The big market in these things isn't going to be the blind- it will be sighted people.
As soon as the bugs are worked out and the resolution is high enough it would be an excellent way to connect two people (or two million) and let the audience see 'what I see'. All you need is a transmitter/receiver like a mobile phone has and you can receive what your friend is looking at or send the friend what you're looking at. Also, you could simply send your imagery (or your visual life as it happens) to a hard drive for storage of everything you see. That last will evolve into directors making feature length visuals as an art medium (would give a whole new meaning to war/porn movies).
The military will get their hands on it first I reckon but civilians will have their day in the sun too. At some point nothing important will go unnoticed- if I witness it, the whole world will witness it. It will change the way we deal with murder and other crime. It will change politics, geopolitical conflict... Everything.
Instead of replacing our biological eyes with improved digital eyes, it would be better to simply add the digital eyes externally. My choice would be to mount them on the ends of two steerable "bunny ear" masts, which would in turn be mounted over the ears. By having an extra (better) set of eyes mounted on the end of these steerable "eyestalks", the wearer could see in all directions, around corners, or quadroscopically. Later, when digital ears are produced, these too could be stalk-mounted, giving the wearer a 360° sight and sound experience.
And then the government will demand to implant one of these in the eyes of anyone who is even remotely suspected of being a terrorist.
And then the warrantless wiretaps, so to speak...
NO cheers, unfortunately.