The term “metaverse” has become a thing again because Mark Zuckerberg has decided to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of a 3D, interactive world where users can work, play and be entertained, even changing Facebook’s holding company name to Meta. 

So while the social media mavens continue to tout how the cool kids will use whatever Silicon Valley can throw at them to interact with content, create creepy little avatars of themselves while they talk to and text their friends’ equally creepy-looking avatars and play games and whatnot using advanced augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology, just remember that this is really nothing new. 

It’s being touted as a revolution but for me, a person definitely way outside the target audience for these products, we’ve been down this road before. Interacting with content is nothing new for media watchers — we’ve been talking about it ever since Time Warner Cable launched the Full Service Network back in the 1990s. And with streaming and ultra high-speed broadband outpacing more traditional forms of entertainment consumption, media types have long prepared for this inevitable evolution.  

But the media business has never met a buzzword that it couldn’t beat to death and for the moment, “metaverse” appears to fit that bill. According to Bernstein Research, “metaverse” mentions on public company conference calls rose from just one in Q2 2020 to 449 in 3Q 2021.

Even actor Keanu Reeves, an owner of bitcoin and enthusiastic embracer of technology — he’s Neo, for gosh sakes — has asked for the metaverse hype to be turned down a notch, telling The Verge during the press tour for the upcoming Matrix: Resurrections movie that the term is decades old. 

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“Can we just not have metaverse be like invented by Facebook?” Reeves told The Verge. “The concept of the metaverse is like, way older. It’s like, c’mon man.”  

Bernstein Research hosted a conference call with its clients about the metaverse on Dec. 10 (a transcript was provided on Dec. 16) and for software developers and hardware manufacturers it appears that momentum is going their way.

According to Bernstein, the metaverse could represent a $2 trillion annual revenue opportunity, but there is a big question regarding timing: nobody knows exactly when that opportunity will come. Still, that revenue is expected to come from multiple sources — advertising, gaming, software, mobile apps and more — and some is even being spent to some extent today.  

“Companies are already spending to build it [the metaverse] and that costs real capital dollars,” Bernstein Internet analyst Mark Schmulik said on the call. “As they build it, we're already starting to see certain companies like Meta gain traction in hardware sales and related software sales. While it's still too early to draw a line of whether that's going to be successful or not, it's certainly underway.” 

That includes cable and telecom companies, which see the metaverse as another catalyst to drive the need for higher speeds. On the Dec. 10 Bernstein call, cable and telecom analyst Peter Supino noted that he expects 80 million U.S. homes to have at least one way to purchase Gigabit symmetrical service by 2025. 

And while wireless has been capacity constrained in the past, Supino noted that about 500 megahertz of mid-band spectrum has been reallocated by the Big Three carriers (AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile) to 5G. 

The metaverse also is important to the cloud services business, because connecting as many machines as possible is a big priority. And that need for connectivity could be a potential boon for Dish Network, which has about 100 MHz of fallow wireless spectrum and partnership possibilities with Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google Cloud. 

“Dish is an unencumbered, high capacity link between the industrial metaverse and the cloud service providers that would like to serve and foster it,” Supino said.

But on the media and entertainment side, the benefits of the metaverse aren’t so clear.

Bernstein media analyst Todd Juenger admitted he was a “card-carrying” cynic when it comes to the Metaverse, adding that with all the hype surrounding the industry’s latest buzzword, he’s feeling more than a little déjà vu.  

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“The reason I'm cynical is that I feel like I've seen this before in media and entertainment,” Juenger said according to the transcript. “To me, the metaverse just sounds like a new word to describe an evolution that's naturally happening anyway.”

He then went on to offer an example. Remember 3D? Not too long ago, in the wake of James Cameron’s Avatar, the most successful 3D movie ever made, all content was supposed to be 3D, movies, television, networks began springing up all over the place. In 2010, ESPN was set to launch a 3D channel, Discovery was teaming up with Sony and IMAX to launch a 24-hour linear 3D network with movies, documentaries and children's programming and electronics vendors were scrambling to introduce 3D TVs to satiate what they expected to be tremendous demand. 

I don’t have to tell you what happened, but I’ll let Juenger tell you why it did anyway. 

“A couple years go by and where is 3D, right?,” Juenger said. “It was just [that] consumers didn't like it. They didn't benefit from it. It was almost being forced upon them.”

Sound familiar?

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Juenger went on to talk about AR, which was all the rage a few years ago, fueled by Pokémon Go, the mobile game that had young and old alike wandering into traffic to capture little AR anime figures. That was supposed to take the video game business by storm and again, it didn’t. Juenger recalled that while Pokémon Go was a massive success and its still going relatively strong, it remains the go-to example of AR’s supposed takeover of the video game business a half decade after its introduction. 

“It's funny that when we talk about AR when it relates to media, we still have to use Pokémon Go as the example, right?” Juenger said, noting that in the entertainment business, everybody copies everybody else, but so far that hasn’t happened with AR. 

“If AR is a big idea, where are the other AR video games?” Juenger said. “Why do we still have to point to Pokémon Go?”

Juenger wasn’t denying the opportunity that a new and improved metaverse presents. He just believes that the concern as to whether media and entertainment companies will take advantage of it is a bit misplaced.They already seem to be doing it. 

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“When it comes to entertainment, I will say the content creation will follow the technology platforms.” Juenger said. “I don't deny that there will be a big advancement in devices people use and [are] using social elements of entertainment, which incorporates elements of what we call the metaverse.”

Juenger, who also follows the video game industry, said that Roblox, the online platform that allows people to play games created by other users, already bills itself as a metaverse. The difference between Roblox games and more traditional games like Grand Theft Auto, he said, is that a user can move his Roblox avatar through different games. 

“I'm not sure you even want to take your GTA persona and move it into a different game, so maybe those will just stay separate,” Juenger said. “In terms of VR and AR games — in VR games, every major publisher makes some — but they all tell you that they just earn the minimum. And the only reason they do it is not really to make money, it's really just to stay involved and to build capabilities in case this takes off.” 

Even Disney has jumped on the metaverse bandwagon, envisioning a merger of the physical and virtual worlds in its theme park experiences, which Juenger said, although a  bit cringe-worthy, probably makes sense. 

“To me, that just sounds like an idea of a Disney video game,” Juenger said, adding that the prevailing wisdom that only huge conglomerates can afford to take advantage of metaverse opportunities may not hold true. 

Sure, the mega-media giants like Disney have all the money, technology and resources and have managed to build huge communities with their brands, but their size can make them slow to react to changes in the business. With development getting easier and faster and distribution barriers being shattered across the landscape, Juenger said some believe it is time to consider smaller, faster, more advanced startups to displace some of their older, larger competitors.    

“This is all still new enough and video games are inherently innovative,” Juenger said. “I would bet on the big IPs. But I think it's an evolution, not a revolution. Video game manufacturers — they've gone through a lot of change already. I think this is just another one.” 

Other analysts have delved into the metaverse conversation, with Evercore ISI Internet analyst Mark Mahaney issuing a 33-page report on December 10 that highlighted the pros and cons of the technology. Pros: there is a lot of money to be made. Cons: It’s going to take a big change in consumer behavior to realize that revenue.

