I propose a small device that would be connected between the cable and the television that would detect whether or not the screen had one of those scrolling news "crawlers" at the bottom.
If it does, it would filter those pixels causing that area of the screen to go blank (or be replaced with the image of your choice)-- zigness, Jun 17 2004 Ideally, the whole screen would be configurable. Then you could choose whether to display scrolling news or tickers along the bottom, a weather inset on the side, the Indians game above that, and your favorite soap in the middle.
(Incidentally, those horizontally scrolling news tickers are the most inefficient way of displaying headlines imaginable. They should be two or three line displays, with the headlines scrolling up or down.)-- DrCurry, Jun 17 2004 //Incidentally, those horizontally scrolling news tickers are the most inefficient way of displaying headlines imaginable.// I couldn't agree more.
Yes, I know, that's starting to step into "rant" category. Sorry, I couldn't resist.-- zigness, Jun 17 2004 Wow--how about a picture in picture box that's movable/resizable? That would take care of it.-- yabba do yabba dabba, Jun 17 2004 Oddly enough, I thought it had to do with murderous two year-olds.
Hmm.-- shapu, Jun 17 2004 How about a button on the remote to simply make the television stretch the picture vertically by an inch or so, thereby pushing the scrolling stuff off the bottom? I know I can make my computer monitor do this, don't see why it couldn't be a preset for the tv. Flip back and forth between modes at your own choosing.-- luecke, Jun 17 2004 my parent's TV semi bakes this, it is a windscreen TV with 4 picture modes, 4:3 (black bars round it, 2 zoom modes one cuts the Bottom section of the picture the other the Top, finally there is full widescreen. given this a hack within the tuner could pull the picture into which ever mode drops the scroller off.-- engineer1, Jun 17 2004 Duct Tape-- thumbwax, Jun 18 2004 Same problem as popup killers. I thought this was about bot diversion.-- dpsyplc, Jun 18 2004 random, halfbakery