In a letter to Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a trio of senators called on the agency to flex its metaverse muscle to make sure children are protected from potential manipulation.

"While some platforms state their VR devices should not be used by children, many adult users have nonetheless encountered numerous children online. In fact, two-thirds of parents with VR devices report that their children asked them to buy the device," they wrote. Among the potential harms they point to are online harassment and unsafe content.

The senators said increasing use of VR and AR is cause for serious concern related to threats to younger users, including because VR platforms and headsets don't have parental controls. Not surprisingly given Washington's current focus on online platforms, they pointed the finger at Big Tech, saying FTC intervention was needed "as leading technology companies that have historically failed to protect children announce plans to expand their businesses into the 'metaverse.'"

Also: Kids Online Protection Bill Introduced

Markey was a driving force behind the V-chip parental control, a technology that was meant to give parents greater control over their kids TV viewing, though most parents likely don't know the V-chip receiver mandate exists, much less use it.

The senators said the FTC should use its authority under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA, which Markey spearheaded) and the FTC Act to monitor the metaverse. "The need to protect young people from threats online is more urgent than ever. As new technologies emerge, it is incumbent upon the Commission to exercise this authority to protect children," they wrote. ■

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. 

Also: Meta May Not Be Betta But it Still Matters to Streaming Video’s Future  

“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.  

Also: A Deeper Look At the Netflix VR Environment 

“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?

Also: A New Reality Check for VR and AR 

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. 

Also: Ripley Says Bally Sports Net DTC Offering Will Be Lean-Forward Experience 

“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.  ■ 

"Through some quirk of evolution, we have a natural compulsion to share stories, even if we have to create imaginary tales that never happened. But even in our imaginary tales, realism is something we place tremendous value on." -Scott Lehane

When I was starting up VRNation.tv, several trusted friends in the traditional media industry warned me that it might just be a fad, and that I could get burned in the end. They compared it to 3DTV, which had a lot of hype, but ultimately went nowhere. They cited Jaunt and Google Spotlight Stories and some of the other “bleeding edge” early pioneers that had gone bust in the VR business, suggesting there was no viable business model.

I always take advice to heart, and I spent many hours agonizing about it, following the news, reading research analyst reports and checking out some of the stuff that’s already out there in VR.

In the end, I am completely convinced that VR, and its cousins AR and MR, will be very different from 3DTV, partly because the various technologies required to make it viable have evolved and coalesced to the point where it's now quite feasible, including high-resolution displays with high frame rates, as well as advances in bandwidth, processing power, GPS tracking, 360 degree cameras and computers capable of processing that much data. All of the component technologies are now commonplace, and well within the budget of the average person.

I see 3DTV as a stepping stone that got us to VR, just as quadrophonic sound was a stepping stone to Surround Sound, and LaserDisc was a stepping stone to CD and DVD.

But also, there's a much bigger picture here.

Through some quirk of evolution, we have a natural compulsion to share stories, even if we have to create imaginary tales that never happened. But even in our imaginary tales, realism is something we place tremendous value on. We’ve been pursuing and perfecting it for a very long time. It helps sell the story to the audience and make it more believable.

Roughly 17,000 years ago, a group of cavemen (and women) in Southwestern France started painting murals on the walls of their caves. Over the course of many generations, they painted over 600 cave paintings. These paintings told the stories of some of their most epic hunting expeditions and some of their greatest heroes. They were almost certainly accompanied by stories, passed down orally, that have long been lost, but the viewer can still grasp what they were trying to portray.

We can read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and imagine what it was like in the Pharaoh's court, but the pictures aren’t very realistic. We understand that an image represents a person, but it has no depth or detail. In fact, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that we discovered the idea of a “vanishing point” which enabled us to paint images with an early type of 3D realism.

Meanwhile, from the ancient Greek amphitheaters to the Shakespearean Globe Theatre, we’ve always had to “suspend our disbelief” and use our imagination to fill in the blanks. (Ok, that’s supposed to be a Minotaur… Ok, I’m in a castle in Denmark and that Hamlet guy is the prince...)

We’ve even gone to the extremes of the Roman Colosseum where real people fought and died for the entertainment of the masses.

When film came along, early filmmakers tried putting a static camera in front of a traditional stage and acting out Shakespearean plays in one long take. But it wasn’t long before they learned how to move the camera – pan, tilt, zoom, truck, dolly, etc. – and, more importantly, cut the footage. People loved it because it required less suspension of disbelief and came closer to reality. Then came color film and color TV which brought us a good bit closer. Then came high-definition TV with its crystal-clear picture and surround sound, which brought us even closer, each step requiring less and less suspension of disbelief.

While we love to use our imagination, suspension of disbelief is something we’ve just had to tolerate all along, just like a 1990s’ internet user had to tolerate dial-up Internet speeds, knowing that it wouldn’t always be this way. But now, with VR we don’t have to do that anymore. Now we can be fully immersed and actually trick our senses into believing it’s all real.

If we ever met an alien species without this same compulsion to invent stories, it would very difficult to explain why we place such value on entertainment, but we do. If you look at film, television, music and video games, you have to admit that these aren’t things we need; They’re things we want and crave. There’s just something deep in our psyche that wants to create more and more realistic stories to the point where someday, we could conceivably play God in our own AI-driven, VR creations. And that future is now within grasp.

Therefore, I believe virtual reality is inevitable.

Scott Lehane is a Toronto-based journalist and editor who has been covering the film, TV and media industry for almost 30 years. Over the years, he has written thousands of articles for dozens of publications. Earlier this summer, he launchedwww.VRNation.tv– an online resource for VR, AR and MR enthusiasts that offers 23 channels of curated VR content along with a guide for upcoming live VR broadcasts, as well as news, a social community and a special section for 360-degree still photographers to share their work.

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.

RELATED: Pluto TV: It’s Time to Tell Our Advertising Story

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. 

With giants such as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft in its corner, the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) has released the 1.0 version of AV1, a next-gen, royalty-free codec that claims to have a 30% bit-rate efficiency edge over current-gen technologies like VP9 and HEVC.

The consortium is releasing AV1 in the hopes that it will deliver improved bandwidth efficiencies amid the move to video formats with more pixels (like 4K and 8K), better pixels (High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut), as well as the emergence of 360-degree video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) apps and services that need to be smooth and are poised to ratchet up bit rate requirements on TV screens, laptops, tablets and smartphones. 

Though AV1, which is also claimed to have a 65% bandwidth savings over AVC/H.264, could eventually find itself a home inside set-top boxes and, perhaps even further out broadcast TV signals, it’s expected to initially find adoption on web browsers and other types of OTT streaming devices.

“Video is changing the way the internet is evolving,” Gabe Frost, the executive director and a founding board member of AOMedia and a principal engineering manager for Microsoft’s operating systems group, said in an interview. 