On the plus side, Mahaney said Meta (the former Facebook) is putting its money where its vision is, investing more than $10 billion annually in the concept, has about 3.5 billion monthly users in its family of apps that are already engaging in what is most likely the core use of the metaverse (social media); and has the majority of the VR device business through Oculus Quest. And the pandemic has shown that consumers are willing to interact more online -- Zoom went from 10 million data meeting participants in 2019 to 300 million by April 2020. Roblox has more than 47 million DAUs that average 2.6 hours per day on the platform in Q3 2021, and while VR adoption is still nascent -- about 2% of monthly users on Steam -- it is rising.

But there’s a downside too. According to Mahaney’s report, the biggest question is whether enough consumers will swap “real” reality for virtual reality or whether VR will just be another niche product. And then there is the technology part of the metaverse. Zuckerberg has said that the biggest challenge for the industry is cramming a super-computer into the frame of normal-looking eyeglasses. 

“Ultimately, we need high-fidelity graphics, low latency, with hundreds of millions of concurrent users in real-time at a relatively cheap price point,” Mahaney wrote.

That, to me, is going to be the real deciding factor in this. People have different expectations as to how the metaverse will look and feel and I will bet you that none of them has a basis in the current reality.

The technology industry is really good at driving interest and excitement about technology, but it takes time for these things to deliver what’s being promised. And now they are talking about a technology that in order to work as promised is literally going to have billions of users accessing servers and whatnot simultaneously. Just think of how annoyed you get when Netflix takes too much time to load a movie and multiply that by 1,000 or so when your virtual jaunt through the rainforest crashes into a sea of pixels. 

And then there are the social and privacy aspects. It’s probably a safe bet that to keep the cost of these products and services down, people are going to have to give up a load of personal data. Sure many are doing that already, but you’ve got to wonder how much more everyone is going to have to surrender to make a low-cost metaverse worthwhile. 

And as far as the social impact, while most people have spent a year in isolation, when they get a chance to go out and interact with actual people, they do it in droves. The news is full of stories of people, young and old, that risked going to large gatherings during the outbreak. Heck, just yesterday (December 16), AMC Theaters said that 1.1 million people went outside to an actual movie theater to watch Spiderman: No Way Home, the second largest box office day in AMC’s history  (The Avengers: Endgame was No. 1). 

So I guess what I’m saying is that for the metaverse to really be worth the hype, it has to deliver on its promises. If it doesn’t, it risks turning consumers off of the concept, or at least substantially delaying its acceptance until it resurfaces years later with another name -- my vote is for  Vitametamegaverse (“It’s So Tasty Too!”). And that’s another thing that this industry has seen before.  ■ 

Vudu, the streaming service from Comcast's Fandango unit, said that it is available on virtual reality devices from Facebook’s Oculus, effective Tuesday.

Users of Quest 1 and Quest 2 devices will be able to rent or buy 200,000 movies and TV shows, many not available on subscription services, such as Free Guy, available for $5.99. 

Quest 2 users can also access hundreds of 3D releases like The Boss Baby: Family Business, Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World. 

Vudu also offers thousands of free titles.

"We’re excited that Vudu will now serve as the official movie and TV store on Oculus," said Fandango chief commercial officer Kevin Shepela. “Fandango’s mission is to usher fans to the most moving entertainment experiences and we’re certainly able to deliver that promise with the new Vudu app on Oculus. We’re thrilled to be working with Oculus to help transport fans to new worlds in the most immersive formats available.”

Fandango merged its on-demand streaming services, Vudu and FandangoNow, in August. Comcast acquired Vudu in April 2020.

Vudu is available in more than 75 million connected TV households via smart TVs from Samsung, LG and Vizio and devices from Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Xfinity X1 and Flex, PlayStation, X-Box and TiVo.

Capitalizing on one of the increasingly precious new opportunities in the ultra-competitive virtual MVPD market, Sling TV is launching an app for the Oculus Go virtual reality headset.

Released last year by the Facebook-owned VR company, Oculus Go is a standalone VR headset that requires no smart phone for processing. It has a $199 MSRP for the base model with 32 GB of storage.

Oculus hasn’t released sales data for its relatively low-priced Go product. But research firm SuperData predicted earlier this year that around 1.8 million units would be sold in 2018.

For its part, Oculus is trying to meld the big-screen living room experience into the device—watching in the Oculus Go environment is equivalent to viewing on an 180-inch TV screen. Viewers enjoy a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 and the headphone-free, built-in speakers deliver a 3-D, spatial audio experience.

"Oculus Go is a real game-changer in giving people a personal home theater experience wherever they are, with its crystal-clear optics and portable design,” said Jimshade Chaudhari, VP of product management for Sling TV.

Sling TV, which has a base price of $25 a month, is offering new Oculus Go owners an $80 credit on a subscription. 

Oculus, Facebook’s virtual reality company, is diving deeper into video with Oculus TV, a custom, 3D-rendered environment that will be centered by a large viewing screen, virtual seating area and serve as a content hub for an initial wave of partners.

Oculus TV, announced at this week’s F8 conference in San Jose, will focus on “serialized content” (including both live and on-demand) and provide a curated area for VR apps from partners such as Hulu and Showtime, with plans to add others, including Pluto TV, Red Bull TV and Facebook’s video app for TV next month. ESPN will be joining the Oculus TV mix later this year.

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Oculus TV is set to launch this month, and sometime this summer will add the ability for up to four people to watch together in a virtual room.

The most significant VR hardware product news to come out of F8 was the commercial availability of the Oculus Go, the company’s first standalone VR headset that starts at $199 (for the 32 Gigabyte version; the 64 GB version sells for $249) and supports more than 1,000 apps and games at launch.

Oculus Go complements the Oculus Rift, which needs to be hooked to a high-octane PC. Oculus software also powers the Samsung Gear VR headset that works in tandem with compatible smartphones. Watch this promo video about Oculus’s new standalone VR headset:

Oculus Go will also compete with standalone VR headsets that will work with Google’s Daydream platform. Google and its CE partners have not announced a revised launch date for those products (originally they were expected to be out by the end of 2017) other than to say that they are coming “soon." More details could be announced at next week’s Google I/O developer conference

Oculus also introduced a “Venues” offering focused on live social events such as concerts, sports and comedy nights – an area that’s been a focus of AltSpaceVR, the social VR company acquired last fall by Microsoft.

Oculus has also redesigned Oculus Rooms, a social platform originally released for the Gear VR, with this week’s launch of Oculus Go. 

Hoping to stoke a mass market for virtual reality, Facebook-owned Oculus has introduced a wireless, stand-alone headset called the Oculus Go that will start at $199 and ship early next year.

The new product will be a follow on to the Rift, which needs to be tethered to a high-power PC, and Samsung’s Gear VR, which runs Oculus software but needs to be paired to a compatible smartphone. Oculus announced last fall that it was developing a stand-alone headset.

Oculus is in a race to get a stand-alone, high end VR product to the market, as Google is also pushing ahead with a standalone VR design that runs its Daydream platform, with several hardware partners already on board to build it.

