Video glasses: the long transition from sci-fi to reality

Mobile TV is one of those technologies that’s been rattling around for a good few years without yet making much impact. The problem it always comes up against is that mobile gadgets are meant to be small, but screens have to be big enough for comfortable viewing.
Video glasses are one potential solution, and judging from the evidence on display at CES this year it won’t be long before they provide an inconspicuous, comfortable way of watching TV and DVD while on the go.
Previous attempts have generally been bulky, odd-looking and the picture size and quality has been little better than you would get from a mobile phone. The Lumus glasses pictured above are not exactly indistinguishable from standard shades, but you wouldn’t get laughed at on the train.

Where they really come into their own is with the picture size. Lumus has used a miniature projection system that beams the image onto the lens – unlike most of its rivals, which use small LCD screens. This fools the brain into thinking that the picture is being projected onto whatever is in the field of vision – turning my head towards the conference centre wall in the middle distance, I appeared to be looking at a 20m-tall screen. It’s quite disconcerting at first, but after a couple of minutes it felt natural and comfortable.
The glasses shown here are expected to go on sale towards the end of this year. The price will be in the $300-$500 range, but this will fall if mobile phone networks choose to subsidise them (as they do with handsets), to encourage the take-up of mobile TV