Helps you decide if you should go pee now or try to hold it.
-- mrthingy, Nov 27 2001

Oh goodness, this decision depends on so many things!

Is the show any good?
will there be any entertaining commercials?
how long is the ad break?
how badly do you need to go?
will you also use the time to make a cup of tea?
is there someone else in the loo?
Do you have an empty beer bottle close to hand which you could use without ever having to leave the living room?
-- lewisgirl, Nov 27 2001


I can see my television from my toilet. Hypothetically.
-- pottedstu, Nov 27 2001


It's still there on British TV.
-- DrBob, Nov 27 2001


That little square can be misleading during the Formula 1 GP races. They have scheduled times for the ads, so the square lights up, but if there's some spectacular action happening, the ads are held back. The little square can be there for five minutes or more.
-- angel, Nov 28 2001


Little blobs in the corner of the screen (owing to the low fidelity of a TV set we had when I was a student, the blob in the corner looked like a little wriggling goldfish) are, as Rods suggests, to allow regional TV to be cued up corectly to take nationally-airing commercials.
However, [lg] is right - it depends on a whole load of other stuff.
-- hippo, Nov 28 2001


How does a TiVo know when it should take out advertisements? Could you just use a TiVo, maybe running on a 5 minute delay, to detect ads so you could know when they were coming?
-- pottedstu, Nov 28 2001


Radio Canada does this prior to le Téléjournal
-- LoriZ, Jun 05 2010


//Do you have an empty beer bottle close to hand which you could use without ever having to leave the living room? — lewisgirl, Nov 27 2001//

Either this user's name is misleading, or I am very impressed.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 05 2010


that comment may be based on ignorance of how bloody difficult it *really* is to pee into a beer bottle (and actually get some of it inside), rather than redneck posturing.
-- FlyingToaster, Jun 05 2010



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