Sony’s Highly Personal, Surprisingly Decent 3D Viewer
..then there’s Sony’s Personal 3D Viewer HMZ-T1. The $799.99 gadget is, essentially, a high-definition video View-Master based on 21st-century technology. Instead of looking at the View-Maser’s two tiny frames of film, you look at twin OLED screens which deliver 720P video from an external source. Built-in headphones pump stereo sound into your ears.
The HMZ-T1 is unique, but it’s also a fresh take on an idea Sony first unveiled in 1997. That original version was called the Glasstron; it used LCD screens and didn’t do 3D or HD. The technology has come a long way in the past 15 years.
...
The HMZ-T1′s dual OLEDs added up to a beautifully colorful, detailed image, and the 3D effect was–this is the first time I’ve used this word in conjunction with 3D–excellent. Instead of wincing and feeling queasy, I marveled at how sharp and subtle it was. Toy Story 3 looked better than it did when I saw it in a theater in 2010. 2D Blu-rays were pleasing, too.
The viewer’s OLEDs may be dinky, but they’re so close to your eyes that they blend into a picture that looks far larger than it is. (Sony says it’s the equivalent of a 750″ screen.) The headphones block out ambient noise, making the whole effect even more enveloping.
Gaming in 3D was also a blast: As I ran around whomping bad guys in Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters, the extra dimensionality made it seem a little less like a video game and a little more like virtual reality, (Many current games are 3D-friendly; they’re identified as such on their cases.)
...
... the quality of the picture makes this a notable product. It provides the rest of the industry a standard to shoot for–and gives skeptics like me definitive proof that 3D video isn’t inherently unpleasant.
Read the full story here: