UITableView section with clearColor background?

if I understand it, you want a completely clear tableview and tableview cell so you can see the background of your view controller.

You can achieve this by setting the tableview as having no background

tableview.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
tableView.opaque = NO;
tableView.backgroundView = nil;

and also the cell

cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]

if you also want the section to be transparent, you can use this method:

- (UIView *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView viewForHeaderInSection:(NSInteger)section {

to make a custom view (for example create an image view with a transparent .png for the background)

I hope I understand your question correctly.

edit after clarification

to give the appearance that the cells stop before going underneath the section header:

make a class that is a subclass of uitableview with this ivar:

@interface CustomTableView : UITableView
{
        CAGradientLayer* maskLayer;
}

obviously this will create a gradient but if you wanted you could either tweak it or use CALayer and instead of programmatically creating the mask, create a .png with the correct width/height of your section header.

ANYWAY: if you use the CAGradientLayer:

- (id)initWithCoder:(NSCoder *)coder
{
    self = [super initWithCoder:coder];
    if (self) 
    {
        [self setupGradients]; //call your method
    }
    return self;
}

- (void)setupGradients
{
    [self addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"contentOffset" options:0 context:nil];

    */ ***** if you choose to use CALayer instead of CAGradient ****** */
    //maskLayer = [[CALayer layer] retain]; 
    //maskLayer.contents = (id) [UIImage imageNamed:@"maskLayer.png"].CGImage; 
    //maskLayer.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor].CGColor; 
    */ ***