Although television and Microsoft are two words you wouldn’t commonly associate, it seems there are some hidden plans in Redmond which might change things as we know them.

Techdirt writes that Microsoft has filed a patent request for a technology that allows notifications to be displayed on the TV set when the viewer is changing channels.

Here’s the abstract description taken from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s site:

“Techniques for presenting notifications to a television viewer in response to a channel change are described. Notification data is received and stored at a client device. A notice represented by the notification data is then displayed to the television viewer when a channel change event is detected. The notification data may also include data that indicates how the notice is to be displayed.”

The request filed by Microsoft contains an example in which the viewer is informed that his bill is overdue, but that’s not all. The size of the pop-up is proportional to the number of overdue days.

The new Microsoft technology would ensure that the notification is displayed when the viewer is watching it, but there are also some risks. For example, the notification can be configured to stay on the screen for an indefinite period of time, which means that if a movie or show was being recorded, the notification could ruin it.

WebProNews comes with an apocalyptic scenario, in which hackers can send their own notifications to the users’ TV sets, generating extremely unpleasant situations.