Another chief aim for AV1 and its royalty-free model is to eliminate some of the pricing uncertainty that has enveloped codecs like HEVC, which has been saddled by multiple patent pools and little in the way of uniformity on rates.

RELATED: HEVC Advance Cuts Back on Some Royalty Rates, Caps

The current codec market is “gummed up” due to the cost uncertainty, Frost said, and has likewise caused friction between technology innovators that those that want to charge for patented technologies that can help them. 

AOMedia, launched in 2015, was formed with the core idea that the underlying video codec technology had become a commodity, and that a royalty-free model represented the best path forward. 

“We all use it; it all gets baked into silicon,” Frost said.

The plan with AV1 then focused on how a new approach, despite being royalty-free, could still “create a viable business model to move the industry forward, with some certainty around the costs of producing these codecs,” he explained.

While that idea was spawned by early meetings with Microsoft and Google, it later expanded to include several other in the ecosystem, including chipmakers, distributors, web services companies and video equipment makers, that would be willing to provide their intellectual property under the royalty-free model.

Examples of founding members of AOMedia include Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and Nvidia. Promoter members include Adobe, CableLabs, Bitmovin, Hulu, Vidyo, and Broadcom, among others.

Frost said every member company of AOMedia signs an agreement that licenses the essential technology that’s used in the final AV1 codec on a royalty-free basis. And those that implement it likewise sign a cross-patent license agreement that says they’re free to use AV1 at no cost, but that if they hold any essential patents, those are licensed to other AOMedia members on a royalty-free basis.

“We wanted to make sure we had a licensing infrastructure set up where we could create a durable, royalty-free ecosystem,” Frost said, noting that companies with patents used for codecs such as HEVC and H.264 are free to license those same patents under other terms, such as those that are governed by AV1.

The hope is that the model will accelerate the adoption cycle of AV1 and spark advancements across software, silicon, devices and connectivity and push the market forward for all stakeholders.

“Royalty-free doesn’t mean that people aren’t making money off the technology,” Frost said.

As for near-term expectations, Frost said desktop browsers will start to support AV1 later this year, and see it start to show up on devices such as gaming consoles towards the end of 2018 or into 2019. 

In a presentation about today’s release, AOMedia noted that AV1 would be “coming to a screen near you,” with examples that included Twitch, Facebook, Android, Amazon Prime Video, Chromebook, Chrome, Google Play, Netflix, Windows, Xbox One, Daydream (Google’s VR platform), Skype, and YouTube.

“It will be 2020 when we see it available on all new silicon that comes out,” Frost predicted.

Michelle Abraham, senior analyst, media and communications at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said the buy-in among a wide number of companies and players gives AV1 a “good opportunity” to make waves in the video codec market.

She sees its greatest opportunity coming from video streaming and OTT, but doesn’t expect to see it widely used by broadcasters, who typically go with technologies that are tied to international standards bodies.

There’s also a question about whether the latency requirements of broadcasters will be suited to AV1, at least in its initial release.

AV1 will be getting some play at next month’s NAB show in Las Vegas, including demos on April 10 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the South Upper Hall Destination NXT Stage.

A panel is also slated for April 11 starting at 3:20 p.m. at the North Hall (N257) that will feature Microsoft’s Gabe Frost, Google’s Matt Frost, Intel’s Zach Hamm, Bitmovin’s Stefan Lederer, Microsoft’s David Rudin, and Netflix’s Mark Watson.

Marking its first big move into VR, Nickelodeon has teamed with IMAX on SlimeZone, a multi-player virtual reality game/experience that will be offered at IMAX VR centres around the world.

Nickelodeon referenced that VR-facing partnership as part of its upfront presentation earlier this week.

RELATED: Nickelodeon Sets ‘Blues Clues’ Reboot

SlimeZone, developed in the Nickelodeon Entertainment Lab, lets up to six players pick an avatar to enter a Nickelodeon-designed digital world to play games, such as ping-pong, watch cartoons and “slime” their friends.

The SlimeZone is initially being sold at IMAX VR Centres in Los Angeles, New York City and Toronto, and is slated to launch “soon” at centers in Shanghai, Bangkok and Manchester (U.K.).

“Our SlimeZone partnership with IMAX lets kids and families interact with Nickelodeon properties and characters by bringing them to life in new and innovative ways,” Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon Group, said in a statement. “This new VR experience will also show the creative community how we are using technology to create unique forms of entertainment for all ages.”

SlimeZone, which debuted at VidCon US 2017, was built using Epic’s Unreal Engine and Nvidia FleX particle system for “slime simulation.”  

Watch this video promo for SlimeZone:

LiveLike, a startup that has developed a VR platform for live TV sporting events, has raised a $9.6 million B round that includes new investors Greycroft Partners and Lepe Partners.

New York-based LiveLike has raised about $15 million so far thanks to backing from other investors such as David Stern, commissioner emeritus of the NBA; Evolution Media; Courtside Ventures; Elysian Park; Dentsu Ventures; and the GC VR Gaming Tracker Fund.

The startup, which is also focusing on augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) applications, plans to use the fresh funds to help it expand its partnerships, and further build out its product and platform in a way that aims to simplify the experience and to make it more frictionless.

RELATED: Putting VR in a Sporting Mood (subscription required)

It will also work on making its system compatible with more platforms and develop new “in-product experiences” such as fantasy sports integrations and other social-facing elements.

The app, also accessible in 360-degree format on mobile devices, will present a “virtual suite” developed in partnership with LiveLike that will feature multiple camera angles of the match, as well as stats and pre-game VOD features.

RELATED: Fox Sports, LiveLike to Offer Virtual Suite for Super Bowl LI

The new investment also follows LiveLike’s early work with partners such as Fox Sports that center on the creation of interactive, 3D “virtual suites” that complement the 2D live TV feed while also providing multiple camera angles, stats and some VOD elements.

LiveLike and Fox Sports have teamed on such VR experiences around several sporting events, including last June’s UEFA Champions League final between Real Madrid and Juventus, Super Bowl LI, the 2016 and 2017 Big East Mean’s Basketball Tournaments, the 2016 U.S. Open Championship, the 2016 MLS Cup, the 2016 Bundesliga season opener, and the 2016 Big Ten Football Championship.

RELATED: Fox Sports to Offer UEFA Champions League Final in VR

LiveLike said it plans to announce more media and event partners as well as product enhancements in the coming months. 

“LiveLike has been successful because we have built a platform that connects with younger generations seeking a more non-traditional experience,” Andre Lorenceau, founder and CEO of LiveLike, said in a statement. “Thanks to our investors, we are now in a position to hire for key positions and continue delivering a premier next-generation sports OTT platform.”

Michael Davies, SVP field & technical operations at Fox Sports, added: “It has always been in Fox Sports’s DNA to explore different and imaginative ways to serve our fans. To that end, in our nearly two years of working with LiveLike, creating our Fox Sports VR app and working on sports like hockey, football, basketball and soccer, we have found them to be innovative, nimble, and attentive to this exciting and rapidly changing platform. We are looking forward to continuing to imagine the future with them.”

Walmart is apparently raising its virtual reality (VR) game a bit as Store No 9, the retailing giant’s innovation hub, moves ahead with the acquisition of a startup called Spatialand.

Walmart and Spatialand aren’t strangers, as they worked together last year to create a proof of concept virtual reality experience that took a stab at the future of shopping during the Innov8 VR event. 

“At our core, we are merchandisers and storytellers which drives us to believe that virtual reality has the potential to reinvent the consumer experience—with an experience we call contextual commerce,” Store No 8 noted in its announcement of the acquisition.

Moving forward, Spatialand, which has worked on projects with Oculus, Intel and Reebok, will become a new VR venture at Store No 8, with Katie Finnegan to serve as interim CEO, in addition to her role as principal of Store No. 8. Spatialand founder Kim Cooper, who has done work on films such as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Prometheus as well as some video game titles, is also coming on board, along with about 10 employees, according to Recode, which also points out that Walmart is making this play even as augmented reality, and not VR, has been the one gaining traction as a technology that can spur at-home shopping. 

Also joining the group is Jeremy Welt, a Store No 8 consultant, who, during his career, helped Disney with its acquisition of Maker Studios, Finnegan noted in the announcement.

But don’t expect to hear a lot about what’s in store right away, as the new venture will operate in stealth mode for an undermined amount of time. However, the general plan is to use VR to create “immersive retail environments” for Walmart online and offline.

Some recent market data questions whether that strategy will resonate much with consumers. InMoment said its study found that 10% of consumers find VR-powered shopping experiences useful – they found other experiences, such as physical stores for online retailers (28%) and buying online and picking up in-store (46%) as far more valuable. Meanwhile, Walker Sands study from last year on the future of retail found that 8% of consumers believe that VR experiences would make them more likely to purchase products online.

Sales of headsets and eyewear outfitted for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are poised for a record year, according to a new forecast from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

The CTA said it expects sales of AR and VR headsets and eyewear to reach a record 4.9 million units in the U.S. in 2018, a more than 25% increase from 2017. Those sales will produce about $1.2 billion in revenues, a 10% increase from 2016, CTA added.

Read More: Complete coverage of #CES2018

The organization noted that it expects sales of consumer-focused AR eyewear to “accelerate considerably” within the next five years.

RELATED: Magic Leap Intros ‘Creator’s Edition’ AR Platform

The CTA announced its VR/AR projections ahead of a U.S. Consumer Technology Sales and Forecasts report that will be released at CES, which is set to run Jan. 9-12 in Las Vegas.

RELATED: PlayStation VR’s Installed Base Crosses 2 Million Units

The CTA will also expand the space dedicated to AR and VR at next week’s show, noting that its Augmented Reality Marketplace will grow to a record 10,900 net square feet, making it 10% larger than that at the 2017 gadgetfest. Meanwhile, the show’s Gaming & Virtual Reality Marketplace, will expand to 34,100 net square feet, an 18% year-on-year increase.

The association also noted that its AR/VR Working Group, operating under its Technology & Standards Program, will “soon” wrap up work on technical definitions covering a “broad spectrum” for those industries, including MR, XR, outside-in tracking and Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF).

Last year, that working group stamped the following definitions:

-Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digitally-created content into the user's real-world environment

-Mixed Reality (MR) is an experience that seamlessly blends the user's real-world environment and digitally-created content, where both environments can coexist and interact with each other

-Virtual Reality (VR) creates a digital environment that replaces the user's real-world environment

RELATED: Apple Snares Mixed Reality Headset Company 

Showing that higher-end virtual reality products are starting to achieve a level of scale, Sony Interactive Entertainment said the install base for the PlayStation VR has surpassed 2 million units worldwide (as of December 3).

The PS VR surpassed the 1 million mark in June.

Sony launched the PS VR, a platform that needs to be connected to a PS 4 console, at retail in in the U.S. and Canadain October 2016. In August, the company cut the price of two VR product bundles by $50.

RELATED: PlayStation VR Becomes a Retail Reality

Sony said it has released 150 titles for PS VR, selling more than 12.2 million copies globally at retail stores and through digital downloads via the PlayStation Store as of Dec. 3, 2017.

The company also announced that sales of the PS 4 console had surpassed 70.6 million units worldwide, and had sold 617.8 million copies of PS4 games.

Though sales of higher-end VR headsets have been somewhat sluggish, shipments of those products eclipsed 1 million in Q3 for the first time, according to Canalys.

The research firm said PS VR led with 490,000 units shipped in that period, followed by two products that need to be connected to high-octane PCs -- the Oculus Rift (210,000), and the HTC Vive (160,000).

Facebook-owned Oculus and Google, make of the Daydream VR platform, are also working toward a new class of stand-alone VR headsets that are expected to goose consumer demand in the headset category.

RELATED: Oculus Preps Debut of Wireless, Stand-Alone VR Headset

Apple has reportedly acquired AR headset company Vrvana amid recent chatter that the company intends to develop and launch an augmented reality headset as early as 2020.

RELATED: Apple Pushing Ahead With AR Headset: Report 

TechCrunch, citing multiple people familiar with the deal, said Apple is paying $30 million for Vrvana, the Montreal-based maker of the Totem-branded “extended reality” headset. TC says Vrvana, founded in 2005, had raised less than $2 million.

The Totem has not reached the commercial launch phase, but the prototype has generated some high marks. Last year, Tom’s Hardware was impressed by the Totem, billing it as a mixed reality device that offers the “best of virtual reality and augmented reality in one unit,” while noting that its 1440p display offers a higher-res experience than one would get with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The reviewer also touted the product’s 120-degree field-of-view.

Apple is already building AR capabilities into its mobile devices and pushing into that arena with its ARkit  -- Syfy, for example, used it to develop an AR app promoting a new series called Happy!

RELATED: Syfy Uses AR to Promote ‘Happy!’

In addition to filling serious technology gap, Apple’s move into AR hardware would put it in more direct competition with Microsoft’s  HoloLens platform and what’s being developed by secretive startup MagicLeap.

Helped by recent price cuts, shipments of higher-end VR headsets that must be connected to PCs or gaming consoles exceeded 1 million units for the first time in Q3 2017, according to an analysis from Canalys.

Sony, maker of the PlayStation VR, led the way with 490,000 units shipped in the period, followed by the Oculus Rift (210,000), and the HTC Vive (160,000).

The study, which excludes mobile VR headsets such as Samsung Gear VR or Google Daydream View, noted that Sony, Oculus and HTC made up 86% of the total portion of the market studies in Q3 2017.

