Product Details
- Brand: Epson
- Model: V11H423020
- Released on: 2012-04-06
- Dimensions: 4.13" h x
6.25" w x
12.50" l,
3.00 pounds
- Native resolution: 960 x 540
Features
- Innovative see-through display. Interact with apps, games and content in an entirely new way with Moverio's see-through eyewear and Android-based control unit. Stay connected to your world while keeping your content private.
- Easily access content Moverio's versatile Android platform, built-in wireless capability, microSDHC card slot and intuitive trackpad mean easy fingertip access to your favorite content whenever and wherever you want.
- Immersive, big-screen entertainment - an 80-inch perceived screen2 means large, clear images
- Supports 3D content - experience side-by-side 3D content like never before
- Portable entertainment solution - includes everything you need: Moverio glasses, Android-based control unit, 4GB microSDHC card, detachable earphones, AC adapter and protective carrying case
Epson V11H423020 Moverio BT-100 Android Powered, See-Through, Wearable Display
Product Description
Bring the future one step closer with Epson's Moverio BT-100, the world's first see-through, Android-based, wearable display. Interact with apps and games in a whole new way. With up to six-hours of rechargeable battery life1, Moverio lets you watch your downloaded digital content, virtually anywhere, at any time. Enjoy movies, books, music and more. Easily stream video from popular sites like YouTube and Video over any wireless network or access content from microSDHC memory cards. As a world leader in projection technology, Epson's reputation ensures bright, larger-than-life images. And, with Moverio's unique see-through viewing technology, you can stay connected to the world while enjoying your content in private.
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
By J
I've had these for a few days now. Here are my initial impressions.This is an interesting toy. There are two components to it: the glasses, and the Android box the glasses plug in to. First I'll focus on the Android box. Since there is no touch screen there is a touchpad on the device. This touchpad is not very intuitive. It took me far longer than it should have to figure out how to do "swipe" gestures (like unlocking the screen). The problem was I kept trying to do a more click and drag gesture like on a laptop, which is, as it turns out, quite different. So on a laptop when not using a physical button you might "double tap" the touchpad to get a click registered, then drag your finger. This touchpad works pretty much just like a touch screen: tap and hold, then drag your finger. Which makes sense I suppose since this is an Android device, it just felt rather unnatural on a touchpad initially.This is more of an Android issue, but it can be difficult to determine where the mouse cursor is. Typically on devices with touchpads (laptops and such) the cursor is always on the screen. Here the cursor is only on the screen when you are touching the touchpad. This is probably so that apps don't have to implement one interface for touchscreens and one for mice, but it can be a bit jarring from a user perspective. It's also extremely difficult to type with the onscreen keyboard (I'm having to use the predictive text quite a bit).This device runs Android 2.2 (froyo) which is a bit annoying from both a user (apps missing in app store) and a developer (Froyo NIO bug frustrated me) perspective.One of the key things this thing is advertised to be for is to watch movies (though I did not buy it primarily for that). First video format support is severely lacking. I had to install another app to watch the videos I have. Netflix is available and works fine, pretty much. The second problem with watching any video is there is some sort of latency issue between video and audio (a noticeable 2 second or so audio delay).For developers, apparently you have to submit a request on Epson's website to get the drivers (plugging it into either a Windows or Linux box it only comes up as a USB Mass Storage device and it does not show up in ADB). I did that but got tired of waiting for a response, so I ended up rooting mine and activating adb network access so I could upload and debug my app over WiFi. This works pretty well, but I don't like having to root something if I don't have to. Also since I was in no mood to type the adb commands in a terminal on the device I ended up side-loading DroidSSHd. This was all fairly easy, and the main benefit is not having to be tethered to a computer to deploy code and debug it.Now to the second part, the glasses themselves. So there are other glasses out there (Sony HMZ-T1, Vuzix, etc.) but I've only had a brief experience with the Sony HMZ-T1 and not really enough to make a complete comparison. However the most obvious different between the two is the Moverio is transparent and HMZ-T1 is not. The HMZ-T1 is probably better suited for watching video due to it's higher resolution, better contrast, and OLED display though you'll have to plug it into another device to drive it since I think it's just a monitor. On the Moverio side since it is transparent you can see around you if you remove the dark plastic piece on the front, potentially allowing for some interesting AR applications and allowing you to interact with your environment without taking the glasses of (not that I recommend wearing them with other people around, you'd look ridiculous!)Both support 3D, however the Moverio loses half of its horizontal resolution in 3D mode since it stretches the screen across both glasses. This is probably a problem limited to the Android portion of the device and I would imagine if Epson releases any adapters to plug the glasses into