Sony HMZ-T1
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| Sony HMZ-T1 | |
|---|---|
| Basic Info | |
| Type | Head-mounted display |
| Developer | Sony |
| Manufacturer | Sony |
| Announcement Date | 31 August 2011 (Japan); 7 September 2011 (United States) |
| Release Date | 11 November 2011 (Japan) |
| Price | Open price (Japan); about US$799 (United States, Sony announcement) |
| Website | https://www.sony.jp/hmd/products/HMZ-T1/ |
| Requires | HDMI video source, such as a Blu-ray Disc player or game console |
| Successor | HMZ-T2 |
| Display | |
| Display | Two 0.7-inch (18.0 mm diagonal) OLED panels |
| Resolution | 1280 x 720 per eye |
| Image | |
| Field of View | About 45 degrees horizontal |
| Optics | |
| Ocularity | Binocular, one panel per eye |
| IPD Range | Lens spacing adjustable in five steps |
| Audio | |
| Audio | Built-in open-air dynamic headphones; 5.1-channel virtual surround |
| Connectivity | |
| Connectivity | 3.5 m cable between head unit and processor unit |
| Ports | HDMI input, HDMI pass-through output and HMD output (on processor unit) |
| Power | AC 100 V, 15 W, 0.35 W standby (Japanese specification) |
| Device | |
| Dimensions | Head unit about 210 x 126 x 257 mm; processor unit about 180 x 36 x 168 mm |
| Weight | About 420 g (head unit, without cable); about 600 g (processor unit) |
| Sensors | Wear sensor |
| Input | Control keys on the head unit |
The Sony HMZ-T1 is a head-mounted display made by Sony and sold under the name "Personal 3D Viewer". It has two 0.7-inch OLED panels with a resolution of 1280 x 720, one for each eye, and built-in headphones with virtual 5.1-channel surround sound. Sony said its optics created the impression of a 750-inch screen about 20 meters away.[1] Sony announced it in Japan on 31 August 2011 and released it there on 11 November 2011.[1]
The HMZ-T1 was a personal viewer for films, television and games from an external HDMI source, not a virtual reality headset. It had no head tracking.[2] Hobbyists, game developers and researchers later used it in VR and display experiments, years before consumer VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift went on sale. It was followed by the HMZ-T2 in 2012 and the HMZ-T3 and HMZ-T3W in 2013.[3][4]
Announcement and release
Sony showed an early version of the headset at CES 2011; CNET called it a prototype and Engadget a wearable 3D display concept.[5][6] The production model was announced in Japan on 31 August 2011. Sony called it the world's first 3D-capable consumer head-mounted display with HD OLED panels, as of the date of the announcement, and set the Japanese release for 11 November 2011 at an open price (no list price).[1] Engadget reported that the expected price was about 60,000 yen.[6] Sony put the viewer on display at the Sony Showroom in Ginza and the Sony Store locations in Nagoya and Osaka from 10 September 2011.[1]
Sony Electronics announced the HMZ-T1 for the United States on 7 September 2011 at the CEDIA trade show in Indianapolis. It said the viewer would arrive in the United States in November at a price of around $799.[7] Time gave the price as $799.99 in its February 2012 review.[8]
Demand in Japan exceeded supply. The day before launch, AKIBA PC Hotline! reported that the Sofmap store in Akihabara had sold its first shipment through reservations, listed the viewer at 59,800 yen, and told customers that new reservations would not be filled until late January 2012 or later.[9] Sony and Sony Marketing published a notice about the supply shortage on 17 February 2012 and said they were increasing production.[10] Orders still outpaced production, and Sony stopped taking new customer orders in Japan from 23 May 2012.[11] Order taking resumed on 20 July 2012.[12]
Design and hardware
The HMZ-T1 has two parts: a head-mounted unit and a separate processor unit. The processor unit connects to a playback device such as a Blu-ray Disc player by HDMI, and a 3.5 m cable carries video, audio and power from the processor unit to the head unit.[1] The processor unit also has an HDMI pass-through output for a television.[1] Sony's specification sheet notes that the pass-through works while the viewer is in standby.[13]
Display and optics
