ALTERNATE DISPLAY CONTENT CONTROLLER

摘要

An alternate display content controller provides a technique for controlling a video display separately from and in addition to the content displayed on th e operating system monitor. Where the display is a computer monitor, the alternate display content controller interacts with the computer utility operating system and hardware drivers to control allocation of display space and create and control one or more parallel graphical user interfaces adjace nt the operating system desktop. An alternate display content controller may be incorporated in either hardware or software. As software, an alternate displ ay content controller may be an application running on the computer operating system, or may include an operating system kernel of varying complexity ranging from dependent on the utility operating system for hardware system services to a parallel system independent of the utility operating system an d capable of supporting dedicated applications. The alternate display content controller may also include content and operating software delivered over th e internet or any other LAN. The alternate display content controller may also be included in a television decoder/settop box to permit two or more paralle l graphical user interfaces to be displayed simultaneously.