Slashdot Mirror
Practical "Smell-o-Vision" System Being Developed
cylonlover writes "Researchers have managed to create a proof of concept Smell-o-Vision device potentially capable of pumping out thousands of different odors, yet small enough to fit behind a TV. The device has 200 X-axis controllers and 100 on the Y-axis that could selectively activate each of the 10,000 possible odors stored within numerous non-flammable silicone elastomer compartments."
Finally figured out how to do it.... doomsday devices can't be far behind...
just write themselves...
Good news everybody! I've recently overcome a major obstacle to my smellescope!
Am I the only person that thinks this is a terrible and possibly revolting idea?
Sweet! Now I can not only see fat people working out in HD but I can smell them sweating too!
With all the crap that's on TV now...
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Can you seriously think of any movie where you'd want to experience every smell?
$5000/gallon refill bottles, inkjet cartridge style. While a neat idea - how do they propose to co-ordinate the speed of diffusion of the smells through the room - with fans or something? Or will it become mandatory to sit exactly X distance from your TV in order for the system to work? The device should go in the remote control you keep next to your chair/couch/bed, not behind the television on the other side of the room.
Also this has the potential to backfire tremendously. While we humans are not anywhere near as dependent on our sense of smell as other creatures, smell has played a fundamental part in evolution and is wired into a very primitive part of our brains. The reaction to smell is subjective, and smells deemed unpleasant or linked to unpleasant memories will quickly lead to people ripping these devices out and throwing them away. If you think you have trouble with epileptics and certain cartoons, wait till you have people throwing up or flying into rage fits because of smells.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Every couple of years, another one of these devices is offered up for sale. Why does this keep coming around? Is there really a demand for artificial scents with every TV commercial? Do we really want to be smell-o-vision while we're watching The Hangover?
Seriously, if you think this is a great idea, please reply and tell us all why...
Wow, all these years I managed to avoid seeing the goatse.cx guy, priding myself on my resilience to clicking on random image links from friends and trolls alike, taking comfort in the fact that I could identify a shock JPG based on a few lines of pixels while the holding the clipped window at the edge of my screen, and yet... now it's all for naught.
This will make watching Terrance and Philip much less enjoyable. Double for pornography.
Smell-o-vision has already been done; Fox News sure stinks, anyway.
Bear Grylls and smell-o-vision? Better drink my own piss.
If it doesn't have a method of removing the smells, it will fail like all the others.
(You do know these things have been failing since something like the 1950s, right?)
I read the article, and it sounds like they don't have a solution for this. Heck, they even talk about using coffee beans between testing smells to act as a nasal palette cleanser. I'd guess from that little tidbit that not only have they not solved the problem, but have definitely encountered it in use and have no clue what to do.
Warning - the above link goes to Goatse.cx.
A technology that will make CSI *almost* worth watching.
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
I've seen articles on stuff like this for over a decade. They never catch on. I think it's because people don't want to be able to smell the campfire scene in Blazing Saddles or get a whiff of what a barbecued enemy smells like after you torch them with a flamethrower.
It's an amusing gimmick, but they don't seem to have solved the problems that have plagued scent delivery systems before: odors don't evaporate that quickly. Audio and video disappear the instant you stop creating them, but odors linger. That's a problem of the room, not the device.
Devices like this have been discussed hundreds of times before, and I'm not quite sure what makes this one "practical". I imagine it's some great bit of engineering that lets them carry 10,000 individual scents and deliver them quickly, and I'm sure that's a neat trick.
It might even be handy for some applications in flavor and fragrance labs: punch in a formula, get out a sample instantly rather than having to drag out all of the source materials and mix them up. That's tedious and time-consuming work, and if you have to tweak, you generally have to start over.
...want to know what Snooki smells like after a night at the bar?
I'm sorry but this sounds like and even bigger gimmick than 3D.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Just because you can doesn't mean you should do it.
Just think of all the nauseating things that will come out of a "remastered" version of Animal House.
What about perhaps a remastered "Moonraker" will freak out more than a few hypochondriac viewers during the gas scenes. Most likely spawning law suits.
It's going to end badly.
I'm not sure I'd call it practical until people find good uses
At first I thought porn! and then I thought oh god no.
Smell-O-Vision replaces television? Carl Stalling sez it will never work
(One of you will get this)
Apparently, Slashdot has been temporarily taken over by The Onion. At least, that's my only suggestion when the headlines contain both "practical" and "smell-o-vision"...
...someone would invent some sort of death clock. That would put some young whipper snappers in their place.
I work in the medical field. Believe me, you don't want this. Well, maybe some people would. Most people look better clothed yet porn thrives.
In the living room, light and sound both travel from the screen to the eyes and ears at an incredible speed, which gives us the illusion that both video and audio are occurring simultaneously, no matter where we are in the room.