RELATED: Google CE Partners to Debut Standalone VR Headsets in 2017

Oculus said the standalone headsets “represent a totally new phase of VR hardware,” noting that the Oculus Go aims to be lightweight thanks in part to a new fabric for the facial interface, and claiming that the device’s high-resolution, fast-switch LCD screen will boost visual clarity and reduce the “screen door effect” of earlier generation models, along with lenses that widen the field of view and reduce glare.

The new product will also integrate spatial audio, with speakers built into the headset.

Watch a brief promo about the Oculus Go: 

“I am more committed than ever to the future of virtual reality,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the Oculus Connect conference, according to the Los Angeles Times. Mark Zuckerberg also expressed a goal to bring VR to 1 billion users.

Oculus also offered an update on its work around project Santa Cruz, demoing a positionally-tracked headset with two controllers that will bring a more immersive experience to an untethered Rift headset.

Next year, the company plans to launch Oculus Venues, a social VR platform that will let users watch concerts and movies with up to 1,000 others in a virtual space.

Microsoft is also getting into the social VR game following its acquisition of Altspace VR.

Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, could use a bit of good news after a recent bad stretch that included the controversial departure of co-founder Palmer Luckey and a loss in the courts.

That good news didn’t come this week, when Oculus head of content Jason Rubin announced Thursday in a blog post that the company is shutting down Story Studio, the unit that created shorts such as Lost, Henry and Dear Angelica, reasoning that it makes more sense to help fuel third-party development that has already helped its high-end Rift product as well as Gear VR, the mobile VR platform that works with certain Samsung smartphones.

Variety reported that Story Studio's 50 staffers are being encouraged to seek other jobs at Oculus, and that all ongoing projects at the studio are being cancelled. 

But, on the positive side, Rubin noted that Oculus is “still absolutely committed to growing the VR film and creative content ecosystem,” adding that Oculus last year committed an additional $250 million to fund VR content from developers around the globe, helping to spawn games such as Robo Recall, Rock Band VR and Follow My Lead.

RELATED: Oculus Splits Into Groups Focused on PC, Mobile VR

Additionally, Oculus will “carve out” $50 million from that total to fund non-gaming, experiential content.

“We’re now entering the next chapter of VR development, where new creators enter the market in anticipation of adoption and growth, and we’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem,” Rubin explained. “After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production.”

While the shutdown of Oculus Stories Studio isn’t super news for Oculus, “declaring the demise of VR” because of it “is both alarmist and somewhat premature,” Mike Bloxham, SVP of Frank N. Magid Associates, said in a statement regarding the decision.

 “The bottom line is that although the news about Oculus Story Studio is not good, I certainly don't see it as terminal as long as the Samsung Gear VR, Playstation's, Google's Daydream and the rest continue to sell and more content populates the broader ecosystem. That's where the bulk of the market is right now and likely will be for some time,” Bloxham wrote.

Based on a recent study of 2,000 U.S. consumers, the VR/AR Insights Consortium (a group formed by Magid and counts members such as A+E Networks, Best Buy and Turner) estimated that there are 44 million consumers who are “in-market” for virtual reality, meaning they are planning to buy a VR device in the near future. The study also found that 82% of VR devices already in use have been purchased in the past six months.

Greenlight Insights, in partnership with Road to VR, predicts “modest” growth for the virtual-reality sector in the short term, hitting $7.2 billion in global revenues this year, of which $4.7 billion, or 65.4%, will be tied to head-mounted displays. That compares to 11.9% for VR consumer content, and 11.6% for VR cameras.

RELATED: VR Market Still Set for ‘Modest’ Growth in 2017 (subscription required) 

Looking to reduce the cost barrier to consumers who might be on the fence about buying a high-end virtual reality system, Oculus has trimmed the price of its baseline Rift headset and the Touch motion controllers.

The price reduction, which comes about a year after the Facebook-owned company started shipping the Rift, cuts the price of both products by $100 – the Rift VR headset now sells for $499, while a pair of Touch controllers fetch $99. Oculus is now selling the product bundle for $598 (down from $798)

RELATED: Oculus Rift Starts Shipping

“As we look to the year ahead, we’re focused on driving the industry forward by bringing VR to more people with the best products and the leading VR content line-up,” Oculus said in this blog post announcing that the company is also offering a new VR shooter, Robo Recall, for free with Touch controllers. “That starts with making PC VR as affordable as possible.”

Oculus Rift users will still need to pair the platform with a compatible, high-octane PC.

The price cuts arrive as Oculus and its rivals attempt to build market share.

Oculus hasn’t announces sales figures for the Rift, but Sony recently confirmed to The New York Timesthat unit sales of the PlayStation VR, a less expensive platform that connects to PS4 consoles, is nearing the 1 million mark. That puts it ahead of estimated shipments of the HTC Vive (420,000) and the Rift (243,000) tabulated by SuperData Research.

RELATED: Sony Has Sold 915,000 PlayStation VR Units: Report

Hulu has added some social and personalized elements to its virtual reality apps for the Samsung Gear VR and the Oculus Rift.

Its app for the Gear VP now supports Avatars and Rooms, which are “private virtual spaces” where users can get together to watch Hulu content together, including a batch of 360-degree video content that does not require a separate Hulu subscription.

The Hulu VR update for the Rift adds personalized Avatars and support for Oculus Touch controllers with full positioning tracking. That latter addition lets users of the app control objects in the Hulu VR environment while watching the OTT provider’s 2D library.

Hulu launched its app for the Oculus Rift last June, which followed the March 2016 launch of an app that’s optimized for the Oculus-powered Gear VR, which needs to be paired with a compatible Samsung smart phone.

RELATED: Hulu VR App Reaches the Oculus Rift

Watch this promo about Hulu’s new VR features:

Hugo Barra, an exec late of Xiaomi and Google, has been hired to lead all of Facebook’s virtual reality efforts, including the team of Oculus, the VR company Facebook acquired in 2014 for $2 billion.

The hiring of Barra, as VP of virtual reality at Facebook , comes more than a month after Oculus announced it was to be split into groups focused on PC and mobile VR, with Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe stepping down from that role to instead head up Oculus’s PC VR division. Jon Thomason now leads Oculus’s mobile VR group.  

RELATED: Oculus Splits Into Groups Focused on PC, Mobile VR

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the hiring Wednesday on Facebook  coupled with an image showing avatars of Zuckerberg and Barra sitting together in a virtualized setting.

“Hugo's in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting,” Zuckerberg wrote, adding that Barra “shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform.”

Barra added  on Facebook that he’ll be joining the team in a couple of months, will look forward to “taking VR mainstream,” and also confirmed his appointment (and title) via  Twitter:

Joining Facebook as VP of virtual reality (VPVR!) to lead Team @Oculus. So excited! Mark posted about it here: https://t.co/kYgIniSQiMpic.twitter.com/7fYTkniykr

— Hugo Barra (@hbarra) January 26, 2017

The hiring of Barra comes as Facebook and Oculus look to drive greater adoption of VR and as they face competition from other players, including HTC and Google and Sony.  Facebook/Oculus are also working on a standalone VR headset that would fall somewhere between its PC-tethered Rift product and the mobile-focused Samsung Gear VR, which is powered by Oculus.