The rise was aided by recent price cuts, particularly the temporary reduction on the Oculus Rift to $399, Vincent Thielke, research analyst at Canalys, noted in the release.

He also expects the Oculus Go, a standalone VR headset from the Facebook-owned company to help drive further consumer adoption. 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: Oculus Preps Debut of Wireless, Stand-Alone VR Headset

 “Hugo Barra [VP of VR at Facebook] is betting on his next product, the US$199 Oculus Go standalone headset, to reach more users next year. The Go will excite first-time users, but driving adoption beyond social media will be a challenge,” Thielke said.

Canalys said its VR headset shipment data is derived from its Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Analysis service, which provides quarterly market tracking.

Turner Sports said it has signed a multi-year deal to use Intel’s technology to deliver live NBA games in virtual reality, starting with All-Star weekend.

The games will be available to cable and satellite subscribers for free via an authenticated NBA on TNT VR App powered by Intel.

Intel will also be a global provider of virtual reality and 360-degree volumetric video with Intel freeD technology for official NBA broadcast partners globally.

The NBA has jumped into the virtual reality space. Before the season started it announced that its League Pass subscribers will have access to 27 games in VR this season using NextVR technology.

Related: NBA Adds VR Subscription Package to League Pass

“We all recognize that the VR market hasn’t fully materialized, but from the NBA’s point of view, we’d really like to be ready with the best possible experience when it does materialize,” said Jeff Marsilio, vice president, global media distribution, for the NBA. “The partnership represents another opportunity to experiment with a first-class VR technology company in Intel and to work with one of our longest-standing partners in the broadcast space with Turner.”

Marsilio said the NBA sees VR as a way to give fans access they might not otherwise not be able to experience, such as sitting courtside beside big-time celebrities. He says viewing of NBA games in VR is up sharply.

“That means there must have been a lot of progress in the last few months in penetration of the market and maybe, I hope, a lot of progress in the product we’re providing,” he said.

Related: Intel Dumps 'Project Alloy'

The virtual reality games will be different from the games TNT regularly televises. The schedule will be announced closer to the All-Star game. The first arenas to install the Intel freeD technology are the American Airlines Center in Dallas, home of the Mavericks, and Quicken Loans Arena, where LeBron James and the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers play home games.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

New York – Virtual reality may get most of its attention from gamers, but CNN vice president of premium content video Jason Farkas believes the technology is opening up a whole new aspect for television news, allowing networks and reporters to convey feelings as well as facts to their audiences.

At the Multichannel News/B&C VR 20/20 event here Monday, Farkas said VR allows viewers to more deeply identify with programs and news items by “giving witness” to them. And that can range from stories on climate change and war, to putting viewers behind the wheel of a Formula 1 race car, running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, or traveling back in time for an immersive look at historical events like the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Farkas said VR is a natural and logical extension for news organizations that for centuries through print, video and digital means strove to give their audience the experience of being there.

“With VR, we have that tool,” Farkas said.  

VR 20/20 kicked off NYC Television Week Monday (Oct. 16); read more #NYCTVWK stories here.

The NBA and Turner Sports have added a new virtual reality subscription package to its NBA League Pass live game out-of-market service, which tips off Tuesday (Oct. 17), the company announced Monday.

The new, season-long virtual reality subscription package – developed by NBA Digital and NextVR -- will be available across the Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream and Windows Mixed Reality platforms. In all, the $49.99 VR service can be accessed across 19 platforms including television, broadband, tablets and mobile phones and connected devices.

Related: NBA Digital, NextVR Strike Multiyear Partnership

In addition to the $199.99 price tag for the traditional NBA League Pass package, NBA Digital will offer a $249.99 premium package that features continuous in-arena coverage during live game breaks.

The new packages will join other NBA League Pass premium packages including NBA Team Pass ($119.99) and single game ($6.99). NBA Digital will also bring back NBA Mobile View, which offers zoomed-in, tighter shot of the action that is optimized for the smaller screen size of mobile devices.

READ MORE > VR 20/20 2017: Virtual Reality Can Enliven ‘Dying’ Sports

Lisa Martinez Gilpin, global head of news and publishing at Google Play, broke down the attributes of both virtual reality and augmented reality at the VR 20/20 opening session, and spelled out the roles both will play in the media going forward.

Augmented reality (AR) offers the user a “push and pull kind of dynamic,” she said, whereas virtual reality (VR) is more immersive.

Martinez Gilpin detailed Google’s history in VR, including 2014's Google Cardboard viewer, which she described as “simple with a lot of meaning.” She said a New York Times partnership a year later delivered more than 1 million Cardboard viewers to Times subscribers.

“Talk about coming into a really personal space,” she said. “We’re right there at your front door.”

Next was Daydream, offering a more breathable material than Cardboard. “There’s lots of great content to snack on,” said Martinez Gilpin, “as well as episodic content.”

VR 20/20 is happening Monday (Oct. 16) at the Stewart Hotel in Manhattan as the kick-off event of NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Martinez Gilpin said VR has a significant role in realms as varied as news and commerce. She spoke of “educating journalists to user VR cameras to tell their stories.”

Martinez Gilpin talked of ARCore, a platform for augmented reality apps. She described AR’s role in helping a consumer virtually try on clothing, or see how a coffee table fits in a family room, or check out a new car in different colors.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Google’s Visual Positioning Service (VPS) can offer on-the-go consumers a look at a store’s layout before they visit. “It’s a great way to think about user flow,” she said, “and where products sit in store.”

VR, and AR, are part of the present, Martinez Gilpin suggested, not the future. “What used to take months now takes hours from a production standpoint,” she said. “It’s a lot more seamless and frictionless.”

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.

Offering another big indicator that the virtual reality (VR) market isn’t moving as rapidly as some companies would like, Nokia announced Tuesday that it will halt development on new versions of its Ozo VR camera (pictured) and other hardware products in the Ozo family.

Instead, Nokia will put more focus on technology licensing opportunities.

Nokia stressed that it will maintain comments to existing Ozo customers, but said “slower-than-expected development of the VR market” was the culprit behind the decision.

Among recent announcements, Accedo teamed with Nokia on a VR initiative to help pay TV operators and broadcasters develop and publish content in the format, and Nokia and NeuLion struck up a VR partnership last year.

Nokia also disclosed that the decision will affect as many as 310 of the 1,090 employees in Nokia Technologies, who are mostly based in Finland, the U.S. and the U.K.

Amid the slowdown on the VR front, the company said it will boost its commitment to digital health, which stems in part to its $191 million acquisition of Withings in 2016.

"Nokia Technologies is at a point where, with the right focus and investments, we can meaningfully grow our footprint in the digital health market, and we must seize that opportunity," Gregory Lee, president, of Nokia Technologies, said in a statement.

Intel’s foray into VR headset hardware has hit the skids.