Each eye has its own 0.7-inch (18.0 mm diagonal) OLED panel with 1280 x 720 pixels, built with Sony's OLED and silicon drive technology.[1] Sony called this the "dual panel 3D" method. Single-screen 3D systems either alternate left and right images (frame sequential), which can leave crosstalk between the two views, or interleave them line by line, which halves the number of pixels. Because each HMZ-T1 panel shows only its own eye's image, Sony said the viewer has no crosstalk.[1] The company quoted a response time of 0.01 ms or less for the panels.[1]
The lenses, based on optics technology from Sony's projectors, give a horizontal viewing angle of about 45 degrees. Sony described the result as a virtual screen equivalent to 750 inches at a virtual distance of about 20 m.[1] In the United States it used a different comparison: a screen of about 150 inches watched from 12 feet away.[7] The housing was designed to cover the wearer's full field of vision, which Sony gave as about 200 degrees, and a supplied light shield blocked light from below.[1] The spacing between the lenses can be adjusted in five steps.[13]
The viewer's processing includes Super Bit Mapping for Video, which Sony said reproduces 8-bit video with gradation equivalent to 14 bits.[1]
Audio
Open-air dynamic headphones are built into the head unit. They use Sony's Virtualphones Technology (VPT) signal processing to simulate up to 5.1-channel surround sound.[1] The specification sheet lists a sensitivity of 106 dB/mW, a frequency response of 12 to 24,000 Hz, an impedance of 24 ohms and a maximum input of 1,000 mW (IEC).[13]
Specifications
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Panels | Two OLED panels, 0.7-inch (18.0 mm diagonal)[1] |
| Resolution | 1280 x 720 per panel, 16:9[13] |
| Viewing angle | About 45 degrees[13] |
| Virtual screen | Equivalent to 750 inches at about 20 m (Sony figure)[13] |
| Picture modes | Standard, Cinema, Dynamic, Custom[13] |
| Sound modes | Standard, Cinema, Game, Music[13] |
| Headphones | Open-air dynamic; 106 dB/mW; 12 to 24,000 Hz; 24 ohms[13] |
| Inputs and outputs | HDMI input x 1; HDMI pass-through output x 1; HMD output x 1[13] |
| Cable length | 3.5 m (head unit to processor unit)[13] |
| Head unit size | About 210 x 126 x 257 mm, including headband[13] |
| Processor unit size | About 180 x 36 x 168 mm[13] |
| Weight | About 420 g (head unit, without cable); about 600 g (processor unit)[13] |
| Power (Japanese model) | AC 100 V; 15 W; 0.35 W in standby[13] |
Software and features
Control keys on the underside of the head unit adjust the volume and, through HDMI device control, operate a connected player (play, pause, fast forward, rewind and chapter skip). The same keys open menus for picture and sound modes.[1] CNET described the controls as a four-way rocker with Menu/OK, power and volume buttons.[5]
A wear sensor turns off the panels when the viewer is taken off, and the unit moves to standby if it stays off the head for a set time.[1] The specification sheet also lists automatic power-off after six hours, a viewing-time warning after three hours and password protection.[13]
Sony asked customers not to let children aged 15 or younger use the viewer. It also advised against using it in environments with heavy shaking, such as inside a car, where motion sickness is more likely.[1]
Repair program
On 19 June 2012 Sony announced free repairs for HMZ-T1 units made during a specific period. A software fault in the processor unit could make text on the initial setup and menu screens display incorrectly, with missing or shifted characters. Text and subtitles in video from connected HDMI devices were not affected. The program covered processor units with serial numbers 1029655 to 1033175. Sony ended the free repair program and its dedicated support desk on 30 June 2019.[14]
Reception
In CNET's review, Ty Pendlebury called the HMZ-T1 one of the best 3D displays on the market, with no crosstalk and deep black levels. He criticized its weight, discomfort over long sessions, blurring at the edges of the image and visible pixel structure, and wrote that the built-in headphones were poor for music. He concluded that it was "definitely the best video headset" he had used.[5]
