I was thinking last night about how to construct a 4d television and, for clarity, what I mean by 4D TV is a display that you can walk around to see all angles (front, back, sides, top) with the exception of underneath since the gubbins that make it work have to be located somewhere. My first thought was to build a cube of plasma pixels each of which could then be activated by laser using the same principle as laser eye surgery however this seemed a bit cumbersome given that you would need approximately 3 trillion lasers to give a reasonable picture quality. Then I remembered flexible OLED displays. These are displays that are so thin that they can be flexed and curved. Therefore what I am proposing is to make translucent OLED tubes with a diameter of a few mm's and a length of 1m each. Each tube has 1000 pixels along the length and just a few pixels around. The control wires run inside the tube but are thin enough not to be overtly visible. Now take a few hundred thousand of these tubes and gather them together to form a cube approximately 1m x 1m x 1m and you have a 4d television.-- The_Saint, Nov 12 2009 Example using mirrors and lasers http://www.youtube....ure=player_embeddedThis is an example of the type of display referred to as 4D [The_Saint, Nov 13 2009] Flexible transparent OLED displays http://images.googl...f%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1 [The_Saint, Nov 13 2009] So the 4 dimensions are up/down, left/right, back/front and.......??? Time? The picture moves?-- pocmloc, Nov 12 2009 ...and the inner pixels are visible through the outer tubes because... ?-- loonquawl, Nov 12 2009 ...because they're translucent? or is it a competition in which case ..."because you're worth it"-- The_Saint, Nov 12 2009 A dimension is usually an axis on which points can be located. A normal TV has two dimensions - X (left/right) and Y (up/down); your design would be three dimensional, adding a third "depth" dimension (usually called Z.)
So, what you're describing could be called a "3D Television", because its points are located along three dimensions, but not "4D Television", unless you're making a complicated physics joke. If you'd rename it to "3D Television", people would have an easier time "getting" this idea.-- jutta, Nov 12 2009 Maybe he could add a fifth dimension - paragraph breaks.-- normzone, Nov 12 2009 And a 6th dimension of arcane humour, not easily discerned since it is folded tightly up on itself-- pocmloc, Nov 12 2009 What about making a huge cylinder 3D-TV, that you sit inside of, sort of like a panoramic film (or exactly like a panoramic film!) Combine it with the LCD shutters for a real 3D experience!
I remember singing "O Canada" ("O Canada", those are the only lyrics I knew/know) at Epcot in panoramic vision (?) at the Canadian pavilion, and I'm American! (I could almost taste the 3D-like maple syrup and pancakes!)-- EdisonEnvy, Nov 13 2009 Many thanks for the inputs. I called it 4D as this is the most likely marketing name that will be used when these products start appearing. 3D, although accurate, would be confusing as 3D systems have been around a long time. True 3D might work. Either way, I have put a link up to show the type of display I mean. I have also put a link to the relevant OLED technology.-- The_Saint, Nov 13 2009 random, halfbakery