However, these chemical reactions that produce odor take a bit longer to reach the viewer (smeller?). How long, I don't know. Assuming the device is centralized and not strapped to each viewer's nose, different viewers will experience the odor at different times depending on their positioning in the room. TFA also mentions that the smell of coffee beans can be used to clear an odor, but how long would this take? If the scene shifts from the sultan's filthy dungeon to his sexy perfumed harem, how would this product handle the dissonance caused by the high latency time of clearing an old odor and releasing a new odor?
I don't want to know what the Na'vi smell like in Avatar 3.
You're not even trying anymore. At least link to the goatse picture with the rickroll video pasted into the hole.
No, I don't have the link.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
200 X-axis controllers and 100 on the Y-axis that could selectively activate each of the 10,000
What happened to the other 10,000?
"I Smell Dead People"
and I'd rather not.
I anticipate the anti-media-violence crowd will crawl all over this technology like flies on shit as a disincentive for gunpowder 'n' corpses.
But nobody notices Samsung's 19" prototype transparent flexible amoled screen prototype announcement on the same site?
What would you rather have. SmellyTelly or small portable rollup/flexible displays?
All those printer cartridge makers who force you to replace the whole cartridge when you run out of just one color are salivating at the prospect of selling a replacement scent cartridge with 20000 different tanks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Without even reading the article bitchez...
... will hopefully ease off the "Smell-o-vision" joke
Why is it called a Smell-o-Vision? Don't they know what vision is? It should be called a telesmell.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082926/
With "smell-o-vision" you would avoid the need for the scrath-and-sniff Odorama card.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
... this will really start to take off once there is an application for porn.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The smells would not have to be that strong, certain odors even low level can have tremendous impact on the psychology and how it would effect emotions. However, I would like to see more investment in writers and creativity. Take a look at the latest rehash of reality shows or going back old comic books from the 20th century for ideas (latest being Green Lantern).
mfwright@batnet.com
The Goatse Guy is a right of passage.
Congratulations, where can we send your Intartubes Diploma?
You wife comes home, you change the channel and think you are fine...She enters the room and all she can smell is vagina! Nice!
I can finally feel like I'm doing shit.
Glad I could help.
All the times I watched that show, the host from time to time would comment that they needed something like this to portray to the people at home just how terrible the things they're eating were. Now he might get his wish.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
in the concentration needed of different compounds in order to smell them. Some compounds can be smelled at ppb levels while other take much more. So some "compartments" would make do with just a few mg of a compound while others might need much more. Also, the volatility and diffusivity of different compounds would make it hard to control how much gets delivered to your nose. I suppose one could heat the compartments individually as needed but the first point seems hard to overcome.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I can possibly see Food Network and other food-oriented shows possibly using this feature. Home and Garden channel too? Past that, I see limited appeal. Next thing, they'll come out with Taste-o-Vision. Do we really want people licking their TV screens?
The worst part is the name. It should be "telesmell." It's like someone saw the word "television" and assumed that the "tele" part was a reference to visual information, and the "vision" part was a reference to transmission of that information, and given those misconceptions, came up with a good new word.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is nothing practical about making me smell whatever horrible smell they'd want to send me over a TV... ever.
Ding! Ding! Ding! It's an olfactory daily double!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
do not rent the Terrance and Phillip movie
The problem with the product, is that the tv viewer isn't the one that would want this but the advertiser. They'd want to let you smell their burgers or subtly associate a minty odor with their toilet cleaning product. I don't see this as an in home product, but an in store display product.
this isn't one of them!
Not even close.
Besides, what's next? People with anosmia requiring close captioning to describe the smell?
This is an excellent example of, just because it's possible doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Me. Can't you just imagine watching the cooking channel (bacon) and smelling that (bacon) bacon? You could smell those delicious (bacon) cheeseburgers, and the barbecue, (bacon) and all the other foods they cook. Yum. Now all they need is (bacon) Wonka-vision, so I can actually taste the bacon.
All I can think of is bacon.
I guess Harold Zoid's career is over then...
get ready for a punch in the face
Next up, we have Taste-o-Vision. *Now* who wants to watch porn....
With the re-re-remake of the original Star Wars Trilogy, you can experience your favorite scenes like never before! Enjoy the musky unbathed scent of a "walking carpet"! Writhe in fear and stench in the garbage compactor! Remember the revelation of Luke's father with the smell of cauterized flash floating through your living room! Ever wonder what ewoks smell like? Now you can find out in Star Wars Smell-D!
It's easy to get smells out of a box.
Then the box eventually starts to smell like that gum your mom kept inside her purse...
Good news everybody! Not only have I invented a machine that forces you to read this post in my voice, but I've also adapted my smell-o-scope to your television so now you can smell me in all my geriatric sexyness!
