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Sony Personal 3D
Viewer
HMZ-T1
The Sony Personal 3D Viewer is
technological feat in itself that actually works and through its
technological smoke and mirrors, it displays a virtual 75" OLED screen
right before your eyes. More importantly, it supports 3D and even comes
with headphones to create a true luxury home cinematic experience.
Unfortunately all this futuristic gadgetry comes at a cost which retails
for around $900AUD and if you don't have perfect vision, the product may
cause some eyestrain. It's not the most comfortable thing to put on your
head!
The contents of the Sony Personal 3D Viewer
contains the rather Tron looking headset, a HDMI pass-through box, HDMI
cable and variety of other accessories such as nose supporter, forehead
supporter, shield for outside light and a quick start guide.
Before getting the product to work, you
first need to connect it to your HDMI device such as a Blu-ray player or
a PlayStation 3 which we tested this product on. The installation is
simple. First, you connect your PS3 into the pass-through box,
connect it to the power and finally, connect your headset. Once the unit
is powered, the next step is to configure the device in order to ensure
that the device suits your vision. Once done, you're ready to experience
3D or normal 3D through the headset.
It's quite an experience seeing these virtual screens in front of you
and the quality is quite sharp, thanks to the two 720p OLED screens. The
speakers on the headset support virtual 5.1 surround sound which does a
decent job at audio. We tested a variety of Blu-ray 3D movies that
included TT3D, Lion King 3D and Smurfs 3D which looked better than our
Samsung 3D screen. Games were equally as impressive such as Gran Turismo
and Avatar.
Colours were vibrant and images were sharp,
however one downside is that the viewer still lets in outside light
sources, even with the shield. The only way around this is to use this
product in the dark but that makes using your remote a tricky aspect.
Also, to control the headset, it has a few controls on the bottom of the
headset but once again when you can't see what you're doing, things
become tricky.
As mentioned earlier in this review, the
Sony Personal 3D Viewer does cause some eyestrain. We tested the unit
with four people, two who had perfect 20/20 vision, another person who
had a lazy eye (Amblyopia) and another who wore glasses. The two people
with vision problems could not use the product to the full extent.
Firstly, the person with (Amblyopia) said
the device worked but due to their lazy eye, the 3D effect did not work
too well and once they removed the 3D viewer, they had issues with
focusing for 30 or so minutes and they blamed the brightness of the
product.
The person with glasses had to remove their
glasses to use the product and said it worked but was hoping for better
quality. Lastly, the two people with perfect vision said the quality was
impressive, although the headset wasn't very comfortable and a little
heavy to wear. This also limits how watch your virtual TV set.
Final Thoughts?
In a perfect world, the Sony Personal 3D
Viewer would be a portable device as it is a little clunky at the moment
with all the cables and if you have a small head, you will have
difficulty in adjusting it for your noggin. It's also not the most
comfortable thing in the world and it's weight, although only 420 grams
is a little heavy.
With that said, I would recommend that you
try before you buy this product to see how your eyes and vision handles
this faux visual experience. It's good but it's definitely not perfect
and I think that's the biggest problem with the Sony Personal 3D Viewer
is that it's more gimmick than practical. |