other devices they won't necessarily share this same limitation (BIG POINT here: you can't plug anything into these glasses other than the included Android box. That means no computers, game consoles, smartphones, etc.) That said, I wouldn't recommend buying a Moverio on the hope that Epson releases adapters for it.For the purpose of AR apps it is best if black portions of the screen are as transparent as possible (so you can see the world behind it. If you take off the dark plastic piece on the front of the glasses, black areas are fairly transparent. But like any projector I've ever used, black is really a dark gray on this thing (better if you decrease the brightness). So, it's not ideal... but not too bad either. We may have to wait until good transparent OLED glasses come out for that kind of experience.The screen is advertised as an 80 inch screen some distance away. If you've never used video goggles before I'll just say that is pretty accurate. However here is an easy way to get an idea of how large the virtual screen is if you don't have an 80" tv handy: take your cell phone, play some video on it, and put it about 10 inches in front of your face. That's what it feels like. It's not too bad when watching video (though the less than 720p resolution is unfortunate) but it is really damaging for AR and VR apps. Take your phone and turn on the camera keeping it about 10 inches from your face. That little window is all you have into the virtual worlds you may be considering creating.Finally, comfort. In my humble opinion there is none. My nose and ears are uncomfortable wearing this.Now with all that said, I still am glad I bought this product. Why? I've always wanted to try my hand at an augmented reality project requiring more immersion than just pointing a phone. Technically this device makes it relatively easy to experiment. It's wireless (just a cord going from the glasses to the Android box, but the Android box has WiFi and a rechargeable battery so you can walk around with it untethered), it supports stereoscopic 3d, and it's programmable using the widely available Android SDK. There are significant issues and personally it feels like a beta product intended for developers, tinkerers, and scientists.Ultimately this is an expensive product for what it delivers now. If all you want to do is watch movies and play games, get a tablet for half the price.A couple suggestions to Epson and anyone else making something like this: add a gyroscope to the glasses, increase the field of view (in AR apps we don't need to see the borders of the image), make an API to switch into 3d mode in software (and please don't cut down the horizontal resolution just because it's difficult to change the resolution of Android while it is running, just double the horizontal resolution all the time and draw the screen twice in software), fix the audio latency, make it a little more comfortable and look less like some bad 80's scifi movie, and make the keyboard navigable with the directional pad. I feel many of the faults are in the software side so, Epson, hire a few good Android developers and Linux kernel hackers!
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
By E. Brummer
I bought this hoping to play with it for the novelty and maybe even run a remote desktop application to connect to a computer.The transparent video overlay over reality is pretty cool though I find it hard to see the transparency to be little more then a way to allow someone to shift their focus from the video to what is going on around them more easily without taking the glasses off. If you're staring at the video you're paying attention to the surroundings as much as someone looking at a book and noting movement in their peripheral vision. The only difference is you can notice movement behind the video. If you focus on the video you're not looking behind the video, and if you're looking behind the video you're not gonna be able to comprehend the video unless some people are exceedingly more talented then me. I'm sure that would change for augmented reality apps that are actually purposefully overlaying onto real world content (but there's no built in camera so you'd have to roll your own camera to provide a video reference to overlay anything.Most electronic devices have some juice in them upon arrival. I was hoping to see the boot screen pop up and enjoy what I'd eagerly been stuck waiting by USPS for but it wouldn't turn on. It needed a decent charge before I was able to use it. (Obviously this isn't a negative for the device just, don't expect to rip the box open and get a sampling before charging.) It wouldn't even turn on plugged in for a bit.Out of the box, the user interface is a little awkward but I had less trouble then the reviewer J did. Essentially, you hover over a button or something like the lock screen and then apply slight pressure and keep it there consistently until it accepts it. Generally the item will get lighter in color (moving towards white) at least in the GUI that came with the stock apps. It's not the worst GUI for a tech device like this. The software that came with this is very lacking though. It's running Android 2.1 with no sign of the Android Market or anyway to seek out extra stuff. It comes with a file browser (SEViewer), a clock, a calculator, a Help file, a basic Browser, "Gallery" which is similar to the gallery that I had on my older Android phones, a Music playing app and that's about it. It has WIFI but won't do my enterprise WPA due to the older Android version (I believe it's software not hardware limited and that if someone hacked a newer version of Android it would work.) I downloaded some APK files of various programs I wanted to install such as Netflix and