Linux-Based PMP Features Head-Up Display

nerdyH writes "A new Linux-based portable media player (PMP) features an eyeglass-like head-mounted display with 800 x 600 resolution. Dreamax's Indicube i-800 PMP provides an experience similar to sitting two meters away from a 54-inch screen, the vendor claims. It uses an 0.44-inch eMagin OLED display, claimed to offer the smallest pixel pitch in the industry."

Cool....

[The_Fire_Horse (552422)]

porn on the train at last (and this time without angry guards and annoyed passengers)

Re:Cool....

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure they'll still notice you jamming your fist into your crotch.

Re:Cool....

[numbware (691928)]

"jamming your fist into your crotch"

I think you're doing it wrong.

Sexist pig

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

It may be that we got a female on this forum who is into the more advanced forms of self pleasure... Oh right. Forgot, this is slashdot. No females.

First Video To Watch On It....

[phobos13013 (813040)]

Strange Days!

Re:

[mr_mischief (456295)]

Let me know when I can get the playback of your experience watching Strange Days on it. ;-) Really, the hardware in the movie wasn't nearly as cool as what it was possible to do with it.

-=##### *very* small possible *partial* spoiler alert #####=-

I only have one complaint about the whole film. They used the Y2K subplot to explain the big crowds they needed for the end of the movie. Considering the characters involved in the film, there's no reason they couldn't have written a large crowd scene without dati

Re:

[SoundGuyNoise (864550)]

Shouldn't it be Brainstorm [imdb.com] instead?

Are they selling these separately?

[m50d (797211)]

I've wanted something like this to use with my PDA for some time.

My Prediction

[DannyO152 (544940)]

2008 will be the year of the Linux Borg Headgear.

Re:

[corychristison (951993)]

Funny you should say that.

Today is my first time not using my own laptop (left it at home in my morning rush).

On my own laptop, I run a tasty install of Gentoo Linux.

Today I am using the work-place provided laptop... Win Vista Home Basic (yuck. Trying to build websites outside of a familiar environment is a pain in the ass.

This is excellent

[Malevolent Tester (1201209)]

Now I can look like a complete tool without using proprietary software.

Re:This is excellent

[msuarezalvarez (667058)]

There a great chances you already do... ;-)

Re:This is excellent

[arbitraryaardvark (845916)]

It's hard out there for a PMP.

As a fashion accessory...

[clem (5683)]

I fear this visor will only look good on hot Asian women.

Re:

[NamShubCMX (595740)]

From the article...

CREATE YOUR OWN STYLE
There is one of the biggest characteristic of INDICUBE by prominent design to express strong male beauty. With ergonomic and stylish feature, it must be fit in both orient and western people. Enjoy yourself with great style on a bus, train, airplane, or out of doors. We guarantee that INDICUBE can make you look better and create your own style.

ugh.

Re:

[AmberBlackCat (829689)]

I know you can't tell but, trust me, she looks like an idiot in these things too. She just has a way of distracting people from the glasses.

Target audience

[Scutter (18425)]

How come these designers never realize that many of their target audience have poor eyesight? These types of things never fit right over glasses.

Re:

[Mad Bad Rabbit (539142)]

If you can afford toys like this, you can afford laser vision-correction surgery...

Re:

[Azarael (896715)]

Unless your toy expenditure is the *reason* you can't afford the surgery..

Re:

[wattrlz (1162603)]

AFAICT TFA didn't mention a specific price, but... can you afford the new corneas when you're the 1 in 1,000,000 on whom they botch the surgery, though? I'll stick to contacts, thank you!

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

FYI: not everyone is a candidate for laser eye surgery. Anyone with vision that is still changing with time, or with extremely poor vision, is not a candidate for the treatment. (Yes, paradoxically the people who most need corrective surgery are not candidates.) For certain people with very bad eyesight and irritable eyes, neither contacts nor surgery are available (my sister is in this class of unfortunate people).

All of that to say that there is a segment of the population who cannot avoid wearing glas

Re:Target audience

[Anonymous Cowpat (788193)]

well, if the screen is wholly over one eye (or could be moved as such) then a relevant lens could be put in position over the other eye. The screen could then be set to black when not in use (forcing you to use the uncovered eye) OR the gizmo could acquire a small camera to provide the relevant image on the screen (of course the camera could be anywhere, such as behind you, or be infrared-sensitive for night-vision, or both) the display could then provide extra information such as the temperature, air pressure, terrorist threat-level, a todo list or, if you happen to be a terminator, a selection of the pictures of the people that you have to kill. If you're short sighted then they'll be close enough to need no correction and if you're long sighted then more fool you (or you could wear a contact lens).
You'd still need to take them off to drive, of course.
Now I think of it, you could just wear contact lenses. Except that you're probably a geek who's too cowardly to try and poke himself in the eye - I certainly am.

