Over the weekend, I received an email from Netflix telling me that my Wii Netflix disc was on the way and would arrive at my house sometime on Monday. At first I was excited for my kids. The Wii is on our television in the living room and my father-in-law has introduced the kids to the cartoons and Disney stuff that's available through Instant Watch. I figured the kids could get some good use out of the subscription but my enthusiasm for Netflix on the Wii dropped considerably when I looked into the specifics of how this service would work for my family.
Recently, I've been watching the Showtime series, "Weeds". I'm on season one and I am enjoying the series. The problem I have with this is that "Weeds" will now be available to watch on the Wii and that's certainly not a show I want my 10 year old daughter having access to. So, last night, I spent some time trying to figure out the parental controls for Netflix and left their site less than impressed. Before I get into this, we watch what our kids watch but I don't sit by their side 24x7 while they watch TV. We trust that they'll make good decisions but let's face it, good decisions and curiosity are mutually exclusive. The line gets blurred even more when their best friend's parents let their 10 year olds watch a movie I wouldn't consider appropriate for my 10 year old. So before you jump on here and tell me to parent my kids, I'm going to pre-emptively tell you that that is exactly what I am trying to do.
Netflix has three major faults that I can see as a parent.
Call me one of the many fans of the show that think the series should continue. Legend of the Seeker is in its second season and is perhaps the finest sci-fi fantasy show ever produced for television and yes, I’m including the HBO stuff. Unfortunately, no one knows about the show. Everytime...
With the release of Apple’s iPad , the world wide web seems to have come to a crossroads. Adobe’s Flash, a long time resident of many web applications is not available on the iPad and this is causing quite a stir. Can an Internet browsing device survive without Flash? That’s the question...
I recently had a chance to rewatch two quality movies on Blu-Ray. Both, “Cars” and “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” were very good DVD releases and I looked forward to comparing and contrasting them on Blu-Ray. In watching them both in sequence, I realized that...
The company where I am currently contracting has regular lunch gathering where a few people talk about their hobbies in hopes that someone else in the room will find the topic interesting. Today, I gave a short talk on the construction of my home theater. The goal of the presentation was to layout the...
Figured I'd index the posts that detail the creation of our home theater room. Additionally, I've added next and previous links to the bottom of each post to make navigating these posts easier. Framing the vision was pretty easy. I remember getting excited thinking that once the framing was done...
About eighteen months ago, after being burned in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray wars, I was uneasy about buying another HD player. Then, a few weeks ago my HD-DVD player decided to let me know that it was dying. It was only then that I jumped into the Blu-Ray waters with the purchase of a Panasonic DMP-BD60K...
I've been looking for a Blu-Ray player for about a week now because I am not sure if my HD-DVD player will even make it through tonight's showing of the movie Knowing with Nicholas Cage. I was leaning towards the JVC as described in my previous post but decided on the Panasonic. The JVC increased...
Eighteen months ago, my wife and I decided to buy an HD-DVD player for our new Home Theater setup. Christmas was right around the corner and the $150 player sales were hard to pass up. Of course, we all know how that decision went. A few days after Christmas, Warner Bros decided to go Blu-Ray only and...
Tonight, I finally got around to watching the movie, The International, staring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent looking to bring down an all powerful European based bank. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The plot was generally easy to follow and the ending was interesting. I did not...
