Taipei - A Taiwan company on Thursday unveiled a gadget to protect children's eyesight by warning them not to sit too close to the TV set.
TV Magic Tool (called Dian Shi Bao or TV Darling in Chinese), invented by the Can-New Co. Ltd., is a stand-alone alarm system placed on top of a TV set. It uses a passive infrared (PIR) sensor to judge the distance between the TV set and the TV viewer.
'Parents can pre-set the allowed distance between the TV and the TV viewer. When the child sits too close, the TV Magic Tool shouts 'My friend, you are sitting too close!' If the child does not move back, it will give the warning two more times before shutting off the TV,' Can-New Manager Ouyang Ho said.
Can-New has acquried a patent for his invention from Taiwan and China, and is looking for an agent to market TV Magic Tool, priced at 3,600 Taiwan dollars (450 U.S. dollars), in Taiwan and abroad.
Ouyang hit upon the idea of inventing TV Magic Tool three years ago when he realized his eight-year-old son was near-sighted due to watching TV.
'Now that we have TV Magic Tool, I no longer need to tell my kids to sit back from the TV. Because when they watch TV together, they tell each other to sit back from the TV because if one kid sits too close, the TV will shut down and they have to switch it on again,' he said.
Opthomologists say that the ideal distance for watching TV is to sit six metres away from the TV set and the TV set should be lower than the eye level.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
Your Talkback on this Story