FWIW, my editor has its own background color (vim in 256 color mode), so I wouldn't see the terminal background either way.
However, I like the idea in general, just not the implementation. It would be nice if modern terminal emulators (hello iTerm!) could adopt new escape sequences to do things like set a background color on the tab (like ZOC and some others support by client-side configuration).
There is still lots of room for innovation in the terminal, it's a bit sad to see progress at such a glacial pace. I'd actually pay for a terminal emulator that's fast (first priority) and then also makes my life easier with innovative features like the above.
For some reason all innovation in the terminal space seems to have died when dialup BBS went out of fashion 10 years ago. Most terminal emulators have even moved backwards and don't support ZModem anymore, which could be very useful to provide adhoc drag'n'drop uploads instead of the scp/rsync limbo that is so common nowadays.
