ST1080 Update: First Shipments arrive in May!

Post by **love2scoot** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:36 pm

Paul Jin, CEO over at Silicon Micro Display, posted a blog update with the latest new out of their production facility in South Korea.

Quick Summary:
- An unexpected problem pushed schedule back a week
- First shipments should go out 2nd week of May
- Light blocker design finished, it's a reusable sticker. ST1080 w/ blocking sticker pictured.

http://www.siliconmicrodisplay.com/1/po ... pdate.html

Post by **brantlew** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:45 pm

AWESOME !! I can hardly wait

So far I have a very good feeling toward this company. They really seem to be on top of it.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:25 pm

I agree, this company really seems to have its act together - they seem very good at keeping their potential customers informed about the product.

If only other VR companies were as open about what is going on!

Post by **PalmerTech** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 8:47 pm

Hooray! Can't wait for mine.

Post by **FingerFlinger** » Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:15 pm

As soon as one of you guys reviews it, I'll be considering trading in my HMZ for it! Looks really slick.

Post by **JackJack80** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:57 am

Great News! Cant wait to receive my set....

Post by **cybereality** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 11:32 am

Looking good, but I'm not sure about the blocking sticker. I mean, that will work if you just want it permanently blocked sure. But if you are experimenting with things and need to pull it off and on frequently, its going to get dust particles and eventually not work so good. If SMD can sell the stickers cheaply, then maybe I'd buy a pack of 5 or 10 just to not worry about it.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:04 pm

They did say they will be including several, so that should be enough for a while. Also, a lot of these vinyl stickers do not have any actual adhesive, you can clean them with water and they are as good as new.

Post by **brantlew** » Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:18 pm

If the mod community can actually make the HMZ-T1 wearable, I'm sure they can handle a light blocker. Actually that brings something to mind. Has anyone put any thoughts into a periphery light blocker for the ST1080?

Post by **fireslayer26** » Tue May 01, 2012 11:55 pm

Can't wait to see some member reviews of this unit!!!

Post by **3dvison** » Sat May 12, 2012 1:56 am

Shipping this monday (May 14)
http://www.siliconmicrodisplay.com/blog.html

Post by **nrp** » Sat May 12, 2012 10:56 am

3dvison wrote:Shipping this monday (May 14)
http://www.siliconmicrodisplay.com/blog.html

Also announced:

Be sure to register your product (will be available at www.SiliconMicroDisplay.com/register) to receive news about firmware upgrades and other important product news.

Updatable firmware.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Sun May 13, 2012 4:50 am

Rock on SMD, im eagerly awaiting the first reviews.

Post by **cirk2** » Sun May 13, 2012 6:12 am

Whait what?
1080p 3D-hmd for 800$, how did that slip past me?
Lets wait for the first reviews here, maybe I'm able to get that money somewhere...

Post by **MadRussian** » Sun May 13, 2012 9:03 am

It's 1080p, but not for gaming, unless you don't mind 24 fps. This it still an extremely exciting breakthrough product though. Let the consumer HD HMD competition begin!

Post by **tommygunner70** » Sun May 13, 2012 11:43 pm

MadRussian wrote:It's 1080p, but not for gaming, unless you don't mind 24 fps. This it still an extremely exciting breakthrough product though. Let the consumer HD HMD competition begin!

24 FPS? is that in 3D mode or 2D mode?

Post by **cirk2** » Mon May 14, 2012 12:13 am

24fps in framepacking 3D, that's the maximum HDMI gonna get you.

Even If i go for 720p (60hz 3D) for gaming (depends on the game) it is a major improvement over 640x480 the VR920 gives me.

Post by **yann** » Mon May 14, 2012 6:49 am

Actually the ST1080 supports 30Hz at full resolution stereo, but only by cutting out the "active blanking" part of HDMI frame packed video, so it's sent as 1920x2160 top-and-bottom of 1:1 pixel aspect ratio (top-and-bottom is normally 1:2). I'm not sure how difficult activating that is in proprietary video drivers. For the best resolution available at 60Hz, 1080p side-by-side or top-and-bottom are also supported. All of those modes offer at least some advantage compared to 720p frame packed, but due to receiver limitations it's a set of compromises. I guess we could pray for dual-link DVI next time.
I would think top-and-bottom modes have a slight advantage in that the horisontal resolution also increases depth accuracy, compared to side-by-side. The scan time difference (which is also there for frame packed) doesn't make the same difference on the ST1080 because its color sequence forces it to buffer the whole frame. We're just not getting an ideal match for the display technology out of the graphics boards.

Post by **brantlew** » Mon May 14, 2012 12:12 pm

The SMD blog posts and comments suggest that the manufacturing run was large. I have wondered what the world wide market for HMD's is - not just for the casual tech-lust impulse buyers, but real users of the equipment. I speculate - maybe a couple thousand but I really have no idea. It's not surprising that Sony had a nice run with the HMZ since they have such high visibility, press contacts, and advertising. But SMD has none of those things. So the fact that they had a good run based almost purely on underground "word-of-mouth" is interesting - especially since a whole round of buyers were already saturated with the Sony. So there must be a sizable chunk of hard-core HMD users that use and follow the tech closely.

Post by **cirk2** » Mon May 14, 2012 3:51 pm

I would speculate that they cot some orders from Universities and other research facilities that work with HMDs already. It looks like an good deal for that kind of use just like the PS3 back at its time as cheap cluster PC.

Post by **cybereality** » Mon May 14, 2012 5:49 pm

Well it would seem like a really small market for HMDs, but I bet its bigger than you think. For example, as of November 2011 Nvidia had sold some 500,000 (a half million) 3D Vision glasses. But if you were to look at the members in forums like MTBS3D or even Nvidia's own 3D Vision forum, you would think there were a lot less people interested. There are a ton of people lurking at any moment, and even more that don't even use forums regularly. Granted, the market for HMDs is going to be smaller, its a niche and somewhat expensive toy to purchase. But I would guess its in the high thousands or even more.

Now, that's not to say that all those people will buy the ST1080 on day one. Many people on the market may have already bought the HMZ and may be happy with it. Or maybe they don't want to spend the cash (or don't have the cash to spend). Maybe the opted for other options like a 3D monitor or projector. Maybe they are waiting for a real VR experience (which can't be bought today unless you are Bill Gates). Personally I'm going to hold off on getting the ST1080 just because I have made way too many large purchases in the past months and my bank account needs a rest. But I think Palmer wanted to send me a unit for review, so I will be putting it through the paces.

Post by **PalmerTech** » Mon May 14, 2012 8:03 pm

Yep, I will be lending my unit to Cyber so he can review it.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Mon May 14, 2012 9:03 pm

I just want high FOV, so am waiting for the Rift, but will probably get a 1080 as well if the reviews are decent.

Post by **pierreye** » Tue May 15, 2012 3:01 am

I'm looking forward for the review between ST 1080p 45 fov vs HMZ-T1 720p 50 fov. Most likely will skip this round of next gen HMD as I just dump in money for a GTX 670. Pretty good deal for 20% cheaper but only 5% drop in performance compare to GTX 680. With a little bit of overclocking, it is as good as stock GTX 680.

Post by **tommygunner70** » Tue May 15, 2012 4:27 am

Ok I'm gonna need some explanation here.

Frame Packing (full resolution), Top-and-Bottom (half resolution), Side-by-Side (half resolution).... lots of fancy words but I got no clue what it means. can someone please enlighten me on what all these terms mean?

and how these modes differ from a regular screen?

Post by **yann** » Tue May 15, 2012 5:28 am

First of all, those modes all differ from the usual video modes by being stereoscopic; so they have both left and right images.

Frame packing is very similar to ordinary video, except that every other vertical retrace just doesn't. It thus takes precisely twice as much bandwidth as normal video at the same frame rate. To a graphics card, this looks like the image is a bit more than double height because there's an "active blanking" strip between the left and right eye images. This mode is used by Blu-Ray players when playing 3D films.

Side by side and top and bottom are both modes in the "frame compatible" category. These were intended for broadcast TV, where the picture could be sent as usual with no changes to distribution equipment. The display unit simply splits the image along the middle and stretches each half to fit, so you get half resolution because the other half is the other eye picture. One downside is that it may not be obvious when an image is SbS or TaB, so the user has to select it, but since the user can that also means you don't need a special transmitter. Programs like Bino support these modes with no assistance from your video driver.

There are plenty of articles explaining these, for instance the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB_3D-TV has some figures. Many people assume frame sequential is the output used, but that's only for shutter glasses (including those with switched polarisation in the screen); independent displays, dual polarized projection, interleaved polarized lines, lenticular displays and parallax barriers do not. The SMD ST1080 falls in the independent displays category, but the HDMI spec is only adapted for broadcast, which in turn was based on CRTs with scanning beams.

Post by **brantlew** » Tue May 15, 2012 8:39 am

SMD confirmed that they shipped out some of the first units yesterday, but they have a big backlog to fill so it will take many days/weeks to fulfill all the orders. Has anybody gotten their shipping confirmation yet? If so, what day did you order? With a few data points, we may be able to estimate how fast they are working through the orders and when we can expect to receive the units. I ordered on March 16th so I expect to be pretty far down on the list unfortunately

@WiredEarp: I'm with you. An ST1080 for general everyday usage and a Rift for insane FOV/specialized usage should be a potent combination!

