Is there an easy way to turn the display off (i.e. no "Sleep" or using blank screen saver)?

I am looking for a way (short-cut key and/or utility) to turn the display off. Essentially the same thing as turning the screen brightness all the way down.

• I do not want to use the blank screen saver ( C:\Windows\System32\scrnsave.scr /s ) as I want to use less energy and as far as I can tell, the blank screen saver does not accomplish that.
• I do not want to click the "reduce screen brightness" button 11 times, then the "increase screen brightness" button 11 times to go back to full brightness.
• I do not want to put the computer to sleep. I need it to still be running.
• I do not want to set the power button to "Turn off the display" as I already have that button mapped to "Sleep".
• I do not want to close the lid (this is a laptop).
• I do not want to remap "Sleep" to "When I close the lid" as I want the computer to stay running ("When I close the lid" is currently set to "Do nothing" and I prefer to keep it this way).
• I do not want to set the "Turn the display off after X seconds" timer to something very low. I want this to be on-demand.
• I do not want to attach a second monitor so that I can select "Second screen only" under "Project"

I have searched around and found a few sites that offer command-line utilities to download that claim to accomplish this, but I don't know if I can trust them, and some of them are just short-cuts to putting the computer to sleep or enabling the blank screen saver (neither one of which are valid options).

This seemed like something that was either already included in SysInternals, or at the very least would be a good fit for a new utility (to go in Misc.).

It would be nice to be able to configure what would trigger the monitor to turn back on (one or more of the following; at least one required):

• mouse movement
• mouse click
• key press
• timeout (in seconds)
• camera detects that child is no longer looking over my shoulder ;-)
• etc

I did see this related question on the now defunct Social.MSDN site — Turn off monitor, permanently — in particular Derek Smyth's response. Noting his objection of "The code turns off the monitor ok but then a bug causes the application to crash.", I think that's an acceptable risk. For most laptops it would be a simple matter of manually increasing the brightness via the brightness adjustment button (that I assume is on most, if not all, modern laptops). Still, I'm sure there's a way around that situation where the utility turns the display off and someone can't find that button and wants the display back on before one of the trigger conditions is met.