There are people that cannot smell in stereo! What about them?!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I hope that commercials don't support this feature. But of course they will...
Dad: Hey kids, wanna go to McDonald's for dinner?
Kid (to brother/sister): See, TOLD you that PVR'ing McDonald's commercials was a good idea...
---
Dude (to Other Dude): Whoa, my pizza tastes like LOBSTER now!
Other Dude (to first Dude): Eww, now it tastes like cat food!
---
Kid: Mom!! Sparky keeps trying to eat the TV!
Mom: I told you not to watch TV while the dog's in the house!
---
Good Situation: Smelling Paula Deen's cooking as we watch her cook a fabulous meal. Bad Situation: Smelling Ron Jeremy's crotch while watching him taking someone to pound town.
Given how close our senses of taste and smell are, a taste-o-vision wouldn't be much of an upgrade. You're dead on with the Food Network, though. Imagine how much this would grow their audience. Instead of being told how great food tastes, you could get a great approximation by being given the smell. Texture is important, too, but this would be fantastic for the network.
I think we should focus on Scream-o-Vision. I mean it worked in Freakazoid right?
What is going to happen when I quickly zap through a few dozen channels ?
didn't this come up before, like 5 years ago? god, worst idea ever. I do not want my house smelling like whatever some jerk off broadcaster decides it should smell like.
Am I the only one looking forward to the smells of "True Blood" and "Swamp Thing"? At last, true verisimilitude to add to my blue ray HD and dolby 7.1 sound system!
http://dplay.com/audio/2000play.htm
I went to college with several people capable of generating 10,000 possible odors -- each accompanied by their own unique sound effect.
now my tv can fart.
...when someone comes up with a Smelloscope.
A rite
I want to capture smell on the set,
directors/actors will need to take smell into consideration.
As far as smell removal, you can just watch it in a wind tunnel
Right around when we were all to be partying like it was 1999? There was in the hype of the .com boom, and subsequent bust the promotional idea that this was a great idea and someone came out with a 4000 smell combo unit for the market. Nobody wanted to smell that crap, so it never sold. I think the biggest market is to test the porn industry smells, get them perfectionarily perfected and then it is no longer a proof of concept vapor ware IPO POS.
I'm looking forward to Salo!
Hopefully, this will spell the end of reality shows like Survivor. Stick a bunch of people in a remote wilderness and film them running (and sweating) through awful challenges... then transmit the result via smell-o-vision. "What's that stench?!! Oh, not Survivor again! Every time you watch it we need to whip out the air fresheners for the rest of the week. Turn it off now!!!"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Oh, I so cannot wait till this thing is hacked! Make your neighbors house reek when they have loud parties. Make all football games smell like old jock straps.
Just think of all the air fresheners, perfumes, candles, and other things that humans have created to give off artificial scent. Do they ever smell like their labels? There are only a few scant smells that have ever accurately been recreated.
I don't knock the technology behind this. I just knock humans ability to put enough proper smells into the thing to make it function and make it believable.
If it works, it makes me think of that aviation ride at Disneyland. That was always my favorite, and they did a pretty good job on the smell part of that ride. Granted they needed to recreate very few smells.
"Political 'Smell-o-Vision' System Being Developed" and thought to myself, "How hard can that be? It just needs a crap scent to work."
Bacon . . . . . and Rachael Ray!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Will they manipulate the magnetic fields so my sense of direction is altered with the images, as well?
"...and the snozberries taste like snozberries!"
I wonder if anybody would watch Slumdog Millionaire movie with the odour.. eeeeeewwwwwwwwwww
Let's see.
"Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring" - Nice! Smells like flowers.
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" - *Vomit*
"Law and Order: SVU" - *Vomit*
"Insert Crime show Here" - *Vomit*
"Insert Action Flick Here" - *Vomit*
"Insert Drama Here" - *Vomit*
"Insert Fantasy Here" - *Vomit*
"Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" Aww yeah.
Let's face it. People die a lot on television. People don't smell good when they die.
..."Practical" isn't in the top 1000.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Can anyone smell petrol?
To watch TV, you will need a smell mask (like a painters one) with a little fan powered by a battery. If you also watch 3D then you need a whole helmet.
Great. That's the last time I watch a zombie flick...
does naybody know that smell-o-vision if from the cartoon futurama? thought it was worth mentioning.
I can't believe I didn't find "Cheech" or "Chong" with my browser's search. My step-brother saw Up in Smoke in the theater when he was ten or so. Some people were smoking in front, and he said, "They have smell-o-vision!"
It's just a matter of time before movies start adding smell tracks and George Lucas has another excuse to re-release the Star Wars movies again. Hmm, "Smellies!"
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis