A Little Bit of Mischief In Your Hands

By David Fishman

Today, I am going to tell you about a devilish little device I stumbled upon a few months ago.  I had been keeping it a secret, but I finally feel I have found an audience trustworthy enough with which to share its secrets.  It is affectionately called TvBGone and that’s what it does, it turns a TV on or off.  Exciting, right?  No?  But you can make it exciting; this device comes programmed with almost all TV codes in use allowing you to turn off over 90% of TV in North America. I bet you’re still wondering “so, that’s what my remote is for?”  Well, here is where your devilish side can take hold.  Imagine walking into Best Buy and as you walk past the rows of TVs, they all begin to turn off one by one.  Then imagine the dumbstruck look as Geek Squad tries to figure out the problem.  They might finally come to the brilliant solution of pressing the power button, but with the press of your finger, off it goes again. The device is extremely portable and easily concealable, as long as you can get within 20-50 feet of the TV’s IR port. The most famous or maybe infamous use of this device was by Gizmodo, an online gadget blog, during the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  This is basically the Mecca of conventions for anything electronic.  It makes New York’s Digital Life look like a Fisher Price Convention. A quick YouTube search for TV-B-Gone and Gizmodo will reveal all the hijinks possible with such a device.  A word of warning, though:  use some common sense and discretion with this device because with great power comes a heck of a lot of fun.  Gizmodo was banned from CES for life for their actions, but a lot of the companies there thought it was a great joke.  Now for any of you still interested you can purchase it from www.tvbgone.com.  They have a $20 keychain model (Pictured) and a $50 model, which has twice the range, but is mocked up to look like an iPhone. To get $2 off, use the coupon code “hijinks.” In my opinion, if you have right sense of humor and feel like freaking out your friends this is a great little toy. Just please don’t use it on campus.  I’m in enough trouble as it is.