Silicon Micro Display ST1080 HMD Update Adds 720p Scaling

Silicon Micro Display’s ST1080 head mounted display has been on the market for a few months now. The HMD has been lauded for its high resolution 1080p display but shipped without the ability to scale up 720p content to fill the entire screen. Instead, 720p content would fill a smaller portion of the screen. Thanks to a new free update available from SMD, the ST1080 can now scale 720p content correctly.

With the 1.10 update from Silicon Micro Display, 720p content will correctly fill the entire screen. All previous 2D formats are supporting, as well as all previous 3D formats except for the side-by-side format which SMD says is “substantially more work”, but says they’ll release an update for side-by-side 720p scaling in the future. Presumably side-by-side 720p 3D will still work with the 1.10 update but it simply won’t scale like the other formats. For a list of all inputs and 3D formats accepted by the ST1080, see here.

The 1.4mb update is free and currently only for PC, but SMD says they are working on the same update for Mac users and will release it in the “near future”. You can find the ST1080 1.10 720p scaling update on the company’s download page here.

Meanwhile, comments on SMD’s site indicate that people are still waiting for shipments of the ST1080 to arrive. Apparently the company has had some trouble filling their pre-order backlog and post-launch orders in a reasonable amount of time. Some of this may be due to quality-control issues where the company decided to halt production to fix issues before shipping out additional units.

[Silicon Micro Display Blog]