QJ.NET Headplay review: a bite from Apple’s cinematic experience

SANTA MONICA, CA - January 24 2008:
http://apple-computer.infonetportal.com/archives/89

The MacWorld Expo 2008 sure swept people’s feet up into the air. Or, to be more specific, Air (yeah that capital ‘A’ makes the difference). Yep, the MacBook Air sure is getting quite a lot of attention lately. And sure, the specs might be a bit unsettling for some, but you can’t deny that that piece of hardware beauty looks mighty sleek indeed.

And so we look back at our clunky (but back then was among the prettiest still) little PowerBook. We’ve definitely gone far, that’s for sure. And in the spirit of showing love to the often-forgot ancestors of today’s technology, we decided to revisit our old iGadgetry (hey, everyone grows attached every now and then) and reacquaint it with the new.

Here, the Headplay shines once again as a mobile display unit that can make ends meet for the on-the-go techie. Being a head-mounted device, you’ve got with you a portable virtual cinema to escape to. And for the Mac-o-phile’s lifestyle, it suits quite perfectly.

You’ve got your iPod Videos, Nanos, Classics, and Touches - each of them (well, depending on which generation you have) has their own video out function care of the good old AV cable. Even the iPhone’s got TV out support, given that your system version is 1.1.1 or later.

As for the notebooks, whether you’ve got your clunky (yes, some of us might still prefer the clunky and rough-and-tough) PowerBook or the Manila envelope-sized MacBook Air, they can support standard video out flavors - whether via composite, S-video, or what have you.
See, the Headplay device has this thing called the Liberator - that’s basically the central nervous system of the entire unit. It’s got analog video and audio inputs, some USB, VGA, and AV ports.

To make things easier, the entire package includes a female S-Video/Composite AV RCA adaptor to make things easier for you to hook up your Apple doohickey into the Liberator.

If you’ve got an iPod, all you’ll need is that useful AV cable - just plug it in as if you were connecting it to your TV, only this time, your TV’s right at your face, about 50 inches wide.
Now if your lifestyle is just begging to have your media in portable format - more specifically, if a big bulk of your portable device or notebook has movies and videos stored in it - chances are, you’d want a bigger screen. That’s where this Headplay Personal Cinema System comes in.

Imagine this: you have your videos on your iPod or on your laptop. Especially for the iPod, the screen is just too small to make out certain details. If you’ve got Headplay neatly tucked away nearby, you can watch those videos in a virtual cinema of your own, blown-up into a bigger screen that you can have all to yourself (minus the annoying kids from behind, kicking at your seat).

Yes, there’s a bit of quality lost, especially if you’re the type to convert hi-res videos to a reasonably-sized .mp4 format file for your iPod, but then it’s all about compression rates - not a fault of the Headplay unit itself.

Notebooks with DVD drives are fine with a Headplay unit because you can always pop in your disc and watch it via the head-mounted display. On VGA, the Visor’s display screen supports resolutions of 1024 x 768, 800 x 600, 720 x 480, and 640 x 480 - so choose the eye candy poison that suits you best.

It’s quite amazing, really, how Apple hasn’t released a head-mounted display device of their own. Because Headplay proves that such a partnership between such devices gives the user the best of both worlds.

The US 500 price tag of the Headplay seems to be off-putting at first, but for the movie-buffed Mac-o-phile with his own army of portable media players, this head-mounted gadget doesn’t fall short of being a worthy accessory to bring out the most out of your iPod screen.