as angle blocks, so that a scene in a film may have two versions, one rated for younger viewers and one for adults.

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.)

 

References:

http://www.orionstudios.com/D5/Parental/Understanding_DVD_Parental_Control.htm

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.42

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See Also

Terrestrial TV channel frequencies for Australia and New Zealand |   Lotech Solutions' Tips, Tricks, and Procedures

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