Video glasses, now less dorky

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- If there's a market for video iPods, there's a market for video glasses: eyewear that plugs into those devices and lets movies take over your field of vision. But today's crop of goggles with built-in screens--like MicroOptical's $300 MyVu--are bulky, block your line of sight, and make you look as though you're headed to the nearest Star Trek convention.

Enter Lumus, an Israeli startup that has developed a pair of video glasses that are lightweight and stylish. The glasses, due to hit the market by 2008 for about $400, project video on the interior of their transparent lenses and weigh less than an ounce.

Thanks to Lumus, the video eyewear segment "could now become a mainstream market," says Chris Chinnock, president of research firm Insight Media.

Cell-phone manufacturers are already aggressively courting the Rehovot-based company, according to Lumus development manager Ari Grobman. He can't name them, but Motorola (Charts, Fortune 500) was an early investor, as was Time Warner (Charts, Fortune 500). Lumus expects to ship a couple million units in 2008, by which time millions of video iPod owners may hail them as a sight for sore eyes.

HOW IT WORKS:

1. An LCD screen goes on the side of the frame, rather than in front of the eyes.

2. A projector beams the video image directly into the lens.

3. Lens mirrors capture light from the projector and fill the viewer's field of vision.