For reasons that escape me there seems to a trend for standby lights on home electronics to be blue "searchlights". This "feature" is especially annoying when the electronics are in a bedroom or the home is a one room flat for that matter. Some manufacturers helpfully allow these to be turned on, but not all, and not on the JVC LT-39C740 I recently bought from Currys.

A bit of black will fix the problem but often, like on the LT-39C740, the same window for the blue light is also the window for the remote control sensor so the black tape solution also disables the remote control. However, with a bit a lateral thinking there is a solution. Remote controls use infra-red so adding a filter to allow infra-red only is another solution. The trend for using blue LEDs helps now. A red filter will likely extend down to infra-red but certainly block blue light.

Luckily Quality Street chocolates have a transparent wrapper that is a nice deep red. I found that 2 layers of this still allowed the remote control to work from across the room while reducing the blue light to near zero. Pulled tight around the square block that contains the blue LED and remote sensor and secured with a bit of sellotape round the back, out of sight, the fix is near invisible. Only the very observant would notice the the square block that contains the blue LED and remote sensor is purple black rather than the same black as the rest of the plastic surround.

A free fix and you get to eat the chocolate. What could be better?