If HEADPLAY, Inc. can really deliver the HEADPLAY Personal Cinema System, then the world of mobile entertainment may change overnight. HEADPLAY’s latest baby is a portable visual headset and media center that is designed to give a mobile user a cinematic, big screen experience. Now a user can totally immerse themselves into a completely digital world apart from the rest of the maddening crowd for entertainment, computer games, or other PC-related business.

This is made possible by the Viewer, a headset that is worn by the user that displays a virtual 52” screen. The Viewer promises to be the latest in optical technologies, with an LCOS micro display and support 640 x 480, 800 x 600, and 1024 x 768 resolution levels. HEADPLAY promises that their “patented technology delivers separate but identical images to each eye from a single micro display” in order to reduce eye-strain. Nice to know they’ve thought that one out.

Attached to the Viewer is the Liberator, the power source of the Personal Cinema System. On a full charge, it can play up to six hours of composite video, component video, and S-video in NTSC, PAL, and SECAM formats. The Liberator has “universal connectivity”, so it is fully compatible with any device with video out such as video game consoles, DVD players, video iPods, PCs, cell phones, and anything with a USB cable.

Control of the Portable Cinema System is achieved via the Navigator, a tethered remote control that allows a user to select and control content and screen settings. Something tells me that if this device takes off, the remote will either be wireless or voice activated.

You may notice that this article does not have a picture of this device. To be honest, I can’t imagine that any device that can give a virtual 52” picture would not completely enclose your head altogether. Yet this Viewer only weighs 5 ounces, so maybe it will just look like ordinary sunglasses.

This device is supposed to hit the market in early 2007. If it is anything near the phenomenon of cell phones and iPods, who knows how it will change society as we know it.