For example, if you make a snapshot when running a movie, you can choose that on Appearence as a Desktop picture. You will have a movie running as a Desktop Picture (it works on Lombard and Wallstreet at least). If you put away the DVD, the Desktop picture will become a brown box. Really Strange.
As far as I know (although my knowledge here is rather limited and based on PC experiences) this is a concept known as overlaying. Basically, the graphic card paints one area of the screen in distinct colour (sometimes pink, sometimes brown; usually one which is otherwise hard to be found in the GUI) and later says to another video card (decoder, TV card, etc.) "replace all pixels of that specific colour with your image." This takes some of the work away from the video card, and results in faster (realtime) image composition, but introduces the problems you mentioned.
Since the overlay effectively bypasses the video card, if you take the screenshot (or put it on desktop), you only end up with the pixels in the strange colour. Also, if you cover the DVD video window with another window, but painted in the right colour, you will still see the movie playing.
The concept of overlays can be implemented in one video card as well, and can as well be analogue (as opposed to digital).
Marcin Wichary
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