Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer

Head-mounted displays (HMDs) are odd devices. They're helmets or glasses you wear on your head that show you a display that, if scaled back, would be the equivalent of a very large screen seen from a distance. Despite the obvious fashion ramifications, back in the 90s, they were the harbingers of virtual reality, and the idea of going into the Internet with a helmet on seemed like the future. Now, they're little more than novelty items. Still, with its OLED screens, 3D support, surprising comfort and excellent picture, the Sony HMZ-T1?is the best HMD I've seen. Unfortunately, with just a single HDMI input and no other options, a separate processor that needs to be plugged into a power outlet, and a $799.99 (direct) price tag, it's still a novelty, and not a good HDTV replacement unless you want a big screen in a really, really tiny space (that only you can see).

Design
The head-mounted display itself looks like a very bulky visor, glossy white and framed in matte black. A padded nosepiece, forehead piece, eyepieces, and headphones make it feel comfortable. A blue light below the front-and-center Sony logo indicates that the display is on, and is showing a picture. Two sliders under the HMD adjust focus, and a direction pad with a Menu button, volume controls, and a Power button sit to the right of them, on the underside of the visor.?It weighs a solid 14.8 ounces, though, so it's not exactly baseball-cap light.?

The HMD plugs into the processor unit, a 1.4-by-7.1-by-6.6-inch (HWD) deck that weighs 1.3 pounds and looks like a miniature Blu-ray player. The processor has no physical controls, but the front holds the HMD output and around back there's an HDMI input and outputs. The Personal 3D Viewer only accepts HDMI, so if you want to connect your Nintendo Wii or a VGA/DVI-only PC, you're out of luck (or have to get an adapter for the DVI output). You can watch any high definition content through HDMI, though, including TV from a cable box, Blu-ray discs, and gaming on a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or PC if it has HDMI-out. Because of this, it's a working display for a small living space, but you can't take it anywhere and watch anything without cable juggling.

Picture
Sony claims the Personal 3D Viewer shows a picture equivalent to viewing a 750-inch projection screen from 65 feet away. Remarkably, that seems to be an accurate assessment. The simulated screen isn't simply because two ultra-sharp OLED screens are right in front of your eyes, but because they're arranged in such a way to give the impression of depth. I'm nearsighted, and when I first put the device on it, the picture was extremely blurry. It became clear only after I put on my glasses, meaning my eyes were registering these small screens inches from my eyes as several dozen feet away. It effectively offers a much larger picture than a 42-inch HDTV viewed from a couch eight feet away.

It accomodated my glasses surprisingly well, with no pinching against my face. Getting the Personal 3D Viewer to fit comfortably on your head can take some work, and it's not something you can easily slip on and off. Two head straps are connected to an arm on either side which can pull in or out of the body of the headset. First you have to adjust the straps, then you need to push the arms in until it fits snugly. This makes the headset feel more comfortable and secure on the face, but it means putting it on and taking it off is a small chore.

I played Mass Effect 3 and Motorstorm Apocalypse on the Sony PlayStation 3 through the Personal 3D Viewer, and I was suitably impressed. The cut scenes in Mass Effect 3 looked relatively cinematic, as if I was playing the game in an empty movie theater. Even without 3D, the graphics offered a surprising amount of depth, because the limited plane of focus made the foreground or background look sharp while its opposite number is blurry. When the camera settled on main character Commander Shepard and the background was out of focus, it really looked like Shepard was popping out of the screen.

The 3D effect in Motorstorm Apocalypse was also impressive. The game showed excellent 3D depth and sense of speed, and the two screens in the Personal 3D Viewer showed separate enough pictures to produce a 3D image. Movies showed slightly less intense 3D separation, but with all 3D content it depends on the material.

For a 2D movie, I watched the Blu-ray of Priest, and was satisfied with the picture. We can't perform our usual lab tests on the Personal 3D Display because of its form factor, but black levels looked appropriately dark and highlights looked bright and detailed. Colors seemed accurate, and a handful of picture settings let you adjust it.

The Personal 3D Viewer has "simulated 5.1-channel surround," but in practice it just has stereo earphones and dubious audio processing. In trying to reproduce the ambient 3D noise in Mass Effect 3, the headset presented some occasionally bizarre stereo separation, and never quite gave me the impression of being surrounded by crew members and humming engines. Additionally, the headset only accepts LPCM stereo and 5.1-channel sound; if you usually use the more common Dolby 5.1 or DTS 5.1 audio tracks, you'll have to tell your Blu-ray player to output in LPCM, not Dolby or DTS (most Blu-ray players automatically output in one or the other, depending on the disc).

As a standalone product, the Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer is an impressive example of a head-mounted display that can produce a great picture and really give you the impression of watching a huge movie screen. However, it's still a $800 device for one user and one HDMI source at a time. The lack of non-HDMI inputs mean you're limited in what you can watch without getting adapters, the separate processor and power requirement keep it from being portable, and the straps keep it secure on the head at the cost of making it easy to put on or take off. If you live in a very tiny, closet-sized apartment it's a great, inexpensive way to have a big-screen HDTV for yourself, but it doesn't offer a feasible replacement for an actual HDTV that takes multiple sources and lets many people watch.

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