Display Privacy Smart Glasses

3D televisions with active glasses work by shutting off each eye in rapid succession based on a pulse coming from the TV. Due to persistence of vision, each eye sees one continuous image, and they are collectively reconstructed in the brain into a 3D image. Take this application and modify it such that both eyes are shut off simultaneously according to a random pulse synchronized from the monitor. For each "on" pulse, display a random selection of pixels from across the entire image, and for each "off" pulse display garbage data. Over a short series of pulses, the entire image should be displayed during the time the display is "on". To an observer not wearing the appropriately keyed glasses, it would just look like snow, but to somebody with glasses that are timed to match the "on" pulses, the display would be perfectly clear.

In addition to enhancing privacy for personal displays, this could be used with wireless glasses to distribute information visually to a restricted group of people in a public space. While it's unlikely to provide much by way of actual security--somebody could probably record all the frames with a video camera and deduce which are the good ones after the fact--it would still be useful for situations where the information is only of significant value in the short term.