We have had a Clearplay DVD player for two years and agree with everyone that it is a wonderful concept. We have been able to watch movies that would otherwise be off limits. The Pro is that it is a good concept. And Clearplay is very fast about putting out filters for all the new movies. And when it works, it works well. The Cons? This is a very cheap DVD player that has a very short lifespan. My 427-USB lasted 2 years. The remote is also light and flimsy, and the first Filterstik broke after a few months. Customer service is the WORST. They will put you on hold for very extended periods (>2 hours) so I recommend using their automated phone call back system. During my last experience, I was ten minutes into a troubleshooting session with “Ryan” when I realized he was a computer. I asked if he was a computer, and he answered yes, then the real Ryan came on and admitted he had been jumping between me and another customer and letting the computer fill in with predetermined responses. I do not doubt that the people at Clearplay mean well and are trying to provide a valuable service. I just think that the company and their customer service have not expanded as their customer base has. We just opened the Upconvert 747 and can’t get it to work on our TV because it isn’t S-video compatible. If your TV relies on an S-video connection, be prepared to purchase a convertor box for the HDMI connection. Customer service took two hours to get back with us this time and even said that they had already detected problems with the filtering of the audio with systems using Stereo. This 747 upconvert has only been on the market a month and already they are identifying problems. Great. It is a good concept folks, just be prepared for an inevitably frustrating experience.

For the past several months, ClearPlay won’t work with newer rental DVD’s. Apparently, Netflix and Blockbuster have changed something to do with the catalog numbers of the rental DVD’s, meaning that ClearPlay can’t make the filters for them. If you are wanting to use this with rental DVD’s, call ClearPlay first to find out if they’ve corrected this. But it does work pretty well with older or purchased DVD’s.

UPDATE 1/23/10 – Talked with Clearplay tech support, and the situation regarding the above has apparently changed. Filters are now being created for new rental disk releases, and they are moving backwards through their catalogue of 3700 movies to revise the filters so that previous rental releases that didn’t have filters will now have filters that work. Clearplay recommended going with Netflix over Blockbuster to reduce your problems with filters and rental disks.

I have been a fan of Clearplay since they started. The earlier, non-HD players, had a few flaws, but worked well. There were problems with some of the movie filters which caused the player to hang up momentarily. The next generation of players seemed to have some serious technical problems, and at one point I thought about cancelling my membership. I decided to speak with their customer support group and decided to give their new HD player a try. I love it. The quality is there. They still have a problem with some of their movie filters, but I have not experienced any hardware issues. It looks like they got a handled on their players.