The effect is surprisingly effective, to say the least, but no one would confuse the images you see with today's crisp rear projection TVs.

While neither produces a great picture, the Olympus Eye-Trek has several advantages over the Glasstron. It projects a 16:9 image rather than 4:3, provides more video adjustments, and offers a better picture. But the Eye-Trek costs $300 more than the Glasstron.

Features:

• video goggles
• 240,000 pixel LCDs
• 16:9, 4:3, zoom and cinema modes
• full video adjustments
• built-in stereo ear phones
• composite, S-video inputs
• A/V cables included
• Sony camcorder battery (not included)
• AC adapter
• separate battery charger
• 3.8 ounces (goggles)
• 5.6 ounces (controller, sans battery)

The Eye-Trek's LCDs have more pixels than the Glasstron's LCDs (240,000 vs. 180,000), which makes them slightly sharper. The Eye-Trek also offers contrast, tint, color, brightness, and two levels of white balance (red and blue) adjustments, along with a slew of other audio and general controls, all accessible from a single push-turn menu wheel on the controller box. The Glasstron only has a brightness wheel.

Both goggles use standard Sony camcorder lithium batteries. Amazingly, the Eye-Trek doesn't include a battery, a huge oversight considering the price. I'd recommend something more than a two-hour camcorder battery, though. The Eye-Trek lasted barely two hours with the basic Sony InfoLithium NP-F330 two-hour lithium; the longer-life F550 ($60 list) is a better option.

The Eye-Treks do come in a nice nylon carry case. For $900 list, I'd expect no less.

Features Rating: 88

Connectivity:

Like the Glasstron, the Eye-Trek comes with four-foot A/V cables -- the familiar red/white/yellow A/V cables with RCA connectors at one end to plug into your source equipment (DVD, VCR, cable box, A/V receiver) and a single eighth-inch mini jack at the other to plug into the unit's control box. A four-foot cable, however, is ridiculously short for its designed purpose.

You can use an S-video cable with either set, but it's not included with either. If you use an S-video cable, you'll need a separate eighth-inch mini-jack cable to hook up the sound or you can use a pair of standard Walkman headphones.

The bottom line: both sets have baseline decent connectivity options, but a lousy choice of included cables.

Connectivity Rating: 70

Look & Feel: The best thing about the Eye-Trek is that the ear-bud earphones are located at the end of the goggle ear pieces, close to your ears. You can manipulate the Eye-Trek ear buds with the goggles on and without looking, which isn't possible with the Glasstron.

Both the Eye-Trek and the Glasstron allow you to maintain some degree of peripheral vision, out the bottom and around the sides. And you can wear either unit over your glasses.

Sitting with these goggles on your face with an image that close to your eyes induces a bit of claustrophobia. The Eye-Trek isn't exactly heavy (it's fairly light, in fact), but watching video this way is definitely something you have to get used to. It took many short viewings to build up a comfort level to watch a full two-hour film in a single sitting.

Look & Feel Rating: 85

Performance: The Olympus delivers a sharper, smoother, brighter picture than the Glasstron. But this is faint praise, sort of like saying "Hudson Hawk" was a better Bruce Willis film than "Last Man Standing."

Even more so than with the Glasstron, you're way too close to the analogous 62-inch image on the Eye-Trek. The image almost completely fills your field of vision, especially if you take advantage of the 16:9 "wide" and "zoom" options on letterboxed materials. If the image had been as sharp as what you'd expect from a decent television, I wouldn't have minded being so close, but like the Glasstron, you can see the pixel structure of the LCD. It's a little like watching a movie through a screen door.

Both manufacturers say that these goggles would be excellent for game playing, but the nearness of the constant flickering game images to your eye can't be a good thing.

The Eye-Trek also had problems with whites. The snow fields of "A Simple Plan" and the home whites of the New York Yankee uniforms were way too over-saturated. No adjustment I tried was satisfactory. Video Essentials was no help either. Despite the amount of fine tuning the Olympus allows, I found myself constantly adjusting the picture depending on the source (DVD or broadcast).

On the positive side, non-anamorphic DVDs didn't display as much zoom artifact as they would on, say, a regular widescreen TV or on the Pioneer PDV-LC10 portable DVD player. Watching the non-anamorphic Yellow Submarine DVD on the Pioneer player resulted in noticeable zoom artifacts that were not nearly as obvious on the Eye-Trek.

Even with all this, I would rather watch a DVD through the goggles than on a portable DVD player. But I also like sitting near the front of a movie theater so that the image fills my field of vision. If you're like me, you'll like the goggles. If you like sitting back to the rear of a theater, you won't.

As to the sound, you're listening to faux surround through ear buds. It ain't Dolby Digital, but it's acceptable considering the source.

Since my preference is for close-up viewing, I judge that the Eye-Trek is a better way to watch a DVD away from your living room rig than a laptop or a portable DVD player.

Performance Rating: 83

Value: The Eye-Trek is too expensive. Remember, this $900 device is pretty useless without a portable DVD player of some sort, which will run you an additional $600-$1300.

For between $1500-$2000, you can buy a DVD-ROM equipped laptop, which gives you a 12-to-15-inch TFT active matrix screen that blows away both the Eye-Trek and the 6-inch screens on portable DVD players -- and you get a PC to boot (pun intended). You don't get the image controls, but then the Olympus is the only portable video device I've seen with this range of video adjustment options.

If you're considering this for use at home as an alternative to a direct view display, well, let me be blunt -- you're nuts. Spend the $900 on a good large screen TV.

Value Rating: 60

If you are a well-heeled, high-tech connoisseur, the Eye-Trek will definitely draw more oohs and aahs than most devices you've ever plucked out of your Gucci travel bag. The rest of us normal folks will be far better off with a DVD-ROM laptop or a lower-priced portable DVD player.

Still, the Eye-Trek's uniqueness makes it a pretty compelling device. If Olympus manages to smooth out the pixelation and bring down the price, you may see row after row of goggle-covered faces on your next coast-to-coastflight.

Overall Rating: 77