Re:Target audience

[russ1337 (938915)]

OR the gizmo could acquire a small camera to provide the relevant image on the screen (of course the camera could be anywhere, such as behind you, ...... ,

Sweet. I've always wanted to walk around in the third person.

Re:

[veganboyjosh (896761)]

Sweet. I've always wanted to walk around in the third person.

even better, you could switch between several vantage points, much like just about every car racing video game i've seen in the last 10 years. just choose whether you want bird's eye view, medium view, in the driver's seat, on the hood of the car, etc...

Re:

[mhall119 (1035984)]

Only a problem for far-sighted people, and making room for glasses isn't going to fix that.

The images your eye will be focusing on is only a couple of inches away, even if it "appears" to be 2 meters away. Your stereoscopic vision will be focused 2 meters out, but your lens will be focused only an inch or two out, so near-sighted users would just take off their regular glasses when they use this.

Re:Target audience

[ballpoint (192660)]

No, that's not true. Optics are designed so that you need to focus your lens on a virtual image that appears to be x meters away in exactly the same way as you would need to focus on a real image that actually is x meters away, where x is a design choice.

For each level of near- or farsightedness, a display could be specifically designed so that no additional correction would be necessary. But guess what, manufacturers will be addressing the middle ground only, and won't be catering to special needs, save for a limited range like +/- 2 diopters that can be easily obtained by moving a lens a few mm.

54" screen is well and fine

[Zerth (26112)]

But can it give me the equivalent of 17" CRT at arms length?

Whenever I see these, I think "yay, monitor replacement" until I find out that, like most of them, it is just as fuzzy for reading text as a regular TV.

Re:54" screen is well and fine

[MrSteveSD (801820)]

But can it give me the equivalent of 17" CRT at arms length?

No. The apparent size of the screen scales linearly according to distance. So 54 inches at 7 feet is the same as 54/7 at 1 foot. Your monitor is probably about 2 feet in front of you, so that is (54/7)*2 = 15.4 inches. So it's like having a 15 inch monitor.

Mmm, time travel.

[nick_davison (217681)]

800 x 600 resolution... similar to sitting two meters away from a 54-inch screen

Forget about sitting 2m back.

In a world where 1080p is fast becoming the norm, 800x600 gives you the experience of sitting 5-10 years back.

Mobile computing?

[SharpFang (651121)]

One thing I missed on the feature list: bluetooth.

Combine this with one-handed chording keyboard [demon.co.uk], maybe a camera or just a hole to look through (or allow one-eye option) and some wireless connectivity (say, your mobile phone as GPRS modem), and you have a lightweight wearable computer.

bonus for whoever comes up with a handy wearable cursor control device - kinda trackpoint on the keyboard would do, but they are quite obnoxious.

Re:

[nmos (25822)]

bonus for whoever comes up with a handy wearable cursor control device

I would think some sort of eye tracking would be ideal.

Re:

[russ1337 (938915)]

for whoever comes up with a handy wearable cursor control device

You mean some kind of "a free-floating, glowing, shifting polyhedron-shaped, mote of energy which could three-dimensionally "draw" and generate physical objects as they are needed, generally becoming the object in the process." like the one here? [wikipedia.org]

Two screens or one?

[pwnies (1034518)]

Are there two screens (one per eye) or one for both? If it's two screens then if I'm not mistaken it'd be the first PMP with 3d capabilities, which IMO would be pretty impressive.

Head-up display?

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display [wikipedia.org]

Since when are googles head-up displays?

Ready, Set, Go!!

[Critical Facilities (850111)]

...and cue the Geordi LaForge jokes in 3-2-1

... finest pixel pitch may not be good

[dsojourner (695863)]

I've worked on micro display projects before --- and you don't want the pixel pitch getting too close to the wavelength of light -- which will be around 1/2 micron. Pixels smaller than a micron or so will result in dispersion of the light that is generated, limiting the quality of the image.

Re:

[hackerjoe (159094)]

Google calculator says:

(0.44 inches) / 800 = 13.97 microns

Still an order of magnitude or so away, but wow, that's a lot closer than I thought..

