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I was just old enough to be on the older end to appreciate this toy and to really dig the neat tech tricks it was pulling off. Thanks for making this cool toy.

I always wondered what signaling the TV transmitter was looking for in the video stream. Was it extra data in the closed captioning area?

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This looks like the relevant patent for it: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6281939B1/en "Method and apparatus for decoding data encoded in the horizontal overscan portion of a video signal"

Good job finding it. The patient calls out two other key patents.

It also describes how the data is encoded.

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