The chipmaker has scrapped plans to launch Project Alloy, an x86-based standalone “merged realty” headset hardware design that was introduced in 2016, according to Road to VR.

Unveiled at the company’s developer forum in 2016, Intel originally billed Project Alloy as an all-in-one solution that supported both virtual reality and augmented reality applications and leaned on Intel’s RealSense technology. It was expected to launch this year.

RELATED: Intel Gets Into VR Hardware Game

Despite scrapping plans to launch the Project Alloy reference design, the company “will continue to invest in the development of technologies to power next-generation AR/VR experiences,” Intel said in a statement to Road to VR. The ongoing investment will center on Movidius (for visual processing), RealSense, as well as other “enabling technologies” such as WiGig (for wireless VR with HTC), Thunderbolt (for high-speed data transfers) and Optane (advanced memory and storage), the company said.

“Project Alloy served as a great proof of concept for Intel and the industry – showing what’s possible in a high-performance, immersive and untethered VR experience. What we’ve learned through Project Alloy will inform future efforts,” Intel added. 

RELATED: Oculus Developing Standalone VR Headset

Though Intel is stepping away from Project Alloy, others in the VR sector, including Google and Facebook-owned Oculus, are moving ahead with plans to develop and launch standalone virtual reality headsets that don’t need to be tethered to a PC or gaming console or work in tandem with a smartphone.

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

Google on Thursday announced a $1.1 billion agreement under which certain HTC employees, including many working with Google on its Android-powered Pixel smartphones, will join Google.

Tied in, Google is also getting a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property. They expect to close the agreement by early 2018.

A deal between HTC and Google has been rumored for weeks, but earlier speculation held that Google would buy a bigger part of HTC, including a virtual reality business that’s led off by the Vive headset/platform.

RELATED: HTC Might Sell Its VR Business: Report

HTC said it is working on a new flagship phone that would follow the launch of the HTC U11 earlier this year, and that it would continue to invest in and grow its Vive business while also pursuing strategies around the IoT, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

For Google, the deal gives it more control over the future of Pixel, a smartphone brand/product that was introduced last October. Google is expected to announce the latest in that line next month. Google is set to announce two new smartphone models, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, along with a miniaturized smart home device, The Guardian reported.

While the deal makes Taiwan a “key innovation and technology hub” for Google, it’s also less ambitious than Google’s $12.5 billion play for Motorola Mobility that also includes key intellectual property and later led to Google’s sale of Motorola Home to Arris for $2.35 billion.  

“HTC has been a longtime partner of Google and has created some of the most beautiful, premium devices on the market,” said Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Hardware at Google.

“We're excited and can't wait to welcome members of the HTC team who will be joining Google to fuel further innovation and future product development in consumer hardware,” Rick Osterloh, SVP of hardware at Google, said in a statement.

Fox Sports is placing another sizable bet on virtual reality this weekend as it again teams up with LiveLike to assemble a “virtual suite” that will provide the main broadcast of the Notre Dame at Michigan State college football matchup alongside other several other bells and whistles.

RELATED: Notre Dame-Michigan State Game to Run Social VR Play

In addition to allowing for a social experience (a visitor to the virtual suite can watch it with three other fans or friends, as Fox Sports did during the summer for the CONCACAF Gold Cup), users will also get access to a 360-degree, floating Skycam (that's a photo of the camera above) feed that, in addition to the Fox Sports VR app, will also be featured on Twitter (@CFBonFox), Fox College Football (CFBonFOX) on Facebook, and the Fox Sports YouTube channel (Fox Sports will also make the c360 footage available for use in the primary Fox game broadcast).

RELATED: VR Evolution Continues at Fox Sports (subscription required)

“It’s almost like getting a player’s perspective,” Jeb Terry, VP of partner and program management at Fox Sports (and a former NFL player), said. “It will give the fan the ability to kind of choose their own adventure and explore this angle like never before… and get a next-level type view of the action.”

Fox Sports is also evolving the social component of the VR experience on Saturday to make it more accessible. Users will also have the ability to choose from school-themed avatars.

“We think this is going to be a great representation of where this thing can go,” Terry said. “Our hope is that a Notre Dame fan in California can get in a suite with his buddy, who's a Spartan in New York, and they can watch the game together.”

Users will be able to access the digital suite on the authenticated Fox Sports VR app for iOS and Android mobile devices and experience it using the “flat” 3D (non-headset) view, or use it in tandem with an Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR mobile headset.

Most users of the Fox Sports VR app have entered the non-headset experience so far – not surprising given that consumer adoption of those headsets is still in the early phases.

“But you can still explore the space and have a new unique angle that you might not have had before,” Terry said. “We think it's a value-add for both scenarios [headset and non-headset] and we'll continue to optimize for both use cases." 

A Wendy’s sponsorship is helping to pay the freight for the VR experience and the Skycam views that are tied to Saturday’s game.

“Sponsors, in in general are looking for more ways to associate with the game...and tap into the fandom that all college sports have,” Terry said. “It’s our goal to make sure we have that robust offering across every screen, and every tech that we believe in for brands and fans to have the option to engage with.”

Fans watching the Notre Dame-Michigan State college football game on Saturday will be able to watch together from the best seats in the house through a new social virtual reality application.

Using the Fox Sports VR app, fans will be able to interact. Users will also be able to access a 360-degree Skycam look at the action between the two teams.

RELATED: VR Evolution Continues at Fox Sports (subscription required)

"Fox Sports continues to accelerate the development of virtual reality as a unique complement to our overall package of sports offerings," Jeb Terry, VP of partner & program management at Fox Sports, said in a statement. "With the debut of social VR with the Gold Cup in July, and now the addition of the Skycam perspective, we continue to strengthen an already robust offering to both viewers and advertisers."

Inside the virtual suite, fans will be able to access multiple camera angle, get an exclusive look at non-game action, including pre-game, post-game and half time activities, and, after the game, review highlights from the best angles.

The VR app can be used without special VR equipment and is compatible with iOS, Android and Oculus.

Looking to put a jolt into sales, the makers of higher-end virtual reality platforms have all implemented deep price cuts ahead of the holiday buying season.

While these across-the-board price cuts indicate that consumer interest in VR products has slowed, one analyst called them a typical move to entice people to jump in during this early-adopter phase of the VR market.

But it’s clear that three key VR players — Sony, HTC and Facebook-owned Oculus — are cutting prices to move the sales needle.

Among those moves, Sony said it has reduced the price of two VR product bundles by $50 — a combo with the Play-Station VR headset and camera now sells for $399, while an “all-in” bundle that includes the headset, camera, two motion controllers and a gaming title, PlayStation VR Worlds, is going for $449.

Meanwhile, HTC has chopped the sales price on its VR platform, the Vive, by $200 to $599. That was coupled with a report from Bloomberg that HTC is exploring strategic options that could lead to the sale of its VR business, and that the Taiwan-based company has already held discussions with Google.

