How would you like to surf the web on a 320-inch screen?

Yesterday, Epson announced the Moverio, a pair of glasses which are equipped with two 0.52-inch displays, both running a 960×540 resolution.  They say it can simulate up to a 26.5-foot screen viewed from a distance of 20 meters.

Included in the package is a touchpad remote that will allow users to navigate the web, watch videos and perform other activities using the Android based device.  Unfortunately, it’s still not clear if the Android OS will be a full blown version as found on many of today’s smartphones, but they’ve managed to toss in WiFi, an SD card slot, a button to toggle between 2D and 3D images, a volume control and headphone jack.

Even though the Moverio glasses are designed to display video and so forth, they’re in fact transparent, enabling anyone wearing them to keep an eye on their surroundings.

The design is some what reminscent of geratics sunglasses.  And for good reason, since you can wear your everyday perscription glasses with the Moverio.

No word on a launch date or a price, but we expect to see them at CES in January of next year.

The 3rd Modern Warfare will rocket into retails stores and people’s door steps in just over a week’s time.  With it will come millions of strained eyeballs, a result of fixating for endless hours on a screen.

To help reduce fatigue, and hopefully increase your frag numbers, Gunnar Optiks has released a pair of Modern Warfare 3 branded eyeware.  They’re designed to increase contrast, enhance detail, reduce glare and improve visual endurance.

We tested a pair of these out a few years ago and based on our experience they’re effective, though nothing beats taking a break from staring at the screen.  Nonetheless, if you know COD fans, than you know that the latter option, isn’t, well, an option.

The COD MW3 glasses will include not only Modern Warfare 3 branding, but a limited edition Call of Duty MW3 branded carrying case and pouch.  They’ll ship with standard lenses, though if need be they can be outfitted with corrective lenses.

You can purchase them online or at a Best Buy store for $99.

4 out of 5 stars

Vuzix has been making video eyewear for a number of years now, but the technology is just now reaching the level of maturity that it is usable for the average consumer. Before now it was prohibitively expensive and the set up process was just too clunky for normal people.

I tested out the Vuzix Wrap 1200 model, which is their newest addition to their video eyewear line. Most people are probably asking themselves just what the heck video eyewear is, and rightly so. Until now, it has been mostly for nerds. Video eyewear is Vuzix’s term for glasses with screens in them. You put on the Wrap 1200 and you feel like you are watching a 75-inch television screen. The effect is pretty impressive when you first put the glasses on.

The glasses themselves are quite sturdy. They feel well-built and don’t feel cheap or overly plastic-y as many gadgets are prone to do. These feel like the expensive piece of technology that they are. That said, they aren’t so heavy that you’ll feel like you’re wearing a lead weight on your face when you put them on.

Getting the glasses set up does take a bit of work. The glasses attach to one end of a small remote control u, the other end of which has a slot for a plug for an adapter which you can use to hook the glasses up to a variety of different electronics. Vuzix is pretty generous with the adapters they include in the box, giving you component, composite and 30 pin dock connector adapters. This box serves as both the remote control and the battery pack for the glasses themselves. The glasses are powered by two rechargeable AA batteries (included in the box) and can last for around 5 hours per charge.

The composite and component adapters allow you to hook the Wrap 1200 up to almost any entertainment device that you might have sitting in your A/V rack, such as a DVD player or television. The 30 pin connector is the most useful, since it can be used to hook the Wrap 1200 up to any Apple device, including the iPod Classic, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well the glasses work. Once you plug them into a video source, the screens light up and you are treated to a high quality video screen right before your eyes (literally).

The video looked sharp and the contrast ratio and color reproduction were surprisingly good. The only disappointing aspect of the picture quality were the black levels. They weren’t bad, they were just mediocre. It’s not too much of a shock that the black levels were not the best, since having such a small screen makes it hard to keep the light from the individual pixels from bleeding together.

You can adjust the contrast and other video properties from an onscreen menu but the text is blocky and white over a blue background. Anyone who used a VCR in the 1990s will immediately know what I mean.