RELATED: Oculus Developing Standalone VR Headset

Oculus, the virtual reality unit of Facebook, has some big changes underway as the company will try to accelerate its market speed and scale by establishing new groups dedicated to PC and mobile VR. 

As part of the shift, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe will be stepping aside to head up the PC VR division, with Jon Thomason, an exec late of Amazon, Qualcomm and Microsoft who joined Oculus in August, to take the helm of the mobile VR group.

Iribe, Thomason and Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer will work together to find a new leader to manage the Oculus teams, Iribe explained Tuesday in this blog post.

“Changing the world on that scale has required us to also scale Oculus at warp speed. With our growth and product strategy, we’ve decided to establish new PC and mobile VR groups to be more focused, strengthen development and accelerate our roadmap,” Iribe said, noting that Facebook remains “committed to working on VR for the long term.”  

Oculus’s PC business has focused on the Oculus Rift. On the mobile end, its technology has been powering the Samsung Gear VR headset.

Facebook has also announced plans to build a standalone VR platform, but has not said much about the anticipated product timing.

RELATED: Oculus Developing Standalone VR Headset

Oculus’s new strategy emerges as the VR sector becomes increasingly competitive following this year’s debut of the HTC Vive and Daydream View, Google’s new mobile VR headset/controller combo that works with select Android-based smartphones.

RELATED: Daydream View Reviews Roll In

“As we’ve grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology,” Iribe said of his decision to lead the PC VR division of Oculus. 

Seeking middle ground between the mobile-focused Samsung Gear VR and the high-end PC-tethered Oculus Rift, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company is working on standalone, wireless VR headset.

Speaking at the Oculus Connect 3 conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the standalone platform is in the prototype phase and didn’t announce when it will hit the market.

RELATED: Facebook to Spend $2 Billion to Acquire Oculus VR

"We're working on a standalone #VR experience." Tune in to the #OC3 keynotes, now LIVE: https://t.co/coMFPh8Bmspic.twitter.com/cz2SVOUPkn

— Oculus (@oculus) October 6, 2016

But Zuckerberg said the coming product would hit the “sweet spot” because it wouldn’t be tethered to another device like the Rift, but will provide “inside-out tracking” – something that is not supported in the Oculus-powered Gear VR.

“We have a demo, but we don’t have a product yet,” he said, calling it a “completely new category of virtual reality product,” according to Ars Technica.

That product plan comes as Google gets more aggressive in the market with its new mobile-based Daydream View headset and rumors that it has also been eyeing a self-contained VR platform that has reportedly been put on the backburner.

Oculus, which is dedicating $50 million to development this year, also announced in-ear headphones for the Rift that will cost $49 and ship December 6. 

Oculus also introduced customizable avatars for a new Social platform for the Gear VR and Rift.

Hulu said its VR app is the first third-party media/entertainment app to support Oculus Social (and the personalized avatars) for the Gear VR and Rift, noting that it will also support the Oculus Touch controllers and positioning tracking supported by the Rift. Hulu released a sneak peek:

Thanks in part to the rise of smartphone-powered virtual reality platforms such as Google’s just-announced Daydream View, the installed base of VR headsets will soar from 4 million in 2015 to 81 million in 2020, IHS Technology predicts.

On the higher end of the VR headset spectrum, IHS also expects Sony’s PlayStation VR platform (for PS4 consoles) to outsell the two main PC-connected platforms – the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive – in 2016.  This year, IHS Technology forecasts that PlayStation VR will sell 1.4 million headsets, and generate $134 million in spending on VR entertainment, versus $69 million for PC-based headsets.

However, mobile VR headsets, such as the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR and Daydream View, will nab the biggest share. IHS sees smartphone VR headsets representing 87% of the market’s installed base by the end of 2016.

RELATED: Google Unveils Daydream View VR Headset, Controller

On the mobile side, IHS expects the Gear VR to have the largest installed base of all major branded headsets with 5.4 million this year, but expects the Daydream View to “slowly disrupt Samsung’s dominant market position” and become the most popular headset for VR by 2019.

RELATED: 360 Video: VR’s Path to the Mainstream

IHS also expects consumers to spend $1.6 billion on VR headsets this year, bolstered by more expensive platforms like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PS VR.

“Smartphone VR headsets will represent the largest addressable market for VR content because of cheaper pricing,” Ian Fogg, senior director at IHS Technology, said in a statement. “The smartphone VR base will be a major opportunity for VR content experimentation

“Smartphone VR headsets’ share of the VR installed base will be 87 percent at the end of 2016.”

However, the firm also expects higher-end VR headsets to dominate content monetization, with IHS predicting that consumer spending on VR entertainment will hit $3.3 billion by 2020, up from a mere $310 million in 2016.

RELATED: PlayStation VR Lands on October 13

“There will be a polarization of the VR market between lower volume premium VR headsets, which will have strong paid content conversion rates, and higher-volume cheaper smartphone VR headsets, which will monetise content at a lower rate,” Piers Harding-Rolls, director of games analysis at IHS Technology, noted. “A $3.3 billion VR entertainment market by 2020 will represent less than 1 percent of overall entertainment spending worldwide.”

If experiencing is believing when it comes to virtual reality, Oculus will soon put that notion to the test.

The Facebook-owned VR company shed some light on its retail initiative Monday, announcing that the Rift will be launched at 48 Best Buy stores on May 7 as part of “The Intel Experience.” Oculus said it expects to support more in-store Rift demos at more Best Buy stores this summer.

The company has also set up Oculus Live, an online form that lets interest consumers schedule Rift demos at Best Buy stores up to a month in advance.

“For many, this is a first chance to jump into truly immersive VR,” Oculus said.

Additionally, a “small number” of Rifts will be offered at select Best Buy stores starting May 7, with some online sales offered via Microsoft and Amazon starting May 6 at 9 a.m. PT.

“Quantities will be extremely limited while we catch up on Rift pre-orders,” the company said, while also acknowledging that “many pre-order customers are still waiting for their Rifts, so we’re offering those customers a chance to purchase Rift from retail instead – while keeping their pre-order benefits, like the EVE: Valkyrie Founder’s Pack and priority status for Touch pre-orders.”

Shipments of the Rift started in late March. Facebook has not announced unit sales, but doesn’t see VR having a material impact on revenue in 2016 as it starts the slow road to mainstream consumer adoption.

Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, started shipping its high-end platform, the Rift, late last month and has been grappling with shipping delays in the early going. 

So, it’s off to a slow start despite a broader market that continues to maintain buzz thanks to the Samsung Gear VR (which also uses Oculus’s platform but requires users to pair the headset to a compatible smartphone), and the launch of the HTC Vive, and excitement over the coming Sony PlayStation VR.

But getting off to a slow start is not much of issue in the eyes of Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, he expects it.

“This is very early and we don't expect VR to take off as a mainstream success right away,” he said Wednesday (April 27) on the company’s first quarter earnings call, noting that most early adopters of Rift are gamers and developers.

