Product: Television: Split
4-Way Television   (+4, -3)  [vote for, against]
Multi-viewer TV

This is an expansion of Mickey the Fish's 'Your Eyes Only Screen' idea. If a family is sat together watching TV, and they all wanted different channels, they could all wear special glasses. Each pair of glasses would pick up different frames (eg pair 1 would pick up frames 1,5,9,13,17,21). They could wear headphones for sound, or maybe even use the same principal in an aural sense. Obviously, if only two people were watching, then the quality would be better, because each person would be getting about 12 frames each.

Persistence of vision would ensure reasonably good picture quality.

It would saves loads on TV's and electricity bills, and stop the usual family remote control/TV arg
-- redleader, Jul 17 2000

Sony glasstron http://www.sel.sony...tronrtm/index.shtml
For those of us unable to casually peruse Tokyo's electronics shopping district, I think this is the kind of device [MrEsoteric] is talking about - a 3.4 ounce pair of glasses that projects an image as if seen on a screen 6 feet in front of you, for $600. It's easy on the eyes, but can be tough on your stomach. [jutta, Jul 17 2000]

Near instant blazing headaches. Ever watched a computer monitor running at a refresh rate of 43hz interlaced? TV's aren't refreshed in the same way, but you'd get the same effect. TV only shows 25-30 frames per second, and if you hacked out half or more of the frames, your eyeballs would melt and dribble down your face...
-- StarChaser, Jul 21 2000


I think what he means is the the 4-way tv would show 4 interlaced 60 fps (field per sec) streams, so the total field rate would be 240 fields per second. This would require enough memory to buffer 4 fields, which is trivial today. Dunno if the LCDs could be made to flicker quickly enough or if the polarizers would be good enough to have minimal bleed through of the other channels.
-- johng, Jul 21 2000


The sound problem is fairly easily addressed. Headphones are always an option, but MIT has created a device that can direct sound much in the same way that a flashlight directs light. In fact, with the device (looks something like hand-held satellite dish) you can pinpoint the various soundwave VERY accurately (enough so, that people sitting next to each other wouln't hear each other's sound)
-- Sean, Jul 21 2000


The sound problem is completely trivial...if they're going to be wearing goggles anyway, add headphones.

I don't think it's possible to do 240fps. Memory isn't the problem, the display would be. Would probably be cheaper to have four TV's.
-- StarChaser, Jul 21 2000


Sorry to rain on all these great ideas, but if you're going to wear the lcd frame demux glasses anyway - why not just make them a personal tv - those of you who might think that is a little far fetched should cruise around (sp) Aki - Habara. - I'm sure that is spelled wrong.
-- MrEsoteric, Oct 13 2000



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