Next time when you see someone familiar or unfamiliar persona smiles or laughs at you wherever – on the road, at office, check out whether he/she is wearing an eyepiece. If yes, then the chances of he/she watching their favourite movie or sitcom (situational comedy) are pretty high, courtesy Sony. Certainly they are not interacting with you because they are in a different world altogether!
The world renowned Japanese electronic giant has unveiled eye glasses that can show full colour video images. Yes, the day is not far off when hardly a few inches away from your eyeball, movies will be rolling! So close.
It is just 3 mm thick at the lens and weighs 120 grams. Slim and thin. It supports QVGA and has a contrast ratio of 50:1. All it means is that you will watch decent quality, grainless images on your eyescreen.
The glasses use a proprietary holographic waveguide and an optical engine made up of a LED light source and a transparent LCD panel. Video coming from the optical engine is reflected by a film in the holographic waveguide. It then bounces off a glass plate and is diffracted to the eyes by a second holographic film.
Sony technicians are working hard to slim it down further to 80 gram. Moreover, it is trying to make lenses more transmissive so that you can watch movies even in dark. Cool, cool idea, no?
What’s the price? Wait, baby. Don’t rush in. For that we have to wait another 18-24 months before Sony’s videoglasses hit the market.
Will it be popular? Good question. A recent readers’ poll on www.gizmodo.com reveals that 53.4% of those polled say that they would go for videoglasses “when the quality-price ratio is sweet enough”. Only 7.6% rejected the whole idea.
Teleglass’s TN-4N
Well, Sony is not the only one to explore. Spectacle designer Kazuo Kawasaki has come out with Teleglass’s Limited Edition TN-4N video glasses in collaboration with Masunaga Optical. Weighing 30 grams, the titanium-framed eyewear is iPod-compatible.
Connect the TN-4N to any NTSC-capable video and watch on the adjustable 640 x 480 resolution monitors. This is equivalent to watching a 45 inch screen from 2 metres away. Audio comes through the frame-mounted earphones.
For $1,150, you can acquire one of the 500 pairs available which looks like stylish sunglasses. A newer vesion is round the corner.
Qingbar GP300
Well, that’s the name of yet another videoglasses. It is the world’s first wireless videoglass because the wire-snarl was the biggest bugbear of wearers. It comes with a built-in mediaplayers. One can pack the SD card with a lot of DivX videos and watch at will. Its 432x240 LCoS display makes you feel you are watching a 5o inch screen just six feet away. By the way, it is cheaper than Sony around $400.
