Long Term Effects of Gizmodo CES Prank

theodp noted that someone from Gizmodo brought a TV-B-Gone to CES and used it to turn off a wall of monitors during demos. Funny yes, it earned him a ban for life and may have repercussions to other bloggers struggling to be treated as equals with traditional journalists in the future. But also this might lead to a future with encryption on remotes.

Comments

Re:First Post!

[dpete4552]

How did he get caught? Are you kidding me? He posted a video of himself doing it, proudly stating his first and last name in the intro to give himself credit.

Re:First Post!

[Tristanjh]

http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-the-meanest-thing-gizmodo-did-at-ces

Re:Encryption on remotes?

[The_Angry_Canadian]

No need for Electrical tape. Most of those tv have a serial port in the back where you can send commands to the LCD and, in most case, you can lock the input from a remote control. On some LG models, there is a plug in the back for an IR extender and if you plug a 3mm connector in that, it locks the front IR receiver... Hell, most LG tvs have a SET ID that you can set, hook them up over serial cable and brodcast a command to all of them and they will only anwser if it's there set ID in it. You dont really need those IR anyway.

Re:Encryption's going a little too far

[FuturePastNow]

According to the story, Gizmodo was there under actual press credentials, not the second-class blogger pass. And I haven't heard of any other pranks, so don't go blaming a whole "underclass."

This was no big deal. They should ban the guy who did it and move on.

Re:Well if the blogger's aren't willing to act...

[sqlrob]

We all know Professional vetting always prevents bad things from happening or resolves them quickly

Re:Electrical tape

[Jester998]

Or if the remote IS the demo (think of those Logitech 'Harmony' remotes).

Presenter: "So here we have this cool multi-device touch-screen remote, and we've programmed it to control this entire home theatre. If we press here, we change the channel..."
Audience member: *activates TV-B-Gone*
Presenter: "Hmm. Just a minor glitch..."

It could definitely have measurable financial & credibility impact on the presenters.

Re:A smart company would put a switch on the back

[Oktober Sunset]

Would be useful for parents of fat kids too. Make the chubby little fucks get up once in a while.

Re:Oooo, you just gave me an idea

[fyonn]

to be fair, apples allow you to pair the standard apple remote with the computer, so only that one remote will control it, precisely to avoid that issue...

dave

Presentation which will be repeated...

[Joce640k]

...on the hour, every hour, for the duration of the show.

Re:Yes...but how many people have serial cables?

[0xygen]

It is normally not a PC though, there are dedicated AV control systems out there (AMX, Crestron et al).
Being a control systems programmer, I happen to know many of the sets at trade shows, especially AV trade shows, are under RS232 control!

Often this is because of the impracticality of the remote - many only have a single on/off button on the IR remote.
You press it, half of the displays turn off.
You press it again, some of the display toggle from on to off, some toggle from off to on.
You end up using a rolled up sheet of paper to go around each one to set it on / off.

Unfortunately not many of the models have the ability to lock the IR out via the serial port!

Gizmodo Sucks

[Apreche]

Earlier this year Gizmodo pulled a prank on supposed sister-site Kotaku, putting the infamous and inappropriate tubgirl image to the Kotaku front page. After that I pretty much stopped reading, and lost all respect for, Gizmodo and it's writers and editors. Apparently that was justified. Maybe they should think about exactly why Engadget is kicking their asses.

Be careful with this

[name_already_taken]

Try moving strong magnets across your c.r.t. displays, its fun!

This is only safe with weak magnets.

Neodymium magnets, such as those you can salvage from hard drives, can not only magnetize the shadow mask, they can permanently distort it. Degauss cycles will not fix that - the only way to repair a monitor damaged in that way is to replace the picture tube.

Do this in a retail environment and you may find yourself talking with the police.

Re:Be careful with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Degauss cycles will not fix that - the only way to repair a monitor damaged in that way is to replace the picture tube.

Not really, you can hand-degauss it by rapidly waving the same magnet over the spot many times, while gradually moving away from the screen. The spot will still be noticible by graphic designers, though. This will earn you a restrain order from CRTs.

Re:Be careful with this

[name_already_taken]

No, sorry, that's incorrect. You don't understand the problem that needs to be repaired in this case.

You are correct that it is possible to hand-degauss a seriously magnetized shadow mask, in fact there are degaussing coils sold specifically for TV repair people to do just that when the built-in degaussing coil around the picture tube is not strong enough to remove severe magnetism left in the shadow mask. I've done it myself back when I used to repair television sets in the 1980s.

You cannot degauss out a bent shadow mask, because the problem is not residual magnetism left in the shadow mask, the shadow mask is physically deformed by a neodymium magnet. You can't fix that with a magnet, you can only make it worse.

And here's a link to the video

[Kabuthunk]

To save people a few seconds of having to google stuff or whatnot, here's a link to the video in question on Youtube.