“It's going to take a long time to get there,” he added, sidestepping a question about Rift unit shipments. “And a lot of what we felt like we were buying there was a critical mass of the best people and the best technology to go do all the things that we needed to go do over the next 10 years to drive that home and turn that into a big platform.”

And he still sees gaming and video as the big use-cases for both VR and augmented reality.

Though he didn’t delve into Rift shipments (Facebook reiterated the VR won’t have a material impact on revenue in 2016), Zuckerberg noted the more than 2 million hours of video have been watched on the Gear VR. Also, a 360-degree version of the iconic Game of Thrones opening was FB’s most-watched 360 video, generating more than 12 million total views in a 24-hour span (it can be viewed with our without a VR headset).

“But again, I do want to really emphasize, this is early and it's going take a long time. And I know there's a lot of hype around this, and we're just focused on building this to be very good over the long term,” he said.

That said, other parts of Facebook’s business are growing rapidly.

In Q1, more than 1.65 billion people were using Facebook each month and 1.09 billion each day, up 16% year-on-year. Also, 1.5 billion people accessed FB from mobile devices in Q1, up 21%.

Revenues grew 52%, to $5.4 billion, while ad revenue jumped 57%, to $5.2 billion. 

Global revenues for virtual reality headset products are poised to reach $895 million this year, according to a fresh forecast from Strategy Analytics.

New, premium products from Oculus (Rift), HTC (Vive) and Sony (PlayStation VR) will drive 77% of the value, despite accounting for just 13% of the volume, while lower priced smartphone based devices, such as the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR, will dominate the 12.8 million VR units shipped during the year, the firm said, calling 2016 a “pivotal” year for the emerging platform.  

Strategy Analytics believes that high-end VR headsets that must be tethered to PCs and came consoles (the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and coming PlayStation VR), will be lucky to exceed 1.7 million devices shipped globally this year because of “prohibitively high pricing.”

“At the same time, smartphone toting consumers are being bombarded by low cost and often bundled-in VR viewers like never before,” Strategy Analytics said, adding that they effectively are a “gateway drug” to upsell consumers on higher-end platforms. Of that group, Samsung has been bundling the Gear VR (regularly $99) with its new S7 smartphones.

As volumes go, smartphone-based VR headsets will represent 87% of the category volume in 2016, versus game console-based systems (9%), and PC-based products (4%). Game console-based VR platforms will represent 46% of the revenue share in 2016, versus 31% for PC-based VR, and 23% for smartphone-based systems, the research firm said.

"Consumers will soon be exposed to an incredible diversity of virtual reality options ranging from ultra-low cost to super premium,”  Cliff Raskind, director of Strategy Analytics' Wearable Device Ecosystems service, said in a statement. “While we expect smartphone-based viewers to take the lion's share of VR headset volumes in 2016 at 87% of shipments, PC and Game Console powered headsets will absolutely dominate value share commanding 77% of revenues." 

HTC started to take pre-orders for the Vive today at 10 a.m. ET, introducing a virtual reality platform that will cost $799 and go head-to-head with the Oculus Rift.

HTC, which has also announced international pricing for the Vive (it’ll fetch C$1,149 in Canada, £689.00 in the U.K., and €899.00 across other parts of Europe, for example), said the pre-order package bundles in three VR titles: Fantastic Contraption, Job Simulator and Tilt Brush, a 3D painting system from Google. The Vive kit will also include two wireless controllers and a 360-degree tracking and room scale movement sensors.

HTC, which is limiting orders to one Vive unit per customer, said it expects to start shipping the Steam VR-powered platform on April 5.

Like the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive users must tether the platform to a high-octane PC (HTC recommends PCs with an Nvidia GeForce GTC 970/AMD Radeon R9 290 equivalent or greater GPU, Intel i5-4590/AMD FX 8350 or greater CPU, at least 4 gigabytes of RAM, and HDMI 1.4 or DisplayPort 1.2 or newer video outputs).

Out of the chute, the HTC Vive will be a bit pricier than the Oculus Rift, which opened preorders on January 6 and starts at $599. Earlier this month, Oculus started to take pre-orders on Oculus-ready PCs and Rift bundles that start at $1,499.

Samsung, meanwhile, is trying to prime the virtual reality pump by bundling the Oculus-powered Gear VR headset with its new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge smartphones. The Gear VR regularly sells for $99, but is compatible only with select Samsung smartphone models.

Google reportedly is working on at least two new VR platforms -- a smartphone-powered viewer that would be a notch above its Cardboard platform, as well as a self-contained VR headset.

In January, the Consumer Technology Association predicted  that interest in new VR products, such as the Oculus Rift, Gear VR and HTC Vive and coming Sony VR headset for the PS4, will cause unit sales to surge 500% in 2016 and reach 1.2 million units sold. CTA also expects VR to generate $540 million in revenues this year, up 440% from 2015.

Samsung unveiled its new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge smartphones this week in conjunction with Mobile World Congress and the CE giant will be using virtual reality to pump early sales of its new smartphone lineup.

Consumers who pre-order those new models are in line to get a Gear VR headset, powered by Oculus, along with six VR games from Oculus. The bundle’s worth about $150 – the Samsung Gear VR sells for $99, and the batch of games go for about $50.

Samsung announced the VR tilt as higher end platforms are entering the market, including the Oculus Rift, which starts at $599 and will being shipping in late March. HTC is expected to release pricing on its VR platform, Vive, on Monday (February 29).

Oculus estimates that there are now 200 app and games offered on the Gear VR platform, and that over 1 million hours of 360 video have been watched so far on the platform.

Samsung also amped up the VR angle this week with the introduction of the Gear 360 camera, a device that lets users capture 360 video and upload it to Gear  VR or share on Facebook, which acquired Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion.

Facebook also announced this week that more than 20,000 360-degree videos have been uploaded so far, with “hundreds” being added daily.

The social media giant also said its new “dynamic,” more efficient streaming platform for 360 video with higher-resolution capabilities is coming to Gear VR “in the next few weeks.”  Per this blog post, Facebook is creating dozens of variants of every 360 video that gets uploaded and adjusts the variant that is displayed based on where the viewer is looking.

“By doing this, we’ve quadrupled the resolution quality of 360 streaming video in VR by reducing the amount of required network bandwidth by 4x — so videos look clearer and play faster,” Facebook noted.

MORE FROM THE VR SPECIAL REPORT: Meet the VR Headsets | Littlstar Builds VR Content Constellation

RELATED:'Virtual Reality -- Ready for a Closeup' Webinar, Feb. 24, with Andrew Trickett (Merge VR) and Tony Mugavero (Littlstar), moderated by Next TV editor Jeff Baumgartner

Virtual reality and 360-degree video are currently just a small segment of the market, but they’re gathering plenty of attention, and piles of cold hard cash, from investors looking to place bets on the Next Big Thing.

The good news for VR is that the segment is teeming with startups that have built or are developing products and content for a market that, by some estimates, is poised to explode. Goldman Sachs thinks VR and AR (augmented reality) could generate up to $182 billion in revenue (content, software and hardware) by 2025, and eclipse TV revenue.

