Christian
THE SETUP
I've been interested in the VidAngel service for a couple years now, yes years, but I just haven't gotten to it...until now.
The promise of a service like VidAngel is very interesting: watch Hollywood-created movies and TV shows with control over the content in the way of muting bad words and/or deleting scenes that contain inappropriate things.
Over the weekend my wife and I were at someone's home and the topic of movies & shows came up. You know, the usual, "have you seen? and you should watch ..."
We told them that we hadn't seen those titles because we only like to watch movies & shows without nudity, over-the-top violence, pointless swearing and so on.
The conversation went something like:
"No, we haven't seen that. It has a lot of swearing and nudity."
"Oh, what about X?"
"Does it have any nudity?"
"Yeah, but only a little."
"That's a little too much. Also did the nudity really need to be shown? What did it actually add to the story? And could it have just been implied?"
"I guess it could have been implied."
This particular recommended show evidently has a couple questionable scenes, but the rest is "ok." I haven't looked into it, so I'm not sure, but if that's true, wouldn't it be great if we could just have those undesired items removed?
Well, that's where VidAngel comes in.
As a side note, if you want to watch good comedy without low-class crude commentary, check out VidAngel's DryBar Comedy YouTube Channel. I watch it fairly often and recommend it. They also have a service: DryBar Comedy+. In the future I hope to review it.
DISCLAIMER
I feel like I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't clearly state my position and views so that you know where my review is coming from.
For starters, I'm human. Let's just get that out of the way. I'm not perfect. And because of this, I need to be discerning with what I consume.
Some things are just plain not "ok" regardless of the removal of any sex, violence or language. For example, a movie dealing with demons or the apparent celebration of demonic things would never be ok to consume.
I believe we need to be wise grownups and learn to reduce temptation and go without when required.
Just as it would be unwise for a recovering alcoholic to pointlessly go into a bar saying "Jesus will save me."—don't willingly put yourself in foolish situations—it isn't wise to watch a "trashy" movie, filters or otherwise, just because you're saved.
Everything we consume affects us. Period.
My personal goal with VidAngel is to see if I can watch a few programs that I think are contextually ok but have some items that I'd like to remove. An example might be a movie based off of real life events but with sex scenes and questionable content removed.
Even though I don't subscribe to Netflix, HBO, etc, for the purposes of this review I plan to get 1 month of one of the services to do the review because I want to be complete in my review and if you happen to use these services, I want you to know if VidAngel is something that can help improve your entertainment life.
But please don't take me mentioning the service or an item on the service as an endorsement.
I know many do subscribe to these services for one reason or another and sometimes for a short period of time. Perhaps one reason is there just isn't enough good Christian-based movies and TV shows being made. But this is why it's important for us to get behind what is created to show there is demand.
Finally, be careful with what you consume and be especially careful if you have children. Labels such as "for kids" no longer mean what they did in days gone past.
SO MANY QUESTIONS
I'm writing this entire series as I discover the VidAngel service for the first time.
I have many hopes, questions and concerns as does my wife.
This review will be broken down into a series of smaller articles so I can fully dive into the issues and how VidAngel works.
Some questions bouncing around in my head:
- How much does VidAngel cost?
- Does it work with all shows or just some?
- Does it work with all streaming services?
- What are all the filters I can choose?
- How does watching a movie or show feel with filters? Does the context remain?
- If there's only a limited amount of movies and shows VidAngel works for, are there more offerings coming?
- Is this service easy to setup and use?
- Does my movie run directly or through VidAngel's service? And if through a service, is the movie still good quality and smooth or are there stutters and such from Internet latency?
- How well does it work? For example, if I took a movie that had more "stuff" in it than usual and cranked up all the filters, would VidAngel actually catch it all?
- Is VidAngel really worth it?
VIDANGEL REVIEW SECTIONS
This review series is going to be divided into 4 parts.
- Overview: This is the article you're reading now.
- Getting Started: I'll be looking at how easy it is to create an account, what to expect, what VidAngel costs, what devices you can use the service on, etc.
- Using VidAngel: I'll be actually using the service on multiple devices, many movies, etc.
- Final Review: I'll put it all together and give my final review including good parts, bad parts and if VidAngel is worth it in my opinion.
Below are the relevant links to continue reading this review.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!