The screen-scrape method is useless to me as the unit will never ever blank. There is always something on the screen that moves.

isn't that the point? to prevent burn in? If something's moving it should stay on....

What would be more useful is if it ignored the screen changes and instead paid attention to key presses. That way I could leave it on Now and Next or Info:Track and it would blank after a certain time between input actions from me. If I wanted to look at the screen I could twist the knob or press a volume button on the remote.

That would change the way it works completely. Here's how i see it, and everyone correct me if i'm wrong on this... But it's exactly like a screen saver on a PC, it only kicks in after a certain amount of time if there's no activity on the screen to prevent screen burn in. If you don't want anything on the screen just switch to the blank visual and hold down the visual toggle to see the info you want. I for one like it the way it is... it seems like you're asking for a seperate function all together... so it would have "screen saver" and "screen blanker", the former shutting off the screen after periods of inactivity on the screen, and the latter doing so after periods of inactiviy on the buttons.