Posted on 10/19/2004 6:48:37 PM PDT by leadpencil1
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A lot of people love television but apparently some people have had enough of it, too. A new keychain gadget that lets people turn off most TVs - anywhere from airports to restaurants - is selling at a faster clip than it would take most people to surf the channels on their boob tubes.
"I thought there would just be a trickle, but we are swamped," the inventor, Mitch Altman of San Francisco, said Monday in an interview. "I didn't know there were so many people who were into turning TV off."
Hundreds of orders for Altman's $14.99 TV-B-Gone gadget poured in Monday after the tiny remote control was announced in Wired magazine and other online media outlets. At times, the unexpected attention overloaded and crashed the Web site of his company, Cornfield Electronics.
The keychain fob works like a universal remote control but one that only turns TVs on or off. With a zap of a button, the gizmo goes through a string of about 200 infrared codes that controls the power of about 1,000 television models. Altman said the majority of TVs should react within 17 seconds, though it takes a little more than a minute for the gizmo to emit all the trigger codes.
Altman, 47, first got the idea for TV-B-Gone a decade ago when he was out with friends at a restaurant and they found themselves all glued to the perched TV instead of talking to each other. No one was around to turn the TV off.
The self-described geek with a masters in electrical engineering started tinkering full-time on the project a few years ago with help from money he had earned from a company he co-founded, data-storage maker 3ware Inc.
Altman remembers spending most of his childhood unwittingly captivated by TV, watching shows like "Gilligan's Island" and others, whether they were entertaining or not.
He quit as an adult and hasn't owned a television since 1980.
He has tested the TV-B-Gone remote discreetly in many places, including in other countries, and - with the exception of Hong Kong - says he usually gets little to no reaction from others after the background TV noise and glare disappears.
But he said he would never dare silently kill the machines in places like sports bars, where patrons expect TVs to be on.
"I can be mischievous, but I'm not going to do anything malicious, and I don't want to make anyone's life more difficult," Altman said. "I just don't like TV, and I'd like people to think more about this powerful medium in their lives."
Altman does not contend that all TV is bad. "There's just so little time in all of our lives," he said. "Why should we spend so much time on something we don't necessarily enjoy?"
So beware: Next time you're at a Laundromat or restaurant, the blaring TV might just mysteriously turn off.
You can give one of those watches to your teenage kid with instructions to use it to surreptitiously turn off any videos his leftie-lie-beral teachers are trying to use to brainwash their students.
Teachers go ape-schumer trying to finger out who's doing it...
All you have to do is come knock on my door and ask me to turn it down. :)
If he pulled that here, he'd be eating that key chain. Now, who's mischievous?
I am a stealth tv turner-offer. When I am at anyone's house for a visit and I am left alone in a room with a blaring tv, I turn it off. Usually no one notices and everyone's life is suddenly enhanced by the cessation of noise and media/culture barrage.
I like that approach.
Cornfield Electronics? I'm all ears.
No way ... if it was that bad they should have just bought it from him at retail and told him to go buy another model of TV
We are witnessing the seeds of anarchy sown by technology. Hehehehe.
Correct!
Elvis gave a gold-plated TV killer to President Nixon too.
No...Not unless you can point it through a window with a line of sight to his TV.
Just your standard point and click interface.
| Flat-screen TV emits international distress signal (Michael Moore on when distress signal started?) |
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| Posted by twntaipan On News/Activism 10/19/2004 12:28:58 AM CDT · 21 replies · 708+ views CNN (from Reuters) ^ | October 18, 2004 EUGENE, Oregon (Reuters) -- TV hardly gets much better than this. An Oregon man discovered earlier this month that his year-old Toshiba Corporation flat-screen TV was emitting an international distress signal picked up by a satellite, leading a search and rescue operation to his apartment in Corvallis, Oregon, 70 miles south of Portland. The signal from Chris van Rossmann's TV was routed by satellite to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Base in Virginia. On October 2, the 20 year-old college student was visited at his apartment in the small university town by a contingent of local police,... |
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See posting #33. It has a link to the article. It was a $10,000 fine and not jail.
Thanks for the link. I heard it on TV I wasn't sure if I got all the details correct.
Thanks for the link. I heard it on TV I wasn't sure if I got all the details correct.
Elvis's remote was a bit louder.
The guy lived in Oregon. His TV was sending out an emergency SOS. Authorities tracked the signal to his apartment. Toshiba (I think) is replacing hia flat screen TV at no charge
I live in an apartment and the guy next door has started messing with my T.V.; I've been told that if I found the big fat ground wire in the breaker box for his apartment that I could loosen it and get his attention, should I believe this?
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