Cinemizer the Future of Personal Media?
I can remember in the late 80s getting my first ever personal stereo. It was called a personal stereo as I couldn’t afford a ‘Walkman’ and had a panasonic alternative. I can remember it, red, chunky yet not too hard on batteries from what I remember.
The hours spent creating mix tapes on TDK D90 tapes bought from the now demised Woolworths were priceless. I can remember the introduction to ‘high speed dubbing’ and thought I was on the wave of a technology and music revolution.
Twenty years later and the kids who are the age I was back then now make playlists. The audio quality if well surpassed the very best of the 80s and literally 1000s of songs can be stored in a single iPod. The technology is now so good we produce video podcasts and video PowerPoint presentations for our students in Mp4 and the more media rich our learning resources become the less pupils want to look at PDF handouts or slideshows.
I often ask the question what is it going to be like when my kids are older and I think I might have just had my first glimpse of what life might be like in the form of, wait for it, “The Cinemizer” . The Cimemizer (by Carl Zeiss) combines high-resolution LCD screens with individual diopter focus adjustment (-3.5 to +3.5D). This means even if the user wears glasses the screen image can be focussed for crystal-clear viewing. The resulting image apparently is optically tuned to appear as virtual 45-inch (diagonal) screen, as viewed from six feet away(2 meters).
The stage to seeing people in planes with little white earbuds is personal video glasses. The standard Cinemizer incorporates on-ear headphones and a ‘plus’ model adds the ability to override the built in headphones and plug in third party models.
The Cinemizer is “Made for iPod” which means it is designed specifically to work with all iPods that have video. The Cinemizer also works with both the original and the 3G iPhone. Just when you thought you had heard it all, these glasses off a full 3D model. Both the original and plus versions of the Cinemizer feature a 3D mode that enables stereoscopic viewing of 3D content. Content that is produced in side-by-side 3D format can be displayed from any video source, then the views are split for left and right screens. The resulting experience is a rich and immersive 3D image.
You are probably thinking there are not that many 3D movies around but Carl Zeiss is actively lobbying Hollywood studios to offer consumer versions of the 3D movies they are creating.
The glasses currently cost £299 including VAT so they are certainly at the upper end of the market. That said what could a device such this mean for education, travel, in fact the way we view any moving image? They are certainly a long way from the Red and Blue paper glasses we are used to, but a very exciting technology we can’t wait to get our hands on.
More information can be found here. If you have a Cinemizer already we would love to hear your experiences.