Harry McCracken of Time compared the HMZ-T1 to a high-definition View-Master and described it as a fresh take on the idea behind Sony's Glasstron. He found the 3D effect "excellent" but had trouble fitting the headband over a large head and glasses, and he expected the price and the one-viewer format to limit its appeal.[8]
After a hands-on test, Ben Lang of Road to VR wrote that the 720p screens were sharp even with 3D content and that there was "practically no crosstalk". He wrote that the screen took up "a decent portion" of the field of view, but no more than a regular HDTV at a reasonable viewing distance, and that the build quality seemed cheap.[15]
Use in VR experiments and research
The HMZ-T1 had no head tracking, so some users added tracking with external hardware. In February 2012 Road to VR reported on a setup that combined the viewer with a TrackIR 5 infrared camera to play World of Warcraft and Skyrim with head tracking.[2] UploadVR wrote that the Polish developer Plastic Demoscene Group paired its 2012 PlayStation 3 game Datura with the HMZ-T1 and used PlayStation Move for head tracking, calling the result "one of the very first prototypes for PlayStation VR".[16] Kotaku reported that Nathan Andrews's early prototypes of a Half-Life 2 VR mod, made before the Oculus development kits, used an HMZ-T1; according to WormSlayer, who later led the project, the setup also included a console gun controller and a professional 3D tracking system.[17]
At NVIDIA Research, Douglas Lanman and David Luebke built their binocular near-eye light field display prototype, presented at SIGGRAPH 2013, from HMZ-T1 components. They removed the case and eyepieces to expose the two OLED microdisplays and attached a microlens array to each panel. They estimated that each modified eyepiece reached 146 x 78 pixels of spatial resolution and a 29 x 16 degree field of view. Each eyepiece measured 42 x 31 x 10 mm with a 0.7 gram microlens array, compared with 43 x 31 x 37 mm and a 57.7 gram lens for an unmodified HMZ-T1 eyepiece.[18] The supplementary material identifies the microdisplays as Sony ECX332A OLED panels. It also gives the completed prototype's weight as 109 grams, against 420 grams for the HMZ-T1.[19] The full paper appeared in ACM Transactions on Graphics, volume 32, issue 6, in November 2013.[20]
Successors
Sony released two more generations of the Personal 3D Viewer line. Both used OLED panels and kept the 45 degree viewing angle.[3][4]
| Model | Announced | Japanese release | Main changes from the previous model |
|---|---|---|---|
| HMZ-T1 | 31 August 2011[1] | 11 November 2011[1] | First model |
| HMZ-T2 | 11 September 2012[3] | 13 October 2012[3] | About 90 g lighter (more than 20 percent); removable headphones, with bundled in-ear headphones, so other headphones can be used with virtual surround; "24p True Cinema" playback; "Clear" panel drive mode for fast motion; redesigned light shield and head pad[3] |
| HMZ-T3 | 3 September 2013[4] | 23 November 2013[4] | New battery unit for use with smartphones and tablets over MHL or HDMI; 7.1-channel VPT virtual surround; new LSI cutting image processing delay to a minimum of one frame; redesigned lenses[4] |
| HMZ-T3W | 3 September 2013[4] | 23 November 2013[4] | As HMZ-T3, plus WirelessHD link between the battery unit and the processor unit (about 7 m line of sight)[4] |
On 7 October 2013 Sony Electronics announced that the HMZ-T3W was available for pre-sale in the United States at $999.[21]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 "世界初 HD有機ELパネル搭載 3D対応ヘッドマウントディスプレイを発売". Sony Japan press release. Sony Corporation. 2011-08-31. https://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/201108/11-0831/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ben Lang (2012-02-18). "Sony HMZ-T1 HMD + TrackIR 5 Camera = Headtracking Gameplay in World of Warcraft and Skyrim". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/sony-hmz-t1-hmd-trackir-5-camera-headtracking-gameplay-in-world-of-warcraft-and-skyrim/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "映画館クラスの迫力ある仮想大画面での視聴に加え、好みのヘッドホンでも5.1chサラウンドを楽しめる"ヘッドマウントディスプレイ"新モデルを発売". Sony Japan press release. Sony Corporation. 