Some large companies have already placed sizable bets. Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus, a company at the forefront of the market. Microsoft has been spending heavily and getting lots of buzz for an augmented reality initiative that centers on the HoloLens. Secretive AR/VR startup Magic Leap recently raised a monster-sized $800 million “C” round.

And we’re still waiting to find out what Apple’s play will be. CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call last month that he doesn’t view VR as a geeky niche. “It’s really cool and has some interesting applications,” he said, an indication that Apple won’t be sitting on the sidelines for long.

VR has also attracted attention from the pay TV industry. Comcast Ventures, Comcast’s VC arm, has announced investments in three startups focused on VR content and technology: AltSpaceVR, NextVR and Baobab Studios, a company specializing in animated virtual reality content.

“We’re excited about virtual reality as well as augmented reality,” Gavin Teo, a principal at Comcast Ventures said. “Going forward, we’re going to continue to invest in this space.”

Comcast Ventures hasn’t said where else in the sector it might splash some cash, but cinematic virtual reality and gaming are two content genres the VC firm could explore in 2016 and 2017, Teo said.

VR market growth will mirror that seen by mobile, Teo said, because it’s tapping into such existing distribution forms as over-the-top video and mobile app stores. The next question is how the storytelling and content-creation tools will evolve for filmmakers and game creators.

“I think 2015 was the year that the technology got there,” he said. “It was a good [year] for camera hardware and transport hardware. 2016 will be the year where you start to see consumer adoption of headsets.”

VR appears poised to go mass market in 2017 or 2018, he said. “But I think there is a market today, and business models are starting to take shape.”

The Gear VR and Google Cardboard viewers are already available, while more advanced platforms such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR will hit the market later this year.

Privately funded Merge Labs released its foam-based, $99 Merge VR viewer in November 2015. It hopes to draw a mass audience, but is keeping its future financial plans under wraps. The company has received “a bit of interest from traditional investors and private-equity investors” pursuing the VR sector, company co-founder Andrew Trickett said. “We’ll keep trucking along and executing with our heads down. We’ll consider them [funding opportunities] as they come in front of us.”

Merge Labs isn’t releasing sales data, but “we have demand exceeding supply … We’re also getting swamped [with inquiries] from brick-and-mortar stores. They are seeing that VR is going to be hot.”

Apparently happy with the consumer response to its inexpensive Cardboard virtual reality viewer and pursuing the next leg in its VR strategy, Google is reportedly pushing ahead with a next-gen, self-contained VR headset that won’t require users to pair it to a smartphone, game console, or a high-octane PC.

Google, which recently tapped company vet Clay Bavor to head up its VR team, is also preparing to release a more advanced version of its entry-level Cardboard viewer later this year that will be made of plastic, but will still need to be paired to a smartphone, according to The Wall Street Journal. That offering, The Financial Times reported earlier, will be similar to the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR headset, which is compatible with certain Samsung smartphone models (here’s our review of that platform).  

But Google’s purported plans for a self-contained offering would seemingly take aim at high-end VR platforms such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, which will be required to be linked to powerful PCs.  An Oculus Rift bundle is available for preorder starting at $599 and will start shipping in the spring; preorders for the HTC Vive are expected to begin on February 29. Sony, meanwhile, is expected to launch the PlayStation VR, a headset that will work in tandem with the popular PlayStation 4 gaming console, later this year.

Google hasn’t announced plans for what’s coming after Cardboard. Word of those plans could come at its I/O developer’s conference in May.  The WSJ said the timing of the release of Google’s new self-contained VR headset isn’t clear, but that Google could use I/O to unveil its more advanced smartphone-based VR viewer.

Speaking on the company’s earnings call earlier this month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Cardboard “is just the first step,” in its VR strategy, noting that more than 5 million of the inexpensive viewers had been shipped so far.

Virtual reality and 360-degree video have become a growing priority for the pay TV industry, particularly among programmers, so I dipped my toe into the platform to see what all the fuss is about.

My first experience with VR was with Google Cardboard, a very inexpensive way to get a taste of the technology and some of the content that’s being developed. There are plenty of Cardboard apps available, and I found the whole apparatus easy and accessible, though the experience had that poor-man’s VR feel to it.

More recently, I’ve been kicking the tires on the Merge VR, a sturdier, foam-based and higher-end display that supports all of the Cardboard apps and some other features and functions — such as easily accessible control buttons — that aren’t present in Google’s entry-level set-up. It’s a nice step up, and certainly a big step up from Cardboard.

But late last year, I was gifted a Samsung Gear VR, the Oculus-powered mobile headset that works with select smartphones, including mine, the Galaxy S6 edge plus.

The Gear VR presents a far more immersive, tightly integrated experience, offering a 3D world and a small but growing walled garden of content, including games and an array of short videos and VR experiences from partners such as Discovery Channel and Syfy. The platform’s accurate head-tracking navigation is another plus.

However, the quality of the content is hit and miss. A zip through a desert in a Star Wars setting was a fuzzy, pixelated mess, but Titans of Space, a downloadable journey through the solar system and beyond, was a sharp and interesting visual delight. VR productions/clips of recent boxing matches from Showtime and Fox Sports gave me a ringside view of the fight game that I’ve never had before.

I also enjoyed GrooVR, a funky, thematic VR experience driven by the beats and tones of one’s own music; it went as far as allowing me to link the app to my Spotify account. A puzzle/adventure game called Land’s End was another visual pleasure.

But I also couldn’t tolerate staying in these environments for more than 30 minutes at a sitting, which fits in well with why the current video focus for VR is on shorter-form fare. I did enjoy experimenting with the Netflix VR app for Gear VR, but I’d be hard-pressed to watch an hour-long TV episode on it, let alone a two-hour movie.

User tolerance, though, is just part of what would prevent me from staying in the experience for much longer than 30 minutes. A big problem is that the smartphone that connects to and powers the Gear VR headset becomes a hot potato in 20 minutes or less. More than once, I saw this message: “Your Gear VR needs to cool down to maintain optimal performance.” 

Soon after that message appeared, the video from any game I was playing would stutter, sputter and flicker, and I’d have to set everything aside so it could cool down.

For what it does well and not so well, Gear VR could serve as a gateway to even higher-end platforms. I’m not ready to make the investment required for the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive (the Oculus Rift, for instance, starts at $599, but I’d also have to spring for a high-octane PC), but I will certainly be in the market for the PlayStation VR because it will work with a device I already own — the PlayStation 4.

Editor’s note:  For much more on the emerging market for virtual reality and 360 video, check out our special section on those topics in the February 15 edition of Multichannel News.  In addition to features on how programmers and studios are experimenting with this new medium and how VC dollars are pouring into the sector, we’ll also have a Q&A with Littlstar founder and CEO Tony Mugavero.

Facebook continues to preach cautious optimism about Oculus Rift, the high-end virtual reality headset/platform that will start to ship to consumers in April.

Regarding pre-orders, which opened up earlier this month, Facebook isn’t offering any sales figures yet, but seems satisfied with the early results.

