This is an idea my mother-in-law espoused. The concept isn't to use a screensaver to prevent pixel burnout or whatever screensavers are designed to do. Her observation was simply that a TV screen that's turned off looks, well, boring. It's dark grey and dull. What would be nice, she thought, is to allow the owner to select a color to match the room's decor or show a lifelike bouquet of flowers or something.
Of course, once you've gone this far, the screensaver analogy applies. Why not have a virtual aquarium a la the Finding Nemo DVD? I don't want to be the arbiter of taste, so the offerings could be anything you'd find on a computer screen, whether its flying toilets, stills from the Art Institute of Chicago or Victoria's Secret models (I think, personally I'd choose to display the old 50's-era TV test pattern with an Indian chief and war bonnet).
How to do it? Heck if I know. Although not a strict necessity, it would be ideal if TVs offered a low power option that would allow the screen to display the chosen image in a way that burns less energy than displaying a broadcast channel. A number of screensavers could come with the set itself, Additional screensavers could be either kept on media that's fed into the TV, not unlike a disk drive or -- if digital TV married to the internet becomes de rigueur-- screensavers could simply be downloaded.
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Why not just leave the TV on with some pleasing DVD set to play in a repeat mode? Probably a lot simpler solution, and if there was consumer demand you can bet companies would crank out special screen-saver DVDs.
This could be modified for a TV alarm so that when a phone call comes in or a cake is baking in in the oven that comes to it's end time or when a specific time arrives for feeding the baby or any other task that must be remembered, a bright signal flashes on the TV to alert the watcher. A built in timer could be programmed from the remote to spell out the nature of the signal.
For a traditional CRT set, there will be marginal power savings displaying a screensaver VS an received program, as the lions share of power is used for the display portion of the set. It may be less for plasma and LCD TVs though.
Many DVD players have screensavers built in, mainly just a DVD symbol bouncing about a screen when there is no DVD and it is not in standby mode.I have also seen these fascinating DVDs of an Aquarium and a Fireplace for use as you suggested. These can be found in "Junkmail" catalogues and on many websites.
Oddly enought there is a reason for turning the television off, to save power. If you havea screensaver in operation then it would use a lot more power than if you were to just turn the television off.
Apart from that though it is a very good idea, and could liven up any room. Digital TV services could be used to download extras onto the TV.
I think there is a tv or computer monitor out there that is a mirror when not in use.