Under a temporary summer promotion, Oculus in July cut the price of its Rift VR headset/hand-tracking Touch controller bundle in half to $399, followed by a permanent reduction on the product combo to $499.

All of those players are fighting for share in a small but growing market. With mobile VR headsets factored in, the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR headset kept its lead through Q1 2017, according to SuperData. The Gear VR was followed by the PlayStation VR (Sony has shipped more than 1 million units so far), Google Daydream mobile VR headsets, the HTC Vive, and the Oculus Rift.

Related: Another 'Promising' Week for Virtual Reality

Mike Bloxham, senior vice president of global entertainment and media at Magid, said the recent wave of price adjustments indicates that the companies are gearing up for the holiday buying season while also looking for ways to accelerate sales amid a period of sluggishness.

He also said that the price cuts should also drive enthusiasm for early adopters, stressing that their behavior doesn’t represent that of the mass market.

Citing recent Magid research, Bloxham said price remains the biggest impediment for consumers considering taking the plunge on VR by a wide margin (64%), compared to a perceived lack of content (34%).

Bloxham remains bullish about VR. “I think it does have huge potential,” he said, noting that product shipments are not the clearest barometer on the level of usage occurring the market.

“VR has the potential to shake things up and create a whole bunch of opportunities,” he added. The expectation, he said, is that VR will not only take hold in media and entertainment, but also in areas such as engineering, health care and education.

Magid and the VR/AR Consortium, a group that includes Turner, Warner Bros. and The VR Society, recently released a study based on a survey of about 2,000 U.S. consumers, showing that about one-third of all U.S. adults have used a VR device.

The study also indicates that the U.S. market of VR owners and “intenders” stands at 44 million.

Seeing is apparently believing, as 50% of those who have tried a VR headset reported “loving” the experience on a PC or console device, while 90% reported “liking” it on a high-end PC or console headset.

Apparently looking to pick up some sales momentum heading into the holidays, Sony has cut the price of two VR product bundles by $50.

Sony announced Monday that a bundle with the PlayStation VR headset and camera costing $399 will arrive at retailers on September 1. Joining the mix is a $449 “all-in” bundle that includes the headset, camera, two motion controllers and PlayStation VR Worlds.

Prices for both bundles represent a $50 discount, Variety pointed out.

RELATED: HTC Might Sell its VR Business

In February, Sony told The New York Times that it had sold 915,000 PS VR units, putting in on pace to beat an internal goal of selling 1 million headsets six months after sales began. It crossed that 1 million mark during the summer.

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

Sony announced new pricing as it gets ready to release a batch of new games for its VR platform, including The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, Doom VFR, and Bravo Team, and following a software update to the PS4 that enables enhancements for PS VR such as 5.1ch and 7.1ch virtual surround sound in Cinematic Mode.

Other VR companies have made similar price cuts. HTC last week reduced the price on the Vive headset from $799 to $599, following a cut on the Oculus Rift. 

Linden Lab, the company that built and developed Second Life, is well on to its next chapter as it opens up a “creator beta” of Sansar, a new social VR platform, to the public.

Sansar is initially being supported on two high-end VR platforms, the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, and can also run in 3D/360 on Windows PCs, so access is not being limited only to consumers with virtual reality headsets.

RELATED: Linden Lab’s ‘Second’ Act

Anyone with the right technical set up can enter Sansar for free under a basic set-up, though consumers can also buy additional capacity and customer support to creators through paid subscriptions that start at $9.99 per month.

Linden Lab said Sansar initially is comprised of a virtual Atlas that contains “hundreds” of VR experiences. Examples of those environments include Apollo 11- Sea of Tranquility, an experience from Loot Interactive that aims to create a “realistic and true-to-scale recreation of the Apollo 11 moon landing site.” Another one, Valencia (from Theanine) is a “surreal city with sprawling skyscrapers that defy the laws of physics,” while Secrets of the WorldWhale (from Teager) lets users explore an “eerie world on the back of an ancient whale and discover hidden treasure.”

Linden Lab said each “instance” of an experience is currently set up to allow more than 35 concurrent avatars.

Sansar also supports customizable avatars, and has partnered with Speech Graphics to provide what it calls “accurate avatar lip-syncing and facial animations” that enter play as users speak into the microphones on their head-mounted displays or audio headsets. Sansar also aims to emulate hand and arm movements by integrating IKinema’s middleware.

Similar in some ways to Second Life, the new Sansar world features a wide array of environments that are underpinned by an electronic economy whereby users can buy and sell digital items in “Sansar Dollars,” the unit of trade for the platform. In the beta creator version, for example, users can buy an astronaut suit for a female avatar for 500 Sansar Dollars, or a western hat for a male avatar for 100 Sansar Dollars.

“Sansar democratizes social VR,” Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, said in a statement. “Until now, complexity and cost has limited who could create and publish in this medium, and Sansar dramatically changes that.”

Linden Lab started to seek applications for its creator preview in May 2016, hopeful at the time that a commercial rollout would happen by the end of 2016.

RELATED: Project Sansar’s Next Step

Linden Labs is pushing ahead with Sansar amid hopes that social VR is set to reach the next level as next-gen platforms become more mainstream.

AltspaceVR, a social VR startup that included Comcast Ventures among its backers, announced last week that it was shutting down on August 3 after the startup’s attempts to secure a new round of funding fell through.

RELATED: AltSpaceVR Shutting Down

Despite a week of upbeat virtual reality developments, promises and encouragement -- the first Disney-backed Marvel VR game, six Emmy nominations for VR "experiences," an endorsement from a top streaming media packager plus a big (albeit temporary) discount from Oculus -- the outlook for the immersive technology continues to baffle media analysts.

The recent string of frothy announcements comes just a few weeks after Ericsson released a generally effusive outlook about VR, especially its value in video programming.

So while technology and programming suppliers continue to proclaim VR's looming role in entertainment (as well as in industrial, medical and other professional applications), media operators are still going slow in planning for the bandwidth and transmission requirements that VR will require. For now, much of the discussion still revolves around the near-VR (but usually not immersive) presentations of 360⁰ cameras, increasingly showing up as thumbnail videos in social media and other online feeds.

Nonetheless, the mid-summer bump of simultaneous VR developments served as a reminder that this technology could still become a $100 billion global industry by 2020 (as Nokia forecasts) and reach 49.2 million American by 2019, according to a report by eMarketer.

At Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif., last weekend, the studio plunged back into the games category (from which it had withdrawn last year) via its subsidiary Marvel. It unveiled "Marvel Powers United VR," which will debut next year. Gamers can play at varying skill levels using Marvel characters such as Rocket Raccoon, Deadpool, Captain Marvel and The Hulk. Disney has partnered with Facebook-owned Oculus.

