I use the 'mute' button on my television to spare myself from having to sit through irritating adverts which are either offensive in some way or which have, for example, an annoying song which may lodge itself in my head.

However, subduing the audible content is often not sufficient and so what I'd like is the ability to configure the mute button to filter the sound and vision down to a level where I'm receiving just enough information to determine when the advert is over - e.g. it might let through 5% of the mid-frequency sound spectrum, and a half-size low-contrast, low-saturation picture - other options are to have the sound and picture modified and crackle added to resemble a 1950's TV set, or a 1890's magic lantern showing.
-- hippo, Jan 23 2007

For visually offensive commercials, you might try the Help button on your cable remote - that causes a large menu to come up and block most of your TV screen (it disappears after a while if you don't interact with it).

Even TV's on mute aren't really mute; you can still hear the sound very very faintly; so maybe a sound amplifier can help.
-- phundug, Jan 23 2007


Some televisions used to have a switchable settings button (most computer monitors do too these days) where you can save a set of brightness/contrast settings for later use.
-- zen_tom, Jan 23 2007



random, halfbakery