a better browser. Netflix worked ok except the device doesn't have an accelerometer to orientate the screen. A number of programs I encountered would load up a menu system that was rotated 90 degrees clockwise to the viewer until the apps started playing video full screen in the landscape orientation. (This happened with Netflix for one.) One program wouldn't let me access menu options in landscape mode so I was screwed. Entering text on the thing certainly isn't pleasurable but for quick things like doing a youtube search for a video its fine. You're hunting and pecking the virtual keyboard with the touchpad at least until someone hacks an external keyboard. (I see no signs of bluetooth for this to be possible.)I was super excited to watch some high resolution HD 3D videos on this thing. I loaded up the browser and went to youtube to watch a 3d youtube video... nothing just split screened video on both eyes. There is a 2D/3D video button that's supposed to control this. I tried the youtube app which I downloaded and installed the APK myself (copy to microSD card, go into the file browser, hold down on file until menu pops up, scroll down to install.) The youtube app wasn't intended for this hardware so I wasn't surprised when 3d on it did the exact same thing.Epson intended you to use the Gallery application to watch movies, pictures and 3d movies and pictures. According to their on device help file, it supports MPEG4, H.264 for "Images" (which clearly isn't right) and AAC, MP3 under audio. This is disappointing. I don't want to reencode or convert videos from VERY common formats to this in order to view them. I installed some 3rd party video playing software via downloading and transferring their APKs and some failed to work and others did not play back correctly. I tried to play back a standard mkv container file with x264 encoding 720p video with a video bitrate of 1409 kbps. It stuttered a bit and the audio lagged tremendously and was overall an unwatchable experience. This was disheartening because I'd planned on throwing larger 3D videos at it via the same encoding standards. I tried VLC Stream Pro that I just found while searching around hoping to stream a nice stream from my computer but this app wouldn't allow access to menus in landscape orientation and I had no way of getting out of landscape orientation to my knowledge. I could understand not caring about supporting a variety of video formats if you were going to be like Apple and then turn around and sell media that went specifically with the device because then you could ensure it was encoded properly to playback properly but Epson isn't in that market. I imagine anyone who isn't technically literate buying these and having absolutely no idea what to do afterwards while wanting to watch videos. I tried to load a large video file size (which would be standard for an HD feature length movie) onto the microsd card. I couldn't find a file system that was acceptable. It couldn't read EXT3, EXT4, NTFS or exFAT (some of which were not surprising) which means you're limited to FAT32 with it's ~4GB file size cap. If you want to watch a long video, you'll have to break it up into pieces in order to put it on a microSD card that will work with the system. I'm currently working on getting some decent 3D videos into mp4 to further test this out.The settings has an "external video" selection portion which makes me wonder about what the reviewer J said about providing adapters to plug other devices in. Heck, my Android phone is way more powerful and could output HDMI to these better then the built in Android system. However there are no real other inputs and the glasses need the Android system to work so the cable would have to splice between the glasses cable and the jack on the Android control box and it seems like that's a sign they don't intend to do so.All in all, they are a fun gimmicky toy that may have some use for a specific application if you like. If you are tech savvy enough to convert all your videos and want to go through the hassle of doing so, then it'd be great for an airline trip or other video watching experiences. I can't imagine using this to actually surf the internet given the keyboard input.They are bulky and I don't think the pictures did them justice. They are big and you will look quite awkward wearing them. I'm 6'5" and I have a similarly proportioned large head and they protrude well past the sides of my head. One friend who played with these had trouble with his prescription glasses. I didn't have trouble with mine but the Moverio did want to keep inching forward on my nose as I wore them over time. This would shift the focus off the screen off so that you wouldn't quite see the far side by one of your two eyes and you'd get slight ghosting of the two different screens not quite in the same place. I wouldn't say they were uncomfortable though.It's really fun watching other people where these because while wearing them, you are not really interacting with the world, you're staring at a video screen and people make different faces and they put their head at different angles as they watch whatever and aren't concerned with the fact they're right next to other people.I look forward to seeing how the technology progresses in the next few years but I'm not happy with these to simply slightly entertain me especially at the price.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
By JAGADISH
It is a bulky one and couldn't wear the device for more than 10 mins. No product manual included in the device and it took 1 hour for me to figure out how to use the device. No youtube app included in the device, Android version is really old (2.2).
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