TV-B-Gone flying off the shelves

By May Wong
The Associated Press

PAUL SAKUMA / AP Inventor Mitch Altman holds up his new keychain gadget "TV-B-Gone" in San Francisco next to a television.

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A new keychain gadget that lets people turn off most TVs — anywhere from airports to restaurants — is selling at a faster clip than expected.

"I thought there would just be a trickle, but we are swamped," said inventor Mitch Altman of San Francisco. "I didn't know there were so many people who were into turning TV off."

Hundreds of orders for Altman's $14.99 TV-B-Gone gadget poured in Monday after the tiny remote control was announced in Wired magazine and other online-media outlets. At times, the unexpected attention overloaded and crashed the Web site of his company, Cornfield Electronics.

The keychain fob works like a universal remote control — but one that only turns TVs on or off. With a zap of a button, the gizmo goes through a string of about 200 infrared codes that control the power of about 1,000 television models. Altman said the majority of TVs should react within 17 seconds, though it takes a little more than a minute for the gizmo to emit all the trigger codes.

	PAUL SAKUMA / AP The new gadget lets people turn off most TVs anywhere — for just $14.99.

Altman, 47, first got the idea for TV-B-Gone a decade ago when he was out with friends at a restaurant and they found themselves all glued to the perched TV instead of talking to each other. No one was around to turn the TV off.

The self-described geek with a masters degree in electrical engineering started tinkering full-time on the project a few years ago.

Altman remembers spending most of his childhood unwittingly captivated by TV. He quit as an adult and hasn't owned a television in 24 years.

He has tested the TV-B-Gone remote discreetly in many places, including in other countries, and says he usually gets little to no reaction from others after the background TV noise and glare disappears.

But he said he would never dare silently kill the machines in places such as sports bars, where patrons expect TVs to be on.

"I can be mischievous, but I'm not going to do anything malicious, and I don't want to make anyone's life more difficult," Altman said. "I just don't like TV, and I'd like people to think more about this powerful medium in their lives."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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