Ok, so this isn’t a monitor you’ll want to plug your new Windows Media Center into, but it can be your new modern art piece you and your drunken friends can sit around on those lonely friday nights. The designer of the TeleBlaster, Aristarkh Chernyshev, designed the TeleBlaster to “explode television”. Which brings me to ask the question, “why would anyone want to explode television?” In fact, I’m a big fan of it… television is the very technology that brought us gems like The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Baywatch and DVR’s to our culture! Maybe in a future post we can discuss the effect of television on American Society, but for now I’ll continue on about the TeleBlaster 1.0 features…

The unit can be loaded from a flash-card or from the manufacturer’s website with content that is mixed with your video feed or TV broadcast giving you “unlimited possibilities for creativity”. What makes this video tom-foolery possible is a special video processor called the, ShineBox 1.1, which uses an Altera FPGA chip (same chip I used for my DVD SDI modification) to manipulate the video in realtime. At present the TeleBlaster 1.0 works in two modes: pixel transformation mode and geometric transformation mode, but is also available with two additional options:

1. “The TeleBlaster is looking at you”. A compact video camera is mounted into the TeleBlaster, thus users get the opportunity to see themselves in every available mode;
2. “Fine Tuning of the TeleBlaster”. A special device in the form of a boxing punch ball is placed near the TeleBlaster. By striking the punch ball a user changes the signal processing mode or the form of transformation within the same mode.

The TeleBlaster 1.0 is available now from eletroboutique for $1,999.00… which makes me think why anyone would pay $2000 for this when a 42″ HD plasma costs about the same price and the video isn’t all jacked up… but who am I to question art…