April 18th, 2008 by ketyung
One major problem of watching movies on iPhone is the display size. Although the 3.2-inch touchscreen lets you comfortably operate your iPhone, but it’s definitely too far from letting you to watch a full feature movie on it comfortably.
In order to solve this problem, Apple now patents a laser based head mounted display for its iPod and iPhone products. Head mounted display is nothing new to us, as we’ve seen couple of them before, but Apple has a pretty unique way of making it, which they’re gonna produce a super thin head-mounted display.
Most of the bulk in the head-mounted display comes from the video image generation and display components. The Apple’s head-mounted display could stay super thin is because they move the image generation electronics, the laser engine and other optics into a compact battery powered box, that can be clipped to the users belt. Transmission of laser-generated video to the headset will be via the optical cable. And of course, the headset display will also be made of ultra thin wedge optics, which is no more than 2 mm in thickness, making the entire device super thin and light.
When the device is not in use for displaying video, the display will become transparent which the user can see through, so the user can just leave it sitting on the head, wearing it like traditional eye glasses. The following are some words from Apple about this patented head-mounted display.
In one example of this embodiment, a user simply plugs their handheld video player such as the iPod manufactured by Apple Computer of Cupertino, Calif., into the compact laser engine attached to their belt, and places the headset on their head. The user then selects a video to be played at the handheld video player (viewing through transparent display elements). Once selected, the handheld video player generates a video signal which is processed into synchronized light control signals and image control signals for use by the laser engine and imaging device. In essence, the laser engine and imaging device work together to create dual video images in accordance with the video signal being outputted by the handheld video player. Furthermore, the display unit receives the dual video images from the imaging device and presents them for viewing. When video is not being played, no images are being created and thus the display unit act just like glasses. In fact, the head set may further include optical components that are based on the user’ eyesight so they can see normally when the system is not operating. Thus, the user is able to select other video for playing without taking off the head gear. If the laser engine further includes a battery, the user can be very mobile while utilizing and wearing the system (e.g., not limited to the length of a power cord).
Source [Unwiredview]
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