EDIT: Just got an email from SMD requesting my phone number for shipping. That's encouraging !!

Post by **yann** » Tue May 15, 2012 11:14 am

My paypal receipt is dated Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:11:18 -0800, although the confirmation from SMD didn't arrive until the 5th. I haven't got a shipping confirmation, but remain hopeful mine may ship this week. I believe two people have noted their confirmation posts on the SMD blog, and one got an estimate by email which he mentioned there too. I for one intend to compare it to HMZ-T1 and get some high speed footage of the displays.

The main encouragement to read out from the phone number request is that our orders haven't gotten lost. I got one of those too.

They just posted an update that they support 50Hz (such as in europe) and SD resolutions as well (making it that monitor replacement one complainer insisted we worry so much about).

... apparently I underestimated the order rush quite a lot. The person who got told next week apparently placed his order within half an hour of mine.

Post by **brantlew** » Wed May 16, 2012 8:02 am

Yes, it seems that several people that ordered on March 1st have tracking numbers to receive their units next Monday, the 21st. Hopefully you will be in that batch as well yann. So maybe by next Monday evening, we will be getting some preliminary impressions posted. Sadly I fear that I probably won't be getting mine until June

Post by **love2scoot** » Fri May 18, 2012 3:22 pm

The first units have started arriving. At least two different users have posted the good news over at the SMD blogs. One of them has pictures up on his blog already:
http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/

They must have received a LOT of orders on Mar 1, since another user noted that although he had ordered 1st day, his unit "is in third or fourth batch which will be shipping middle to end of next week."

Post by **cybereality** » Fri May 18, 2012 5:39 pm

LOL! The box is so much smaller than the one for the HMZ.

Post by **fireslayer26** » Fri May 18, 2012 5:45 pm

Come on with the review! LOL

Post by **pierreye** » Fri May 18, 2012 6:13 pm

The unit build quality looks quite good. Can't wait for the review.

Post by **faker** » Sat May 19, 2012 10:52 am

if you havn't seen it yet:

http://the-games-veda.blogspot.com/

2nd part of the review, functionality of the ST1080 compared to HMZ T1 is up on the blog.

Post by **cybereality** » Sat May 19, 2012 12:34 pm

Sounds like the HMZ is still better in some respects (color, etc.) but this still seems like a great product.

Post by **brantlew** » Sat May 19, 2012 1:17 pm

What a scatter-brain review.
But I am super excited that everything that was promised is bearing out. SMD seriously kicked some ass with this release!

Post by **3dvison** » Sat May 19, 2012 3:13 pm

Just wondering about something, I know ten people can read the same thing and come away with ten different takes on the same thing. So I want to see what others thought about the 3D part of the review.

From reading that review. do you all feel he is saying 3D with the ST1080 is better than the HMZ-T1 and even has (Yes I am going to say it) better POP OUT Effect than the HMZ-T1 ? Waiting to find out if the ST1080 will have better Pop-out than the HMZ-T1, is what I have been dying to hear about the most.

Post by **pierreye** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Sometime is hard to get a solid conclusion based on personal preferences. For example, there are groups of people rave how great JVC LCOS projector is but based on my personal comparison side by side with a DLP projector, I like the DLP pop better than LCOS projector although black level advantage goes to JVC.

Based on the above review, I think the reviewer just can't accept the stock HMZ-T1 wear ergonomic issue although display quality is better on OLED. Somehow he said OLED burn his retina hinting HMZ-T1 is brighter than ST1080 which is something we don't expect. Personally I feel the HMZ-T1 brightness is just nice. With the ski goggles mod, I can easily put on/take off the HMD with good focus immediately once you dial in the tilt.

Post by **WiredEarp** » Sat May 19, 2012 9:13 pm

That reviewer is a TERRIBLE author.

Post by **GSG9LIGHTNING** » Sun May 20, 2012 1:27 pm

The Review is very hard to understand in many parts because he uses terms and phrases that i dont understand... kind of slang or special regional phrases ?
That might be the reason that i didnt understand everything, but i think that the product is a good one.

As i want to use the ST1080 for my combat flight simulation in 1920x1080 pixel resolution, it should be absolutely sufficient for that task, even with 24-30 frames per second.

The only thing that dissapoints me so far is the fact that it is not available here in germany without paying 19% taxes and custom office fees additional to the 799$ ( US Dollars )
Collecting money to get one of these as soon as possible

PS :
It would be nice if another person would upload a nice Youtube review about the ST1080 in which he uses simple and easy to understand language

@Palmer Tech
Thumbs up for your Project ! Sounds very interesting and i support your intention to bring out such a nice product. I hope we get an update about that thing soon