Related > CTA Projects Record Revenue for VR

A day before D23 began, when the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced nominees for the 69th Emmy Awards, VR was in the running with six projects nominated in the "Original Interactive Program" and "Creative Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Program" categories (the academy hasn't created a VR category).

In the first category, all three nominations came from Oculus, some with a partner. One of those nominees is The People's House, featuring a White House tour with Barack and Michelle Obama. The second category included The Mr. Robot Virtual Reality Experience from USA Universal Cable Productions, Stranger Things VR Experience from Netflix and CBS Digital, and The Simpsons – Planet of the Couches from Gracie Films, 20th Century Fox Television and Google Spotlight Stories.

More Content, Lower Prices
Separately, Oculus announced that it will put $50 million of the $250 million already committed to VR content into “non-gaming, experiential VR content," according to published reports.

Meanwhile Oculus just slashed its equipment pricing. It has temporarily bundled its Rift headset and Touch controller into a $399 package, about $200 lower than the $598 price announced in March, which itself marked a drop from the $799 Oculus kit price early this year. The company said the summer-long promotional pricing seeks to attract potential customers who "may have been sitting on the sideline because of price," as well as viewers who have been waiting for more apps and games to become available.

Related > VR Equipment Market Mixed: Study

And at a July 18 webinar on "How to Produce, Deliver, Monetize & Experience VR Content,” NeuLion and Nokia executives urged media companies to plunge into VR opportunities.

VR has moved "beyond simple streaming,” said NeuLion executive VP Chris Wagner, because "there’s so much more to do to interact with the viewer” to enhance the video-viewing experience.

“Compelling content is [vital] to make sure that you have that most immersive experience,” added Malachi Bierstein, head of VR sales at Nokia. 

“Without the content, not really much else matters," Bierstein said in published reports from the webinar. "So, really that compelling content is going to be the ultimate driver of VR adoption."

Their pleas for high-quality video content backed up findings from an extensive Ericsson "Merged Reality" study published a few weeks earlier.

That study found that 54% of respondents believe VR devices will become the new screens for video. About the same number (53%) expect video to be one of the most popular uses for VR.

Notably, current "early adopters" were significantly more enthusiastic than survey respondents who "are planning to use a headset," but the overall optimism is promising for a product that currently has a very limited footprint. (According to eMarketer, only 2.9% of Americans now use a VR headset at least once-per-month, a figure that will grow to just 5.2% by 2019.)

Related: Facebook Dives Deeper Into AR

Many analysts still believe that augmented reality -- a more limited, less expensive approach to content enhancement that doesn't require special headsets and other gear -- will make its mark in the mass media well before VR. As an example: During next month's total solar eclipse, the Weather Channel will use AR during its all-day coverage to explain the science of how the eclipse develops.

Perhaps even more pertinent: A Facebook group that has focused on VR for several years this week expanded its name to "Virtual and Augmented Reality."

Though the consumer virtual reality sector hasn’t taken off as rapidly as some had hoped, content providers continue to experiment with and refine their VR experiences for when this emerging medium becomes a mass-market phenomenon.

Fox Sports has been a key member of this group as it continues to work with companies such as NextVR and LiveLike on VR experiences that can be access on smartphone-powered headsets such as the Samsung Gear VR and its authenticated apps for iOS and Android mobile devices.

“If you believe in something, you want to get good do at it before it really takes off so, when it does, you’re not learning about it for the first time,” Michael Davies, senior vice president of field and technical operations at Fox Sports, said.

Fox Sports’ latest major VR endeavor will center around the CONCACAF Gold Cup, as the programmer and LiveLike will create a “virtual suite” for three fixtures, starting with the just-completed July 8 U.S.-Panama match. They’ll follow with similar efforts for matches set for July 22 or 23, and for the Gold Cup championship, set for Monday, July 26.

As had been done in previous VR partnerships with LiveLike for events such as UEFA Champions League matches, the Big Ten Football Championship Game and the Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament, the virtual suite experience will include a 2D live feed of the Gold Cup games along with the ability to manually access other camera angles, lean on a director’s cut that auto-selects those angles, watch replays of the action, and view some pre-produced content delivered in the 360-degree format.

New this time around is a social component allowing the viewer and three others to be present in the virtual suite to watch the game (represented by individual avatars), to use the suite’s interactive components and to interact with each other. Enabling that experience is a new “Social” tab and a “Join Friends” button, which connects the user to Facebook upon authorization. Users can also have the system select a viewing partner at random, and can toggle the social component on or off.

Davies said the social component delivers a “hybrid” experience with elements of how consumers watch live sports — alone on TV; with others on the TV at home; at a restaurant or bar; or live at the venue itself.

“Hopefully this is something that takes the medium to the next level,” Davies said, noting that sports viewing tends to drive a “tribal” form of activity. “We’re hoping to recreate that. We’re excited to see how it works out.”

So are advertisers. Buffalo Wild Wings is on board as the sponsor for the Gold Cup VR experience, and follows sponsorships for past efforts from Jeep, Audi, Lexus and Toyota.

Davies said most viewers who watch these VR experiences are doing it without a headset, opting to access it on the app for smartphones and tablets, but that there’s a “fair amount” of activity from viewers who tune in using the Gear VR. Fox Sports has also been keeping close tabs on not just how many consumers join the experience, but how many are coming back to it, he added.

Support for higher-end platforms, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and the PlayStation VR, as well as the smartphone-based Google Daydream, are on the product roadmap, Davies said.

Davies also hopes coming standalone VR headsets in the works from Google and Facebook-owned Oculus will reduce consumer friction into those higher-end experiences.

“That, I think, is going to propel this thing beyond those people who are the true believers,” he said.

Matthew Zinn, a former TiVo executive, has been named general counsel and corporate secretary of Jaunt, the San Mateo-based cinematic virtual reality producer and publisher.

Zinn reports to Jaunt president and CEO, George Kliavkoff.

RELATED: Jaunt VR App Hits PlayStation VR

Zinn previously was SVP, general counsel, corporate secretary and chief privacy officer of TiVo, which completed its merger with Rovi last September. Zinn, a key voice in the contentious debate around the CableCARD and separable set-top security, is also late of MediaOne Group and Continental Cablevision.

RELATED: Stakeholders Weigh In on Set-Top Decision

“Matt brings a wealth of experience to Jaunt, not only in the legal realm, but from a business perspective as well,” Kliavkoff said in a statement. “His extensive experience with both established and emerging media companies is a perfect match for Jaunt, as we continue to witness the rapid growth of VR and the related evolving mediums. I am excited to have him as a member of the team and am looking forward to the contributions he will be able to make to the business . ”

Zinn holds a juris doctorate from the George Washington University National Law Center and a bachelor’s of arts degree in political science from the University of Vermont.

