An alternate display content controller provides a technique for controlling a
video display separately from and in addition to the content displayed on the operating
system display surface. 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 in addition to the operating system
desktop. An alternate display content controller may be incorporated in either
hardware or software. As software, an alternate display 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 and capable of supporting dedicated applications. The alternate
display content controller may also include content and operating software delivered
over the 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 parallel
graphical user interfaces to be displayed simultaneously.
