TV Charater Overlay - food for thought

[Wayne <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hiyall,
Came across these the other day (http://www.decadenet.com/) the BOB-3
units... which have a ttl level (may be wrong) serial port on it - video
in - video out.

Basically a character generator on a "simm"
Now - these ethernet -> serial ports that have been talked about, how
much of a challenge is it to get something like that to drive this
module and therefor up pop messages on your tele...

I'm making a few assumptions here
1st off, my freeview box, when I turn it on, makes the tele jump to the
correct channel and therefor you are watching whatever channel the box
was left on.
2nd,  I /think/ (Haven't played for a while) that my tele also puts out
(on the scart connector) the channel that the tv was on /before/ you
changed to the scart channel. I dont know if this is correct for all
tele's but am sure this is the case on my Toshiba.

So... with a bit of 'electronic wizardry' I was thinking along the lines
that the video source for these 'bob-3's is the output of  the scart of
your tele. These programmable ethernet-> serial adapters accept your IP
data and 'as if by magic' you have this network accessible display thing
that will overlay your programmed text onto whatever you are watching on
the tele.

The coding of the ethernet devices I could probably do - its the
electronic bits that would be my problem.

Thoughts anyone? Has it been done before and I now have another wheel??

Wayne.

( oh - all designs are open source as long as whoever makes one - does
one for me too at no extra charge :)