Chip Flop

With politicians in Washington once again raising an alarm about indecency on TV, over at Slate Tom Hazlett asks, whatever happened to the V-chip?

Comments

[mobile]

Huh? How would the V-chip have kept the Super Bowl halftime show from impressionable young retinas?

[GoonFood]

mobile:
By making the TV a useless POS that nobody wants anymore, thereby lowering the grand total of eyeballs watching the SuperBowl to 2?

[David 2]

The V-chip wouldn't have helped. It relies on a particular code included with the broadcast signal that would tell the V-chip what sort of content was being sent. The only way the V-chip would do its job is if the people at CBS knew in advance what sort of content was going to be displayed and put in the appropriate code.

Now if the V-chip DID work, then that means that CBS knew what was going to happen... and the execs who were grilled in Washington this week over at the Joe McCarthy Memorial Star Chamber would be guilty of lying to Congress.

Something to think about.

[Charles Hueter]

My Toshiba's V-chip has gone haywire, blocking just about every cable news channel at random during the day. Can't turn it off through the TV's menus no matter how hard I try.

Woulda been nice to have the option of buying a new TV without the damn thing.