P3D VM Talking Viewer

[jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Gabriel Jacob)]

Well I finally got it! The Tyco (now Fisher Price) Talking VM
that is. Thanks to Dan Shelley I got one, cause here in
Canada it wasn't possible to find. That is not unusual of
course, since even the 3Discover (manufactured less than a
mile from where I live) came out many months later, after
it came out in the states.

When the package arrived the other day, there were no pleasant
or unpleasant surprises, since I remembered reading all the bad
reviews here on P3D. The reviewers were right on the mark BTW.
Still I had to SEE it for myself and also since it would 
complement my other 3-D novelty viewers, I had to get it! ;-)

Anyways, now that I have justified why I went ahead with the
purchase, here are some more additional observations. First of
all, I couldn't believe how bad the chromatic aberrations were.
I don't remember seeing one this bad. My first thought was,
how could they use such cheap lenses. It was so bad, that they
would have made excellent prisms or ChromaDepth glasses! I
took out the cartridge and tried to see how the images looked
with a pair 10X lens loupes. They were much better, with much
less chromatic aberrations. What surprised me was that the
images were smaller with the 10X loupes than with the viewer!
The images with the viewer were (very roughly) 15 percent
larger than with the 10X loupes.

I then realized that those simple single element lenses were
working overtime and being asked to do MUCH MORE than they
could provide. The rather short f.l. lenses (roughly 30mm)
explained the bad chromatic aberrations present and huge
magnification power. Heck it explained alot of things except
one! Why did they decide to go this route?

This begs the question, "How does it compare to it's older
sibling". Much less chromatic aberrations with the
traditional VM viewer and longer f.l.(about 45mm?). Even
though the cartridge film chips (10x10mm) are slightly
smaller than the old reel type film chips, the cartridge film
chips yield about a 25 percent larger size! This won't come
as much as a surprise considering how it stacked up with
10X loupes. The quality of the Talking VM film also seems
inferior to the reel type and certainly doesn't help matters.
The lens spacing is 62mm (aprox.) and chip spacing 59mm
making it narrower than the reel VM viewer. The viewer case
color keeps with tradition and is the same color as the reel
type viewer but is a deeper shade of red.

Overall the design is nice. The endless loop is mechanically
advanced and doesn't need batteries. The batteries are only
necessary for the audio. As reported by others the sound is
kinda tinny but is a welcome feature. One very unacceptable
aspect of the endless loop is a very fine line on the middle
of the image where it is (seemingly) spliced together. If
thats the case, I don't understand why this line couldn't be
between frames and not in the middle of the chip! All three
cartridges (different subjects) had this line with one of
them on two different frames. 

Some minor nitpicking was that the cartridge can be 
inadvertantly put in backwards part way. They could have made
it slightly less rectangular to avoid this. The steal the
light from above I liked and worked rather well. No more
sprained necks for me! :-) They could have used a better
diffuser material though. Another thing I didn't really like
was the cartridge lock. This is reduntant since the cartridge
stays quite secure without it. It's so secure that it needs
an eject button to remove it from the viewer. 

So all in all a nice design but the quality of the lenses and
film is lacking. The viewer is recommended for ages 3 and up.
With the narrower eye/chip spacing, little tykes can probably
actually see the images for a change, but I don't think it
would be a good idea. Eyestrain and all!

Gabriel


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