Personal Censorship In The Works

Much to the chagrin of your humble reporters, we try to keep things SFW here at the Gear (that’s “safe for work”, n00bz). If you’re for that sort of thing, then you’re most likely also the type that thinks that the tube has gotten a little crass. You’ll want to purchase a PTC the day they hit the store shelves.

What, you ask, is a PTC? It’s a Personal TV Censor. Working with your DVR, the PTC monitors the incoming closed captioning stream. Delaying the TV throughput, it scans the CC stream for dirty words. When they’re detected, they’re filtered from the audio, ostensibly replacing the offending verbiage with a beep or even silence, making an episode of Jerry Springer even less entertaining.

While we think this would make Lost just plain boring, and it does nothing for on-screen images, the idea is novel. At this point it’s in the planning and theoretical stages, but if you’ve driven through Idaho, then you know that there’s a market for such sqeaky-clean devices.

[beep]! Personal TV censor seeks to silence naughty words [ArsTechnica]