Video played back smoothly and there was no motion blur during the actions scenes of That Matrix or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. The Matrix (which was playing from a standard DVD player) looked as good as it does on my HD television. There were some parts of the movie that had a static background for a long period of time and I was able to see the individual pixels, but for the most part, you can’t even tell.

The fact that the you can’t really make out individual pixels is due in part to the two LCD screens that are housed inside the glasses. Each screen has a resolution of 852 by 480 pixels. For comparison, the iPhone 4’s Retina Display has a resolution of 960 by 640 pixels but it is almost twice as large.

The image quality was high from a variety of different sources. I played back clips using an iPod Classic and digital copies of movies from the iTunes Store and video from both Hulu and Netflix running on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4, respectively. Since the Vuzix Wrap 1200 comes with component connectors, I decided to hook it up to my TiVo Premiere to see how well it would handle playing back 1080p content. The text on the menus was crisp and easy to read. Video looked just as good as it would had I played it back through my HDTV.

According to Vuzix, the Wrap 1200 supports 3D. I wasn’t able to test it out, however, since the only 3D-enabled device I own is a PS3 and the Wrap does not use the same type of 3D. Because of that I can’t speak to how well the 3D works.

The Wrap 1200 also includes a pair of earbuds that plug into either side of the glasses. The audio quality is about what you would expect from any bundled headphone set– good enough, but not anything to write home about. If you are using the 30 pin dock adapter and have a more comfortable pair of headphones or just prefer to use your own (as I do), you can simply plug your own headphones into the headphone jack of your iOS device and use them like normal.

There is one other problem with the Vuzix Wrap 1200 though, and that’s the price. They cost $499 for a pair. That’s a pretty hefty price for something that you, quite honestly, won’t use all that much. Why would you use them around the house when you can just turn on the television? I can see how they would be useful for someone who travels a lot and has to sit on airplanes for hours on end– they let you block out the world and just enjoy your video.

The bottom line: The Vuzix Wrap 1200 performs well and is definitely a slick gadget, but $499 is a high price tag to pay. If they could cut the price in half, I would recommend them in a second.

Pros:

• Video looked great
• Lots of pack in items (headphones, adapters and batteries included in the box)
• Works with many iPad apps via display mirroring

Cons:

• Expensive
• You look silly wearing them
• No VGA, DVI or HDMI adapters in the box
• 90s style menus make the glasses feel somewhat cheap

You can get your own pair of Vuzix Wrap 1200s from Amazon for $499.99

By now you’ve probably amassed a stack of shot glasses.  While most are designed to serve as a memorabilia they probably all look the same and what were once a pair are no longer.  Logical, because they’re shot glasses and if you’re taking shots you’re probably getting drunk.  Which means accidents and accidents mean broken glass and misplaced items.

And while we can’t promise that any of the aforementioned misfortunes won’t happen by drinking from the Doomed Crystal Skull Shot Glasses, we can guarantee that you’ll take a fair bit of care not to lose or break them considering their overall awesome quotient.  In fact, you’ll probably become far more intoxicated if you perform your shot ritual from these since they hold a whopping 2.5oz of liquid, which is pretty reasonable considering a 1.5oz version couldn’t possibly boast the same level of detail.   And much like the movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, you might obtain super natural powers, or just sure death.

The Doomed Crystal Skull Shot Glasses will be available this September for $10 each.  However, something tells us they probably aren’t made of crystal.

Brazilian police will soon use a special pair of glasses fitted with a small camera, that can track down criminals by capturing up to 400 facial images per second.
It works by wirelessly sending the recorded images to a database that can compare up to 46,000 points on a face, known as biometric data, and determine if they’ve got a criminal history or an outstanding arrest warrant. If a positive ID is made, an alert is sent back to the cop in the form of a red dot on the screen, where upon they can take action, though it’s not clear how much info is displayed.

