I-theater video goggles

Video goggles are meant to let you watch video by wearing a set of special glasses instead of looking at a tv screen.

If they ever get it right, tv as we know it is dead. 

 It looks like that may be a couple years off.

The i theater gets a few things right.  It is lightweight and compact, which its predecessors were not. It comes with a battery/video adapter box which is compact and inobtrusive.  I give it high marks for looks. The battery seems to last a while, I have not yet reached its limit. (I used it for 2 hrs straight once, no problems)  I theater comes with a recharger, too. The battery box also serves as the video connector interface. You get either a mini-av jack or rca connectors. The connector to the headset looks like an AVI connector, but I haven't tried plugging it into anything directly.

The video is surprisingly good.  It is supposed to be like looking at a 50 inch screen eight feet away, which it kind of does.

I thought at 320x200, it would suck pretty badly, but for normal video viewing, it is just fine.  Reading subtitles is not a problem, nor is most reading that the viewer is supposed to see. Reading the credits at the end of the movie may be difficult, but it is with many tv sets, too.

Ideally, you need to view your video in a somewhat dark area.  Otherwise you get reflections from any light in back of you on the screens.  Also, they don't ahve a skirt, so light from around the screen in front of you may also detract from your viewing experience.  You can theoretically wear glasses with this unit, but it would only make the above problems worse.

Under ideal contitions, there are still some visual abberations, such as when the screen is mostly dark except for some lights.  in this case, the lights will have ghost images, but if you don't mind that,  the overall visual experience is not too bad.

Audio, on the other hand, is not too good, The ear buds are a hard plastic, which is uncomfortable, and one size certainly does not fit all. I found them painful if you wedge them in securely, and they have a tendency to fall out if you don't.  Fortunately, you can use your own headphones over the i theater. This obviously makes it less convenient.  If you are handy, you could probably cut off the existing ones and add your own.  But then, of course, it would lose that sleek look.

The down side, in a word, is comfort.  It comes with an adjustable nose rack, but somehow, this just doesn't do it.  It also comes with some velcro tape, with the instructions:

" Use the Velcro tape for more comfortable wear feelings."  for what that's worth.

It isn't that the set is particularly uncomfortable, mostly just the nose and ear buds.  However, you need to adjust the position of the set just so for best viewing, so perhaps a headband with top strap would have been the way to go. An eye skirt would have really topped it off nicely, and a pair of decent earpieces. 

Remember, though, the street price of these is only about $200 at the time of this writing, so you can afford to experiment a bit.

Overall, I say its a big step in the right direction, but you should be prepared to tweak it a bit to make it workable.