DVD Screensaver
The bouncing screensaver everyone waits to see hit a corner, running in a browser tab. Type your own text on the badge, pick a size and a speed, and open it full screen. The badge changes color every time it touches a wall, and a counter keeps score of the corner hits.
Set up the screensaver
Press Esc at any point to come straight back to this page.
About the badge
The badge here is our own plain lettering, and you set the text on it yourself. The oval mark printed on disc players is a registered trademark, so this page does not reproduce it and there is nothing to download.
What people use it for
It is a screensaver, so most of what it is good for is filling a screen that would otherwise sit blank - and settling the old argument about whether the badge ever really hits a corner.
An idle screen for a stream
Capture the browser window, or point an OBS browser source straight at this page, and let it run behind a starting-soon or be-right-back card. Nothing is streamed to you and nothing is downloaded, so it adds no bandwidth to your broadcast, and the corner counter gives chat something to wait for.
On a waiting-room or shop TV
The routes are the ordinary ones for any web page on a television. Cast the tab from Chrome on a computer and leave that tab open while it plays, open the page in the browser your TV or streaming box already has, or plug a laptop or a phone into the HDMI port. Which of those works depends on the set, so try it before the room fills up. Put the shop or clinic name on the badge and the screen does a small job as well as filling itself.
In a presentation
Between talks, through a break, or on a second screen while people arrive. Type the event name on the badge and pick a slow speed so it stays in the background. The page holds the display awake by itself, so nothing drops to a lock screen halfway through the coffee.
How the bounce works
The badge starts somewhere random and moves at 45 degrees, because a flatter angle traces a path that almost never reaches a corner and a flat one never leaves its line. Every wall it touches flips one direction and steps the color to the next in the list. The motion is measured in pixels per second against the clock, so the badge crosses the screen at the same speed whether your display runs at 60 Hz or 240.
Frequently asked questions
Does it ever hit the corner?
Yes, eventually. The badge moves at 45 degrees, so the horizontal bounce and the vertical bounce each keep their own rhythm, and a corner only happens when the two line up. On a screen that is not square those rhythms drift past each other, so the wait is long and different on every run. The counter on the screen keeps score, so you do not have to sit and watch for it.
Can I change the text and the colors?
The text yes, up to twelve characters, and it stays on your device like everything else here. The colors run through a fixed list of eight and step on every wall hit, which is part of what makes the corner moment worth waiting for. There is no color picker.
Why is there no DVD logo on it?
Because that logo is a registered trademark and copying it onto a web page is not ours to do. The badge is our own lettering with your text on it, which is more fun anyway when the text is a friend's name.
Does it save power?
Not much, and on an OLED it is doing something more useful than saving power. A small bright shape on a mostly black screen draws very little on an OLED, and it keeps any one pixel from sitting on the same color, which is the opposite of what causes retention. On an LCD the backlight is on the whole time either way. The screen is also kept awake on purpose while the screensaver runs.