The cameras are generally designed to scan faces at up to 50 meters, though they do have the ability to function from as far as 12 miles away.
Brazil plans on using the tech at football stadiums, concerts and the upcoming World Cup where it might prove intrusive to the average citizen, but ultimately save lives.
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Looks like the big wigs over at Hasbro have the R&D monkeys working overtime.  Just before the release of “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”, Hasbro will release the Autobot Cine-Mask 3D glasses for kids.  There will be two pairs, OPTIMUS PRIME and BUMBLEBEE, and each pair will include their very own built-in pair of 3D glasses.  That means your kid can go to the theater dressed as one of the two characters from the film and enjoy the 3D experience without having to remove their helmet.  

We’re expecting a serious “nag factor” to be instituted by kids all across the US for one of these.  In case you parents are considering the excuse “we can’t afford it”, consider that they’re just $10 each.  All said and done you’ll be dropping over $25 once you factor in the movie ticket, but nonetheless it sure is a memorable, if not geeky way for your kid to enjoy what we hope is the last installment of the Transformer movies.

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Remember that story about the Brain Port device that let blind folks see using their tongue, yes tongue.  Well, the device is back in the news today as Britain’s first citizen received the prototype device.  Pretty cool stuff, but not quite at the level of Star Trek’s Jody Laford.

I think it’s safe to presume that you’re going to spend a significant amount of loot totally converting to 3-D TV and Blu-Ray.  Word from Sony Japan is that they’ve priced the TDG-BR100 and TDG-BR50 Active Shutter 3-D Glasses at $133 a piece.

You are also going to need the Infrared Emitter to get the glasses to work.  That will cost you $55.  They should be arriving around June in Japan.  This seems a tad late given that the post I did a couple of minutes ago detailing Sony’s new 3-D Blu-Ray Players, which arrive in the US by the end of the month.

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It’s that time again.  GadgetReview has teamed up with Vuzix to give away a pair of their Wrap 310 Video Glasses.  The Vuzix Wrap 310 glasses can display both 2D and 3D images, and are compatible with iPod, iPhone, portable DVD players and virtually any portable video source.  In fact, it’s like looking at a 55-inch large screen TV from 9-feet away!  They weigh under 3oz and include built-in ear buds; a complete home theater in your pocket.

We’re giving away one of these.  To enter you must be a US resident and submit a comment below with an email address (so we can contact you).  The comments are moderated so please be patient and enter only one.  If you want a double entry follow us on Twitter and tweet “@gadgetreview #Vuzix310”.

This contest ends 3/12

Product info here

Good luck!

As Hipsters are wearing uglier and uglier glasses these days, this pair of video recording glasses should totally slip through the instant judgement meter unnoticed.  These cool guy glasses have a 320×240 pixel video camera embedded between the lenses and is triggered by a press of a button off to the side.

The glasses have 2Gb’s worth of memory which roughly equates to 5 hours worth of footage at 25 FPS.  With swappable lenses (shaded), the internal rechargeable lithium battery also lasts for 5 hours.  Upload your sleazy antics via USB and you can really embrace the voyeur savant you’ve always dreamed of becoming.  On sale now for $150.

[via Dvice]

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The current undisputed king of the geeky gadget may well have just been found, folks–brace yourself for the iPhone Arider.

It’s still in the prototype stage, but one day we’ll all be able to enjoy the iPhone Arider.  And what does it do, you wonder?  Simple–it’s a portable navigation system that feeds to a display in a pair of glasses.  It follows your head motion, so if you want to pan the map to the right, you just look right.  Pan any other direction and you just look that direction.  Even better, it also can be used as a Bluetooth headset, PLUS it will handle Twitter updates.

I couldn’t be happier about this one, folks–I’m eagerly awaiting the day I can buy Spider Jerusalem-style picture taking sunglasses, and every move like this brings me one step closer to my triangle-and-circle.

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I think by now I’ve established myself as a bicyclist on the torrid streets of West LA and Santa Monica.  Riding in the road can be dangerous, especially with vehicles coming from all angles, which often requires me to whip my head from left to right to insure I don’t get T-boned into tomorrows ground beef.  The Nike Hindsight glasses, a concept from designer Billy May, increases the wearer’s peripheral vision by utilizing a Fresnel lens.  The lens captures light beyond the scope of human vision and draws it the eye.  Detail is limited to more of a blur, but rightfully so as too much information could serve as a distraction.

[Yanko]