2012-09-11. https://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/201209/12-0911/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 "スマートフォンのコンテンツを、場所を問わず映画館クラスの迫力ある仮想大画面で楽しめる バッテリー新搭載のヘッドマウントディスプレイ 2機種発売". Sony Japan press release. Sony Corporation. 2013-09-03. https://www.sony.jp/CorporateCruise/Press/201309/13-0903/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Ty Pendlebury (2012-02-10). "Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer review". CNET. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/sony-hmz-t1-personal-3d-viewer-review/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Richard Lawler (2011-08-31). "Sony's head-mounted 3D visor is real, HMZ-T1 arrives in Japan November 11th". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2011/08/31/sonys-head-mounted-3d-visor-is-real-hmz-t1-arrives-in-japan-no/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Sony Introduces the World's First Personal 3D Viewer". Sony Electronics news release. Sony Electronics. 2011-09-07. https://sony.mediaroom.com/2011-09-07-Sony-Introduces-the-Worlds-First-Personal-3D-Viewer. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Harry McCracken (2012-02-02). "Sony's Highly Personal, Surprisingly Decent 3D Viewer". Time (archived by the Internet Archive). https://web.archive.org/web/20130617004222/http://techland.time.com/2012/02/02/sonys-highly-personal-surprisingly-decent-3d-viewer/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "ソニー製HMDが明日発売でデモ開始、予約しても入手は来年？". AKIBA PC Hotline!. Impress. 2011-11-10. https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20111112/etc_sony.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "「HMZ-T1」の供給不足に関するお知らせとお詫び". Sony Japan. Sony Corporation and Sony Marketing. 2012-02-17. https://www.sony.jp/hmd/info2/20120217.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "「HMZ-T1」のご注文受付一時停止に関するお知らせとお詫び". Sony Japan. Sony Corporation and Sony Marketing. 2012-05-22. https://www.sony.jp/hmd/info2/20120522.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "「HMZ-T1」のご注文受付再開に関するお知らせ". Sony Japan. Sony Corporation and Sony Marketing. 2012-07-18. https://www.sony.jp/hmd/info2/20120718.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ 13.00 13.01 13.02 13.03 13.04 13.05 13.06 13.07 13.08 13.09 13.10 13.11 13.12 13.13 13.14 13.15 "HMZ-T1 主な仕様". Sony Japan. Sony Marketing. https://www.sony.jp/hmd/products/HMZ-T1/spec.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "製品に関する重要なお知らせ - ヘッドマウントディスプレイ"Personal 3D Viewer"「HMZ-T1」". Sony Japan. Sony Corporation. 2012-06-19. https://www.sony.jp/hmd/info/20120619.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Ben Lang (2011-11-30). "Update: Sony HMZ-T1 Hands-on Test, Crystal Clear Image With No Crosstalk!". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/sony-hmz-t1-hands-on-test-crystal-clear-image-with-little-to-no-crosstalk/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Jamie Feltham (2016-06-14). "The Hypnotizingly Beautiful 'Bound' is Coming to PS VR". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/bound-ps-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Claire Jackson (2022-10-01). "Half-Life 2's Excellent VR Mod Is Almost Too Good To Be True". Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/half-life-2-vr-mod-alyx-pc-valve-steam-gordon-freeman-1849603782. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Douglas Lanman, David Luebke (2013). "Near-Eye Light Field Displays". ACM SIGGRAPH 2013. ACM. https://history.siggraph.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2013-11-Lanman_Near-EyeDisplays.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ Douglas Lanman, David Luebke (2013). "Near-Eye Light Field Displays: Supplementary Material". NVIDIA Research. NVIDIA. https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/publications/NVIDIA-NELD-Supplement.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Near-Eye Light Field Displays". NVIDIA Research. NVIDIA. 2013-11-01. https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2013-11_near-eye-light-field-displays. Retrieved 2026-10-15.
- ↑ "Sony Introduces Portable, Wireless Head Mounted Display". PR Newswire. Sony Electronics. 2013-10-07. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-introduces-portable-wireless-head-mounted-display-226767371.html. Retrieved 2026-10-15.