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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Menus for set top boxes feel painfully slow to me. Maybe I'm just impatient.

But I'd love something that can overlay stuff - "now and next"; subtitles; tv schedules; 'your favourite programme is on in 5 minutes on the other side"; "Ann (who you trust) recommends this programme. Do you agree? [YES][NO]" (and it builds up a score of trust in some reviewers, enabling discovery of good programmes.

With a bit of human intervention you get some exciting possibilities. Links to (as you mention) Wikipedia would be awesome for instant checking. Some people would enjoy having tweets running on the tv.

Tie the news into a web search for other stories, or better analysis.

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Agree - why so slow?

Would be nice to see an open implementation here. I was kind of thinking that Google Tv might be that. But you really need the ability to overlay the picture. I've considered placing a low resolution lcd next to the telly and doing something myself. Something text based would be fine, it wouldn't need a supercomputer.

When David Cameron visited the Queen to be signed in, I had a live Twitter feed running and it was hilarious. I like the alternative commentary. You could also do audio overlays - over the net. Or even (though a little Orwellian) a webcam to communicate with your mates, something like hangouts.

The smart TV landscape and digital services are pretty confusing. It was tricky enough choosing between Ceefax and Teletext.

Currently I resort to a laptop for lookups and my partner claws her smartphone - which is pretty antisocial, and you miss the action.

In the past I've thought about overlaying Twitter on live TV but don't watch live TV enough these days to be particularly motivated to follow through.

I even picked up a "Breakout Board for MAX7456 On Screen Display" http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9168 which combined with a networked Arduino should be enough to get something happening.

(I am available for consulting if you want someone else to do all the fun work for you. :) )

That's pretty cool. I was thinking about something similar. Just the ability to easily blend video signals. Say two inputs on the TV.

It would be good to then plugin a 'computer' something like the Raspberry Pi, that would overlay the existing signal, or merge two video inputs (Would this be simple digitally?).

It would be nice if there was meta info available alongside a program, that you could hook into somehow, so you could do something useful with it. A cue sheet or something. Having meta info about a playing scene could be useful. Digitized credits would be nice.

The biggest issue is with the move to digital from analogue TV signals. Then you have the issue that any significant high resolution image manipulation requires decent processing power.

Even more complications arise when you also factor in control technologies like HDCP.

I was about to mention work that had been done by a guy "bunnie" and discovered it's actually advanced from a hack to an actual product:

* http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page

* http://adafruit.com/products/609

Looks like that could be exactly what you're looking for. :)

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