One of the things I really enjoy about being in my yearly holiday gift-buying mode, is that I can write about items that normally wouldn’t fall within the preview of my column. That said, I feel compelled to enlighten you about a nifty little piece of technology that really grabbed my interest the moment I heard about it.

Now I have to tell you that I don’t think of myself as a practical joker. I find no gratification in offering someone pepper flavored chewing gum, shaking their hands with a buzzer or putting artificial dog-poop on someone’s carpet. In fact, I’ve never even used a whoopee-cushion. But the TV-B-Gone ($14.99) from Cornfield Electronics (www.tvbgone.com) has uncovered that there may just be a tiny little bit of practical joker hiding inside of me after all.

Turns off MOST any TV

The TV-B-Gone is basically a tiny battery-operated remote control that has just one button on it. When you press the button, the TV-B-Gone turns off any television set within its range, which can be up to 50 feet.

Now why would you want to surreptitiously turn off a TV set? According to its inventor Mitch Altman who recently appeared on my radio talk show Computer America, one day he and a group of friends were constantly being distracted by an overhead set in a restaurant. And even though the sound wasn’t on, they found that the distraction kept interfering with their conversations. They found it to be extremely annoying but the proprietor refused to turn the set off. Altman found himself wishing that he had some way to turn the set off. It was at that very moment that the idea of the TV-B-Gone was born.

And evidently thousands of people share in Altman s original wish as literally thousands of these little devices have been sold. In fact, his first batch of over 20,000 sold out in just a couple of days. Thousands more have been sold since and the demand keeps growing. So I’d say that Mitch is on to something here.

Uses infrared LED

The TV-B-Gone uses the same kind of infrared LED found on standard remote controls. Altman has gleaned the Power On/Off codes for literally hundreds of television sets from a myriad of sources. As these codes are not readily available, Altman had to be clever. One interesting source of the codes turned out to be some of those companies that manufacture universal remote controls. As you know, universal remotes contain the function codes for numerous television set models. Altman simply set up a device to read those codes and thus began building a database of power off codes that he would eventually transcribe into his TV-B-Gone.

When you press the button on the TV-B-Gone, it can take up to 69 seconds before the TV turns off. That’s because the device has to sequentially fire off the power codes, each separated with a tiny pause between them. Altman has structured his database to lead off with the codes from the more popular TVs.

The more obscure models will eventually be powered down. The batteries are the ones usually found on computer motherboards and not really designed for this kind of use. But Altman found a way to make them work with his little gizmo.

The positive result from that effort is that they last around a year before needing replacement.

Altman says that although the current model continues to sell very well, he’s already coming up with the next version. That unit will have even more of the power off codes to even more television makes and models. He was also thinking of adding a little indicator light to let you know that it was transmitting. But he thought that anyone wanting to use it in a stealthy manner would object to a light. I suggested he add a small switch that would let the user decide to have it on or off. He liked my idea and we may see that in version 2. The other improvement will be the addition of a restart feature. Currently you must wait until the entire sequence is over. Pressing the button at any time will restart the sequence no matter how far onto its database of codes it may be. This is ideal in case you pressed the button while you were to far away from the TV and it missed the code.

But all of that technical stuff aside, the TV-B-Gone is a very clever idea. And if there is any practical joker in you, you’re going to love this thing. With apologies to Paddy Chayefsky, now when you’re confronted with a blaring TV set, you won’t have to get mad as hell since you won’t have to take it anymore.

www.tvbgone.com

(Craig Crossman is the host of the radio show “Computer America,” (http://www.computeramerica.com/) heard nationwide. Send questions to him at ccrossmancomputeramerica.com or 340 S. Ocean Blvd., Suite 4B, Palm Beach, Fla. 33480. Please include your phone number.)

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(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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PHOTO (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): CPT-COMPUTE

AP-NY-12-15-04 0619EST