Much as I hate channel ID 'bugs', I did find them useful when traveling.
The 'bug' made it easier for me to learn where my favourite cable station
was located on the hotel TV service. And in the 70+ channel universe,
this is sometimes useful.

It would be fairly trivial for a PIC to modify a 'looped through'
video stream to create a 'gray box' over the logo's usual location.
The much trickier part would be having the box match the immediate
surrounding background.
If you are willing to hack into your TV, you could simply use a sample
and hold on the CRT RGB signals so that the box has the color of the
pixel immediately to the left of the bug.

True be told, you can do this with a pair of dual monostables and
a sync separator chip, and 4066 quad transmission gate.
I built an electronic cross hair cct decades ago using the above
and it would be trivial to modify the logic to do a gray square box
rather than a white cross hair.

So, would anyone here actually buy a little 'black box' with RCA in/out,
and a couple of pushbuttons (or pots) for setting the mask position?
How many have TV's where they could loop the tuner video signal out,
then back in? Otherwise you have to use the VCR tuner to supply your
video source.
What would it be worth to you? Or would you just want the PCB for your
own case & power supply (9V battery, 2 month (or so) life)

And the box can also demultiplex the NASA technical channel by
blanking out the unwanted alternate frame. During launches G2/Tr 5
carries a multiplexed video feed of cameras inspecting the shuttle,
but it's a bit hard on the brain to pick the camera you want.
Blanking the unwanted alternate frame makes for a 15Hz flickered image,
but much more watchable.

Robert

Jinx wrote:
>
> > I think it would be possible to make the logo mostly invisible but
> > it would be hella difficult
>
> I've looked into doing this and is still high on my wish list. It is
> possible in real time with micros
>
> I hate the damn things too and don't see the point of them for
> ordinary broadcasts. Sky Movies here tried it out for a week
> but got so many complaints that they took them off in a big
> hurry. Their ads say movies are "uncut and uninterrupted" and
> people took them to task on that claim with much vigour. TV3
> actually increased the size of theirs recently. The only program
> that doesn't have one is their 6pm main news and the opposition
> (TVNZ) doesn't, so I faxed them both (as I did when TV3
> introduced them many years ago) and told them again I will
> watch TVNZ's news and why. The main evening news is a
> flagship program for any network, so it seemed a good target

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