The TV-B-Gone may revolutionize television as the world knows it.
Similar in appearance to an automobile remote key-chain, this device
turns off almost any television with a click of a single button.
Once activated, the device spends over a minute flashing out 209
different codes to turn off televisions.
The mastermind behind this invention is Mitch Altman. His motivation
was to improve conversation, as the device frees people from the
attention-sapping death grip of television programming. The idea
actually came to the inventor when he was at a restaurant with some
friends. The group kept paying attention to what was on the restaurant's
television rather than each other.
Altman tested his device by shutting off televisions in public
places. At one Laundromat and café, a man was sorting clothes
and watching a show on television. Altman simply pushed the button
and the screen went black. The man did not seem to notice this change.
Another example involves the store Best Buy. When Altman was in
the store, no one seemed to notice when he shut one display-television
off after another. Occurrences such as these back up Altman's
belief that television is so much part of the environment that people
don't even notice when it disappears.
A downfall to TV-B-Gone is that it is not 100 percent guaranteed
to work. At a pizza restaurant it took a couple of times to turn
of a football game playing on a giant television. This may result
from the fact that some manufacturers of televisions have added
new codes.
Wired
October 19, 2004
CORANTE
Tech. News October 21, 2004
| 