Vapour-wearable

[Caspian (99221)]

The realm of 'wearable computing' seems particularly prone to vapourware. For example, check out this awesome device [eyetap.org], which has been babbled about for years, and which you still can't buy in stores. And this PMP thing... well, you can't buy it in stores yet either.

Yawn. Wake me when it's available for immediate shipment, with an actual price tag.

Seriously, I'm sick and tired of Slashdot stories slashvertising gadgets that ARE NOT EVEN AVAILABLE YET and may, in fact, never be. Like this damned thing [moller.com].

Re:

[ferat (971)]

The article says the thing is shipping in March, so not all that vapourware.

Re:Vapour-wearable

[by Anonymous Coward]

The article says the thing is shipping in March, so not all that vapourware.

Sadly, all the stores in my area are still in January, so it's not available and may never be.

Re:

[nmos (25822)]

I'm sick and tired of Slashdot stories slashvertising gadgets that ARE NOT EVEN AVAILABLE YET

So, what you want is "Slashdot, EX-News For Nerds. Stuff That Already Happened."

Vision

[corychristison (951993)]

Just curious here... I am (very slightly) far sighted.

It is incredibly difficult and hurts the eyes to try and focus on anything of about 4 inches away... would this still work for someone like me? Or am I out of luck?

A very common product

[Aceticon (140883)]

At the moment a lot of Chinese manufacturers are making these PMP with head-mounted display products - these things were already available wholesale at least 2 months ago.

I suspect the fact that one of these things makes you look like a hard-core fan of a certain science fiction TV series imitating a certain weak-sighted character is probably not helping with it's adoption.

If you're really into portable media players you're probably better off with any of the flash memory based 2.4'' MP4 player which suppor

This opens up whole new possibilities

[by Anonymous Coward]

... as a guy who has a fair bit of difficulty scoring with attractive women, I am really looking forward to the possibility of banging ugly chicks while watching hot porn.

Finally, technology that helps me in important ways.

heh.

[apodyopsis (1048476)]

to rehash the old joke...

you get home, put on the ol' Indicube and immerse yourself totally in the audio and video of your favorite p*rnstar doing what she does. there you are, she's 2m away in glorious full OLED color and resolution as you are cranking away....

you remove the headphones to find your mum has been in and left tea and biscuits on the side table whilst you were busy.

on a more serious note, add sound canceling headphones and I can see a use for this on a long haul flight.

54 inch screen at 7 feet = 15 inch monitor

[MrSteveSD (801820)]

Yes, a 15 inch monitor (15.4 to be more precise) on your desk 2 feet in front of you has the same field of view. Somehow the sales tag "Like a 15 inch monitor on your desk" doesn't sound quite as impressive. This is one of my pet peeves. You always hear manufacturers explaining how their tiny FOV eyepiece is like an enormous screen at some equally enormous distance. They just pick a distance which coincides with an impressive sounding screen size. If they give you a distance in feet, just divide the screen size by the distance, then multiply by 2. That will give you the equivalent monitor size (2 feet in front of you).

The FOV of this device is actually a bit better than a many I have seen. They often come out as being equivalent to 14 inch monitors rather than 15 inch monitors. It's nice that it can play HD movies but a bit of a shame that the screen is way below HD resolution, making such an exercise fairly pointless.

Since the early 90s I been waiting for an affordable head mounted display (HMD) with a human-like field of view, and sadly I'm still waiting. Even the unaffordable ones have pretty crummy FOVs. Still, if any kind of HMD becomes popular (no matter how poor) it can only be a good thing in the long run. It's bound to result in better products before long.

Linux-based PIMP?!

[Bwana Geek (1033040)]

"Give me my money, bitch!"
"F*#% you!"
"SUDO give my money, bitch!"

Long haul trucker

[Lord Byron II (671689)]

I'm a long haul trucker and I have to say these things are a life-saver. Instead of nodding off at the wheel like I used to, now I can watch a handful of movies as I drive between Chicago and LA.

Re:

[CommunistHamster (949406)]

Well, the reason widescreen is so nice to look at is because you have two eyes, set horizontally apart from each other. This display only uses one eye, so 4:3 is a better choice.

Re:

[ianare (1132971)]

No ... using Linux means tried and tested support for the embedded platform, no royalties to pay, access to source code in case modifications need to be made, access to source code to see exactly what is going on, easy to set up a custom interface, no bloatware mandated by OS vendor, etc etc ...

It's really no surprise to me that Linux is making more and more progress in small devices, and none of it has to do with some sort of imaginary "Linux halo effect". It's just good engineering/business sense.