Would You Wear Video Glasses?

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to EE Times, an Israeli company has developed a personal video display device that looks like a simple pair of glasses. You can use these glasses with various sources, such as a portable media player or your cell phone. This technology promises to eliminate the dizziness phenomenon usually associated with this kind of display. And with these glasses weighing only about 40 grams, you'll feel that you're viewing a 40-inch screen from a distance of 7 feet." Video screens embedded into eyewear isn't that new, but the footprint of these is smaller than what I've seen before, making them cooler to wear on the subway.

Comments

Re:Wear them on the subway?

[Anonymous Coward]

why funny? if they're still transparent, i think you could give the driver lots of useful information without him having to look away from the road :)
and it'll probably bee cheaper than embedding it into the window

I'd use them

[slusich]

I'd use them, but only in certain places.
Certainly never on a subway or any other public place where you should be alert to your surroundings. They'd be ideal for taking on a trip to use on a plane or in a hotel room.

HD version of this would be nice.

[emj]

This is clearly a step forward and will lower the cost of wearable screens, we can just hope it's not as much vaporware as it sounds. I also have some issues with the whole wearable screen tech business: Every "videoglasses" producer has always promised 40" TV, for as long as these have been sold, but usually the let down is quality. You know a laptop 12" screen can also seem to be 40" as long as you have it close enough, and a laptop screen has better resolution.

I've used the Sony version that you plugged into a TV, and that version was very low res, about 400px in height. I'm not sure you can make "affordable" wearable displays with any good resolution. Even though Mirage, the makers of this device, are using a single OLED/LCD it still going to cost a lot to produce enough pixels to satisfy the eye.

And I can't figure out how my glasses are going to fit in there.

Maybe ...

[Hektor_Troy]

Depends on a few things ...

First of all - they're hideous. Few types of (sun)glasses look good on people (depends on the facial shape amongst other things), so a one design fits all is out the window if you expect people to use them in public.

If I can get some that fit outside my own glasses, that'd be nice. Even better if you could adjust each screen to somehow present an image that apears sharp to whatever's wrong with your eyes. Not sure you can do that though ... present an image that looks blurry to regular vision, but sharp to someone not wearing their glasses that is.

40 grams is also a bit on the heavy side. My own glasses weigh 22 grams, and they can be a bit bothersome in the long run. Of course, these probably aren't meant to be worn 16 hours a day anyway, so maybe it's not a problem. Hard to say without trying.

Since they're obviously meant to improve your sense of "being there" in whatever you're watching (movie, tv, game), you'd think it'd be logical to use Dolby Surround head phones with them. However most ear covering headphones are uncomfortable to wear through a movie when you're wearing glasses, as the "legs" (no clue what they're actually called) tend to get mushed between the ear and the skull, which is rather annoying over the course of more than maybe 45 minutes in my case.

I suppose my answer to the question in the title is a big fat maybe

they tried too hard..

[ZSpade]

I think they tried too hard to make these look like regular sun glasses. I think they should add borders to the lenses, or something to proclaim that "No this guy isn't just wearing the most retarded sunglasses you've ever seen, but actually a nifty piece of technology."

They got the something light right, but until they can actually make these look like fashion wear, they shouldn't even try. It's like trying to make the ipod look like an earing. It would be big clunky, and ugly, but just trying to make the ipod look like an ipod has created a fashion trend in and of itself.

So far the only piece of wearable technology that can actually add cool points is something that's centuries old - The Wrist Watch

40 Inches at Seven Feet?

[setirw]

If the size of perceivable objects diminishing with distance is an inverse square relationship (as it is with light intensity...)

Forty inches at seven feet is equivalent to approximately one inch (.81 inches, to be precise) at one foot, which isn't that big. It'll fill most of field of vision, though (hold a ruler one inch from your eye and compare).

Converting

[houghi]

you'll feel that you're viewing a 40-inch screen from a distance of 7 feet.

40 inches is about 1 meter. 7 feet is just above 2 meters.
It does not talk about resolution. I have 2 x 1600x1200 20", so 40" would be 4 times as large. However when I stand 7 feet away, it looks about 4 times smaller, making it standard.

So I guess they are saying it looks like a normal screen. They could have also said that it looked like a movie screen screen where you sit in the back of the teater.

Oh and 40 grams is about 1.4 ounce.

Think of the possibilities!

[Ruff_ilb]

If this really were JUST like a simple pair of glasses, you could potentially do all sorts of things; coupled with a video scanning device, you could flip through a book, much faster than you could read it, and then google it from your glasses. Heck, you could get a HUD for real life, or zoom in on a far away object... especially with the shrinking size of high-resolution cameras, the possibilities seem almost endless.

I'm sure the military would be interested in some applications too.

hm

[piratePenguin]

Combine that with Apple's "display watches YOU" idea, add some software to figure out what part of the screen the person is looking at, add a button to click, connect it up to a (small, wearable) computer, and that would be a very cool computer.

Issue in the past with such devices: eye injury

[Cherveny]

I used to work for a company that had, as one of it's products, several similar type heads-up type displays (around 1995 or so). The problem we ran into with all our models, prolonged use (a couple of 8 hour shifts, a few days in a row) would start to cause eye strain. We eventually had to pull all the products from the market, because the risk/reward ratio for using them was just not worth it. I'd be curious to see if the next generation of such devices still have similar issues.