“Yes, I am happy,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday on the company’s Q4 earnings call, when asked about pre-order activity. “I don’t show much joy, but I am happy.”

And he reiterated that gaming will be the core focus of the Rift early on, expecting to see more than 100 VR games and “experiences” come to the platform this year.

“It’s going to be gaming for the beginning. That’s the initial market,” Zuckerberg said, noting that about 250 million people have an Xbox, PlayStation or Wii. “I think we’re off to a good start.”  

But Facebook also knows that it’s shooting high-end – the core Oculus Rift bundle (which includes the headset, a remote, an Xbox One Controller and two games) starts at $599, with Rift-PC combos starting in the $1,500 range.

Facebook CFO Dave Wehner tempered the near-term expectations, noting that “it’s early to be talking about large volumes...At this point I don’t think we’re giving a lot of color around supply chain and that sort of thing. It’s not going to be material to our financials this year.”

Some analysts are taking that to heart. “We have heard from investors whose estimates for VR-related 2016 revenues are $2 billion, and, in some cases, more than $3 billion. Both seem excessive to us, or at least too speculative,” Carlos Kirjner, senior analyst at Bernstein Research, said in a research note issued Thursday. He rates Facebook shares at “market-perform” with a 12-month target price of $150 per share.

VR was just one area of focus during the call, with Zuckerberg calling video “an important part of the Facebook experience,” as users now watch 100 million hours of video on the social media platform each day.

He said FB is experimenting with video discovery tools and opened the door for even grander plans --  “exploring ways to give people a dedicated place on Facebook for when they just want to watch videos. “We’re also exploring ways to give people a dedicated place on Facebook for when they just want to watch videos,” he said.

Facebook has also opened up a video channel for Instagram that, in a Twitter-like twist, lets users share and watch “moments” from events. 

Facebook shares jumped more than 12% in after-hours trading Wednesday in the wake of Q4 results that blew out Wall Street estimates. 

Facebook earned 79 cents per share on revenues of $5.84 billion in Q4 (up 52%), beating expectations of 68 cents on revenues of $5.37 billion. Ad revenue grew 57%, to $5.63 billion, with mobile ad revenue climbing 81%, to $4.5 billion.

Facebook also issued Q4 stats, announcing that more than 1.59 billion people use the service each month, and 1.04 billion use it each day, up more than 200 million and 148 million, respectively, year-over-year.

In December 2015, 1.44 billion people used Facebook on mobile devices, up 21%.

The company said its users watch 100 million hours of video each daily. Among other Facebook properties, Instagram has more than 400 million “monthly actives,” more than 800 million use Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp ended 2015 with 1 billion monthly actives.

The new Oculus-powered, $99  Samsung Gear VR headset  shipped late last year, and Facebook said it’s “pleased with the intial reaction” to the platform. Oculus opened preorders for its high-end Oculus Rift headsets earlier this month, with shipments slated to start before the end of March.

Facebook shares were up $11.63 (12.31%) to $106.08 in after-hours trading Wedneday.

Two significant endorsements recently for the value of virtual reality -- from Goldman Sachs and Deloitte consultants -- are escalating the hype about VR, which was virtually ubiquitous at CES this month. In addition, Google, which has been on the VR fringes, this week confirmed that it has created a VR division, headed by a senior executive, Clay Bavor, who has run Google's apps units, according to published reports.

Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini,in a 58-page outlook on virtual reality and augmented reality, predicted that the technologies have "the potential to become the next big computing platform." Her most optimistic growth estimate expects that VR and AR could generate up to $182 billion in revenue, including hardware and software/content, by 2025 -- exceeding television revenue. 

Even at a slower pace, VR could generate $80 billion by then, she said. Bellini's forecast cites nine categories for VR and AR adoption. Videogames will represent about one-third of the revenue, with live events, video entertainment and retail collectively pulling in about another quarter of the money; healthcare, engineering, military and real estate applications will also use VR to varying degrees, according to the Goldman Sachs forecast.

Separately, consulting firm Deloitte Global, as part of its 2016 Telecommunications/Media/Telecom outlook, forecast that this year will be VR's first billion-dollar year. It expects that "full feature" VR -- based on consoles and wired devices -- will initially exceed the market for "mobile VR," which may rely on high-resolution smartphones for displays.

"VR’s capability is likely to improve further still over the years as processors improve, screen resolution increases yet further, and content creators learn how to create for the format," Deloitte's report observed. But it acknowledged that, "As can happen with emerging technologies, there is considerable hype about the impact of VR in the near term."

For cable operators, the VR/AR juggernaut poses countless questions, ranging from the capability of home gateway devices to signal latency for live events. There will also be challenges in dealing with the VR vanguard, which now includes Facebook's Oculus subsidiary, HTC/Vive and Sony in addition to Google.

CableLabs is working out "what cable operators need to do to prepare for a large market adoption of VR," said Steve Glennon, principal architect at CableLabs' Advanced Technology Group, who is focused on VR. CableLabs's recent consumer survey about the value of technology found "an overwhelmingly positive consumer response on the value, comfort and lack of nausea problems using the goggles," he said in an interview after CES.

"We’ve been trying to understand the bandwidth needs, and have found that a good consumer experience needs between 30 and 40 Mbps for 360-degree content with current technology," he said. "This is far above current video streaming bandwidth requirements for online video like Netflix and Hulu."

Glennon said that CableLabs is continuing "to look for tactical opportunities to speed the consumer adoption of the VR technology." 

At CES, "It was pleasing to see how mainstream this technology is becoming," Glennon added.

"I think this will quickly move from HD content for the VR sphere up to 4K," he observed, citing several immersive VR demos that were "not for the faint of heart."

Prior to CES, CableLabs CEO Phil McKinney characterized VR developments as "beyond the goggles," referring to the limited hardware demonstrations of previous years. "What we're going to see is content," McKinney told USA Today, emphasizing that sports and travel-related VR content are the most likely initial products.

Skeptics have noted that the new VR buzz resembles the 3DTV hype a few years ago, which fizzled away.  Bellini, in the Goldman Sachs report, waives off such cynicism, insisting that VR and AR are laying the groundwork for new kinds of devices "beyond PCs and phones" that include controls via head and hand motions.  

Facebook is set to offer a $99 version of the Gear VR mobile headset with Samsung this holiday season and follow early next year with the Oculus Rift headset, but company CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t expect virtual reality to catch on like wildfire right out of the chute. 

It will take some time for VR to become adopted by consumers on a broad basis, perhaps following the growth rate of first-gen smartphones, but Facebook is in the virtual/augmented reality game for the long-term, Zuckerberg emphasized Wednesday on the company’s third quarter earnings call.

“Virtual reality has the potential to be the next computing platform that changes all of our lives,” he said. “It's important also to recognize that this is going to grow slowly, like computers and mobile phones when they first arrived. So we're committed to Oculus and virtual reality for the long-term.”

VR and other new platforms “take a long time to develop,” Zuckerberg acknowledged.

