A few months ago, a little thing called Eye+ TV Window hit the Internet radar as the virtual screen that will give any room a million dollar view. At the time, not much was known about this curious device. We knew it was an LED HDTV that has eye-tracking sensors to give viewers full panoramic views, no matter which angle they’re looking from. We knew you could preload some videos of various sceneries, or turn the screen into a regular television if you connect it to a cable box. And if you went to Eye+ TV’s website… well, you wouldn’t learn of much else.
If this was something you were interested in back in April, the good news is Eye+ TV Window has now officially launched on Kickstarter and the details make the technology a bit more clear. What we’ve now learned is that Eye+ is an HDTV equipped with a webcam to observe the viewer’s point of view using facial recognition. The videos can also be programmed to display different scenes depending on time of day, such as a bright shot of the mountains during daytime (so it feels like the real deal) and a shot of space at night. If you wish, the video can also play sound to make the scenery feel more immersive, though we think that’s a small step toward making the whole thing feel even more fake.
Thankfully, the Eye+ technology can be added on to your ordinary televisions. If you already own an HDTV, and it’s likely that 99 percent of you do, all you need are the peripheral modules to get the webcam set up. It’ll also make your HDTV Wi-Fi-enabled so you can control your video settings via a smartphone and remotely configure alarms and sleep modes. Interestingly enough, the socket that comes with the Eye+ package works with almost any appliance with an On/Off button, so you can literally automate any piece of gadget in your home. All of this will be programmable on Linux, Windows, and Mac operating systems.
From the looks of the Kickstarter pledge currency, the technology will initially be made available for European markets. If the product works as well as it promises, perhaps it’ll expand over to the U.S. and become the new digital photo album of sorts. Whatever funding Eye+ gets, we hope they use it to make better devices in the future (and perhaps a better-produced promo video). The pledge for an Eye+ peripheral module starts at $63 USD, and goes up a ton more for the full system including a television screen and window frame to house everything in.
