IFA 2011: Sony HMZ-T1 Gets Pricing & Release Date

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Remember back when we were covering CES like no tomorrow, and spotted a bizarre chunk of heavily updated retro tech in the form of a head-mounted visor from Sony? Well, it’s now being called the HMZ-T1 (it was called the Headman back in its CES prototype stage) and it will be making its way to us sooner than you might think.

The Sony HMZ-T1 is geared toward home theater buffs in general, whether it’s movies, television or gaming that’s their particular favorite part of the whole experience. It combines the views of a pair of .7 inch OLED panels to generate a 3D image, which, since there are two separate images involved, manages to present the 3D image without ghosting or other such signal noise. It’s also packing a pair of headphones for 5.1 channel surround sound, and projects an image that is, reportedly, approximately the same as a 150 inch display from about three feet out, which doesn’t really sound that appealing, but will be in 720p which isn’t half bad.

The whole thing connects to a go-between box with an HDMI port that will allow you to connect your device of choice–gaming system, Blu-ray player, what have you–to the HMZ-T1, as well as a variety of resizing points to ensure that the thing fits on your head. Early word says they’re pretty nice but have a tendency to put most of their weight on your nose, which makes me wonder how they’d fare if you were using them from one of those sweet zero-gravity sling chair rigs from The Lawnmower Man. And yes, I do remember The Lawnmower Man, the movie that was supposed to show us virtual reality back when everyone thought headsets were going to be the way to get your media needs met.

Early word on pricing says you should expect this between $600 and $700, and look for it to come out in time for holiday shopping season sometime in the November-December time frame. Me personally, I’m looking forward to these actually making it to market. But what do you guys think? Figure you’d throw over a television for a head-mounted display? Or would you rather drop that same $700 on a reasonably good quality television? Either way, tell us what you think in the comments section below.