TV-Blocking Technology Fails to Impress : Violence: Senate panel gets demonstration of new devices to allow parents to control what their kids watch. Guess what? The industry is far from ready.

Congress found out Wednesday that when it comes to combatting indecency on TV, some of the available technology aimed at helping parents fight the problem is not yet ready for prime time.

Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, held a hearing that promised demonstrations of a slew of products to address the growing public furor over excessive sex and violence on television.

Yet Pressler and other lawmakers who support a technological, rather than government-mandated, solution, learned that of the four products being touted as a remedy, only one is currently available to consumers. And that channel-blocking technology, shown to a standing-room-only audience by a Zenith television executive, proved so balky that, after 10 frustrating minutes of navigating TV screen menus and entering codes, the executive pleaded to an aide: “Am I doing something wrong?”

Consumers and politicians may be hankering for technology that would allow parents to electronically block offensive programming from their living rooms, but the demonstrations on Capitol Hill showed that American industry has a way to go in dealing with what Pressler termed the nation’s “crisis of culture” on television.

Although there are about 200 different models of television sets on the market that offer a version of the channel-blocking technology demonstrated by Zenith executive Wayne C. Luplow, the paucity of other effective products has only served to spur more calls for a legislated solution to the issue of sex and violence on television.

The Senate last month overwhelmingly passed a bill that would require the television industry to develop a ratings system and an electronic v-chip to enable parents to block out objectionable TV programs. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) told the Senate panel Wednesday that he plans to introduce a similar measure in the House today.

The v-chip is not currently being marketed, and the Senate did not say in its legislation how programs should be rated. But technology was again endorsed Monday when President Clinton, speaking at a conference on family values, said he believes that violence and other offensive content on television can be brought under control through a combination of voluntary industry restraints and electronic measures like the v-chip.

Although the technology to electronically block TV shows has been around since the late 1980s, television manufacturers have balked at only offering such sets because of the cost and because the cooperation of program producers was needed to make any blocking system recognize programs that may be objectionable.

At Wednesday’s hearing, two companies--Protelcon Inc. of Califon, N.J., and Technidyne of Coconut Grove, Fla.--demonstrated boxes that sit atop a TV set that would allow parents to block objectionable cable, VCR and broadcast TV programs by routing antenna and other video input wires through the box. But the devices won’t be available for sale for months, executives said.

Sybase Corp. of Emeryville, Calif., demonstrated a blocking software, but it can only be used in digital TV systems, which are just now being used by a handful of cable operators.

Most of the demonstrated products involved a similar procedure: To block out TV shows, a parent would push a button to bring up a special on-screen menu to the TV set. Then they would select how long to block out programs--a day or an evening, for example--then they select which channel or channels to block. Finally, they would enter a personal identification number to prevent the child from altering the selections.

The Zenith executive said the market is just beginning to emerge for electronic parental control TVs, which he said his company has tried unsuccessfully to market for more than a decade.

Still, the TV networks and program suppliers remain opposed to rating their programs and encoding them with electronic signals that would make it easier for such systems to work. The industry says legislation ordering it to comply would constitute a form of censorship and worries that there might be economic fallout from advertisers who didn’t want to be associated with programming specifically labeled as violent or sexual in nature.

Network executives say they are also concerned that the v-chip could turn into a weapon against program content of all kinds. Animal rights groups, for instance, could ask for shows about hunting to be labeled.

And the job of applying ratings would be enormous, said Dick Wolf, executive producer of the popular NBC drama “Law & Order.” It would not just amount to counting up acts of violence on a particular show, but would entail debates over whether the incidents were germane to the plot, were celebrated or reviled, and so on.

“It would take an infrastructure bigger than the Pentagon,” Wolf said.

Torie Clarke, a spokeswoman for the National Cable Television Assn., said her organization believes parents should have more control over what their children are allowed to view. However, she said the group would rather see parents get that control with the types of equipment demonstrated Wednesday, rather than having it mandated by Congress.

Still, many producers worry that even the threat of regulation has caused the networks to become more timid in programming and that a chip would accelerate the trend, creating an even wider gap between broadcast television and cable.

Times staff writer Sallie Hofmeister contributed to this report from Los Angeles.