[by NY Post staff writer]

Someday in the future, your TV set will smell.

Now it turns out that day is not that far away.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego, in collaboration with Samsung, have developed a compact device capable of generating on command thousands of aromas, according to a paper published this week in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie.

The device is small enough to attach directly to the back of any TV set or to mobile phones, the article says.

The smell comes from solutions held in 10,000 tiny chambers in the device. A small electrical charge heats the solution, turning it into a gas with the desired smell, the developers claim.

The idea of smell-o-vision has been around since at least the 1950s — when it was tried in movie theaters — but has never caught on with consumers.

But, if the new system proves practical, advertisers would likely be the first to use it — paying extra to release the aroma of, say, baking cookies during their dessert commercials.

Researchers said they tested the new device by using two commercial perfumes, Live by Jennifer Lopez and Passion by Elizabeth Taylor.

The challenge, they said, was coming up with an electrical system that was reliable enough to zap the correct tiny chamber without setting off any neighboring aromas.

See the original post here: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/future_now_it_smell_vision_smell_rJxNP3ZkxOSRwbv3lRGmnJ