Can’t stand Snooki? Do you wish Donald Trump would just shut his trap while your channel surfing? Thanks to a new ingenious TV remote from video producer Matt Richardson your wish is now a reality. Richardson recently created a remote control which uses closed captioning to mute out the voices of TVs most annoying personalities.
The TV remote works by using closed captioning to determine when a certain person is talking, then mute the TV until they have finished.
For example your closed caption might read:
Snooki: Let’s all go out and act like idiots
Since you have programmed the name “Snooki” into your TV remote whenever the closed caption shows her speaking her voice is muted.
Since the controller is programmable you can add and remove TV personalities however you want.
The TV remote will officially debut this at the New York Maker Faire this weekend.
There’s just one qualm I have with the remote, it automatically mutes the TV for 30 seconds when the word you have programmed (even if it’s not a name) appears, which means you could miss other people talking. The controller also continues with the mute option every time the word appears which means on Jersey Shore you could just be watching a muted episode the entire time. Actually a muted Jersey Shore would make the reality TV series better, perhaps it’s a win/win situation.
One other issue also arises, since closed captioning isn’t always in real-time it’s not necessarily a perfect system and more of a work in progress, however Richardson says the first time he got it to work was “silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn’t have to hear about Kim Kardashian .”
While he doesn’t plan to commercialize the remote, creative types can make one of their own for $70, the remote code and instructions are posted here .