“But just to put that in perspective and compare it to the development of previous computing platforms like phones and computers, I think the first smartphones came out in 2003, and in the first year, I think BlackBerry and Palm Treo were the initial smartphones that came out,” he said. “I think they each sold in the hundreds of thousands of units.”

On the content end, he said gaming is VR’s “most obvious market…Then the next thing that we think is going to be huge is video and immersive experiences, both things that people can create, like the social content that they share on Facebook today, and more professional and premium content both short form and longer form.”

Facebook, which acquired Oculus VR in 2014 for $2 billion, also isn’t yet pinning any firm financial expectations on VR. Company CFO David Wehner wouldn’t discuss the possible operational expenses that Oculus could absorb in 2016.

“We're, as Mark said, very bullish about the long-term opportunity for VR and excited about the launch for the Rift next year,” Wehner said. “But VR is still very much in the development stage, so it would be early to be talking about large shipment volumes.”

But analysts are keeping a close eye on those developments.

“There is great interest from the Street on the evolution of Oculus, in part because of its potential contribution to revenues but most importantly because of its potential impact on operating expense (guidance) growth,” Bernstein Research analyst Carlos Kirjner said in a research note. “Zuckerberg was very clear in his attempt to lower expectations on the number of Oculus units sold next year, suggesting to us that the total impact of potential subsidies to hardware will be limited.”

Whether it’s been tablets, smart TVs or the latest, greatest streaming device,  one can count on Netflix to be among the first to jump on board a new platform. That goes for virtual reality, too.

Working in tandem with Oculus, Netflix is among the first video streamers to develop an app with an interface that’s optimized for the Samsung Gear VR, the virtual reality headset that needs to paired to a Samsung smartphone. Others such as Hulu and Twitch will be joining the mix soon.

While this doesn't give the actual VR experience justice, this YouTube video from Road to VR offers a sense of what the app is like:

Meanwhile, John Carmack, the CTO of Oculus, who did most of the development work on it, offered a bunch more technical detail about the effort in this Netflix blog post, noting that the core app uses two Android Surfaces – one for the user interface layer and another for the decoded video layer.

“Despite all the talk of hardcore gamers and abstract metaverses,” he wrote, “a lot of people want to watch movies and shows in virtual reality.” And getting the leading streaming service on board was key, in Carmack’s point of view. “A year ago, I had a short list of the top things that I felt Gear VR needed to be successful. One of them was Netflix.”

Oculus and Netflix, he explained, were able to get the UI running in VR within two days, with video playback capability following “shortly thereafter” using an app called VR 2D Shell that “functioned like a very simplified version of our Oculus Cinema application.”

Still, it wasn’t all easy peasy, as it was a challenge, Carmack explained, to provide smooth playback, and that the engineers had to use a special set of code just for the viewscreen portion of the VR view to ensure a high-resolution image.

And here’s more detail on how the video streaming challenge in a VR environment was met for this initial app:

“Still, it is drawing a 1280 pixel wide UI over maybe 900 pixels on the screen, so something has to give. Because of the nature of the distortion, the middle of the screen winds up stretching the image slightly, and you can discern every single pixel in the UI. As you get towards the outer edges, and especially the corners, more and more of the UI pixels get blended together. Some of the Netflix UI layout is a little unfortunate for this; small text in the corners is definitely harder to read.

“So forget 4K, or even full-HD. 720p HD is the highest resolution video you should even consider playing in a VR headset today.”

As the Twitterverse and tech blogs understandably poked all kinds of fun atTime’s virtual reality cover with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, Comcast this week was also talking up its financial interest in VR as the emerging market starts to seek a mainstream audience. 

Gavin Teo, principal at Comcast Ventures, noted in this blog post that the VC recently participated in a $10.3 million funding round for AltSpaceVR (announced by the startup in July), joining a big group of return investors that include Tencent, Dolby Family Ventures and Promus Ventures, among others.

AltSpaceVR, which has raised $15.7 million and was founded in 2013, says its virtual reality communication software is currently available for Oculus users (for the full, immersive experience), or on Mac and PC desktops, and 3D TVs. The platform also supports a trio of input devices (mouse, Xbox 360 gamepad, or keyboard), and hand-and-body tracking systems such as Leap Motion and the Microsoft Kinect v2.

It will use the new f unds to expand its team and accelerate product development.

The product, in this case, enables users to communicate and share experiences in a 3D VR environment. “We are the only place to watch synchronized Netflix in VR with other people,” AltSpace VR proclaims in this video that shows its platform in action. “We are one of the few places where you can do a ‘Rick Roll’ in VR with other people.” Yes, indeed. Sharing is caring.

“One of the most compelling features is the ability to watch streaming video from services like YouTube, Netflix and Twitch in VR,” Teo wrote. “Imagine Game of Thrones streamed in a 2D web player in the shape of a TV screen hanging on the wall of a 3D space you are sharing with a friend on the other side of the world.”

While the VR market is predicted to explode, the question, Teo said, is what consumers will do when they put on VR head-mounted displays from Oculus, Vive, Sony, Samsung or even Google Cardboard

 “Our view is that they will consume different kinds of media: games, animation, cinematic storytelling, live action sports - and they will want to do it with their friends,” he wrote. 

The marquee events of NBA All-Star Weekend are going virtual.

The three-point contest and slam dunk event and its practice session at Barclays Center on Saturday night, as well as the 64th NBA All-Star Game on Sunday from Madison Square Garden will be shot in the virtual reality format, with highlights depicting immersive, 360-degree views soon to be available through Samsung’s Milk VR.

Fans with the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition headset powered by Oculus, and a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will be able to access the marque hoops content for free by downloading the Milk VR app and navigating to the NBA section for streams or downloads. 

In January, the league announced it would become the first U.S. professional sports league to bring virtual reality experiences to the public.  The NBA, which announced last month that it would become the first U.S. pro sports league to present virtual experiences to the public, plans to deliver new experiences on Samsung’s Milk VR, introduced at last month’s Consumer Electronic Show, throughout the balance of the 2014-15 campaign.

In addition to sports, the service offers downloads in the highest quality available (4K x 2K) and adaptive streaming options across music, action and lifestyle, with new content appearing daily.

The NBA and its technology teammates gave attendees of the league’s All-Star Technology Summit a chance to sample a courtside, virtual reality presentation of an October preseason game between the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers in Rio de Janiero, as part of its Global Games initiative. Last month, that series of contests yielded the first-ever U.S. pro league contest in 4K. Neulion streamed the presentation of BT Sports ultra-high production of the Milwaukee Bucks-New York Knicks contest from London’s O2 arena at NBA headquarters in Manhattan.

As to Samsung’s Milk VR, the service offers downloads in the highest quality available (4K x 2K) and adaptive streaming options across sports, music, action and lifestyle, with new content appearing daily.

“With basketball enthusiasts all over the world, it’s paramount that we explore new ways to bring fans even closer to the game,” said Jeff Marsilio, NBA vice president of global media distribution.  “Virtual reality delivers amazing vantage points like the NBA All-Star Game from a courtside seat or Sprite Slam Dunk from the baseline.  We’re very excited about the possibilities and look forward to rolling out the content to our fans.”