Hah, I ordered one of these a few days ago... Can't wait to use it at Target, where there's usually about 30 TVs blaring bad pop music. Assuming I get mine first, I'll post my impressions here.

*daylia*, my nephew becomes zombified by the television, too. One day, he was playing with... those big toddler sized lego-style toys, whatever they're called. Something loud and colourful appeared on the screen, and he snapped his head up, looked at it, and froze in mid-lego-snap, looking like a photograph. I said "Hey, Max," because that is his name. Nothing. "MAX!" Nothing. He stood like that for about 30 seconds, and then I moved my hand in front of his eyes, blocking the TV. He immediately started playing, right where he'd left off. Creeepy.

Oh, and I've found a good way to cut back on television recently: I accidentally broke my remote. "You lazy bastard," you might say, but that's not it at all. I don't mind hopping up to change the channel. What the loss of the remote did for me was interrupt my "channel surfing," which I'd sometimes waste hours doing before. Something about sitting, clicking, "maybe there's some 'breaking news,' or a 'Family Guy' I've seen 40 times," or whatever. Now, I only watch maybe 4-5 hours of television (excluding dvds) a week, and that's only the programs I intend to watch.

---Lepus Rex