Jaunt’s VR app supports platforms such as iOS, Android, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, PlayStation VR, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Web browsers.

Jaunt has raised more than $100 million, and counts The Walt Disney Company, Sky and Google Ventures among its backers.

Amid the slew of announcements Apple made Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference, the CE giant announced bigger plays into emerging sectors that included augmented reality, virtual reality and the smart home.

On the VR front, a new line of iMacs will have enough pop to support virtual reality services and applications. That optimized VR software for the new macOS, called High Sierra (set to ship this fall following a beta period), will work with the Valve, Unity and Unreal engines.

RELATED: Apple TV Opens Door to Amazon Prime Video

Looking to take augmented reality to the next level, Apple introduced a new core technology called ARKit that will use the capabilities of the iPhone to identify surfaces such as a table and to let users add an object such as a lamp, coffee cup or vase.

RELATED: Facebook Dives Deeper Into AR

The ARKit, to be supported in iOS 11, to be released this fall, uses the phone’s sensors and cameras to find those surfaces and to estimate ambient lighting. Hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads will be capable of using ARKit, making it “the largest AR platform in the world,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s SVP of software engineering, claimed, seemingly taking aim at Tango, Google’s AR platform for certain Android devices.

Wingnut AR, Peter Jackson’s new production company dedicated to augmented reality, was on hand to demo a real-time battle game/experience that will be offered in the Apple App Store later this year.

In the smart home arena, Apple will be looking to grapple with products such as Google Home and Amazon Echo with the launch later this year of the HomePod, a high-end, connected home speaker that will sell for $349.

HomePod, at less than seven inches tall, is covered in a 3D mesh fabric that hides a seven-array beamforming tweeter pack, a four-inch woofer and is controlled by the A8, the same chip used in the iPhone.

In addition to working with Apple Music, HomePod also has a six-microphone array that works with Siri, and is made to work with HomeKit devices.

HomePod, available in white and space gray, will start shipping this December in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, then follow to other parts of the globe.

Apple also trotted out a new line of the iPad Pro, the higher-end, business-class version of its tablet platform, supporting a full-screen keyboard and 30-plus languages, as well as HDR video.

A new feature called “ProMotion” will double the max refresh rate to 120Hz, enabling smoother and more response to video and other content.

A 10.5-inch version starts at $649, while the 12.9-inch model starts at $799. Both will start shipping next week and will support iOS 11 when the new operating system is released this fall.

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) 

Other Bets, the unit of Alphabet that includes Google Fiber and longer-term projects, saw revenues rise and losses widen in Q1 2017.

Q1 revenues came in at $244 million, up from $165 million in the year-ago quarter, paired with net loss of $855 million, versus a loss of $774 million a  year earlier. The bulk of revenues for Other Bets came way Nest, Verily and Google Fiber, Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet and Google, said on Thursday's earnings call.

Last year, Google Fiber put a pause on market expansions as it concentrates in existing markets and pursues new wireless-based alternatives

RELATED: Google Fiber Pauses Expansion Plans

Google’s push into virtual reality and OTT TV (via the new YouTube TV service) were among the topics that came up on the call.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said more than 50% of the time consumers spend in the company’s new Daydream mobile VR platform is for video consumption, and that YouTube VR for Daydream is the number one app on the platform in terms of time spent. Google launched the Daydream View headset last November.

Google launched the Daydream View headset last November, and Pichai preached patience on how long it will take for VR to generate mainstream adoption.

“Technically, we are making the breakthroughs are needed,” he said later, noting that Daydream is doing well with early adopters of VR technology.

RELATED: Google Daydream View Hits Stores Nov. 10

Pichai also talked up the new advertising potential presented by YouTube TV, the mobile-focused virtual MVPD service that went live in handful of markets earlier this month.

“The delivery of ads on TV has also not evolved at the same speed as the delivery of ads and media content on the Internet,” he said. “We think we have a significant opportunity to improve that experience, especially for advertisers…across these surfaces.”

Viewing hours of live OTT video is expected to overtake traditional broadcast TV, according to hundreds of industry pros who participated in a survey/study by Level 3 Communications, Streaming Media and Unisphere Research.

The 2017 edition of the annual OTT Video Services, based on answers from 486 “media industry professionals” (with 70% based in North America, 16% in Europe, 9% in Asia Pacific and 5% from South America), found that nearly 70% believe that OTT will cross that threshold no later than 2022.

The study also asked about the technical challenges faced by live-linear OTT services (see chart), and the most popular response, at 26.8%, was quality of service/quality of experience, followed by local ad insertion (14.5%), content security (13.3%) and network DVR/catchup services (10.3%).

“Engagement,” at 22.7%, was viewed as the most key performance metric used for OTT business decisions, followed by buffering (20.3%), latency/jitter (15.7%), abandonment rate and bitrate (time-weighted) (both at 14.2%) and video start failures (13.1%).

Notably, linear channel OTT content was rated as very important to OTT business plans by 42% of respondents, ahead of per-event and VOD content.

Respondents also offered insight on content delivery network strategies. About 47% said they use a multiple-CDN approach, up from 40% in last year’s study, and 30% had a single-CDN strategy, and 22% operated their own internal CDN.

“In-house CDN delivery presents a challenge for pure-play CDN companies, as they lack the ability to sell basic services such as IP transport that traditional telecoms can use to offset the cost of their CDN infrastructure,” the study  explained.

About half said they plan to offer both High Dynamic Range and High Frame Rate formats, with one-third saying they were uncertain about 4K or had no plans to support 4K.

Some 47% said they are not considering VR-focused video, but more than half said they are actively researching it, plan to launch a VR video service soon, or have launched on already.

Multiscreen software and navigation specialist Accedo has teamed with HTC Vive on a partnership aimed at accelerating the virtual reality market along with a collaboration that will deliver VR sporting events in tandem with the Australian National Basketball League.

Under the deal, they’ll will produce a series of joint seminars and participate in industry speaking engagements, and to collaborate with “key media accounts” that include the aforementioned basketball effort.

RELATED: Accedo, Digiflare Get the Urge to Merge

They said the NBL, which includes eight teams from around the country, attracts more than 750,000 spectators each season, and offers a mix of prime-time games that are televised nationally.

Accedo said it plans to feature its VR solutions next month at the NAB show in Las Vegas.

A year ago, at Mobile World Congress 2016, Samsung announced its first million hardware shipments. This marked the first time a major VR headset manufacturer had reached this milestone. At this same time last year, Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise appearance in Barcelona, Spain, surrounded by an audience all in VR headsets, sparked excitement for the future of VR. The image went viral and capital, entrepreneurs and brands made significant investments into the space.

Today, a year later, critics question whether VR is just a fad or whether it is the next major computing platform. With holiday sales of headsets underwhelming expectations, the cynics commentary has gotten louder. It is important for everyone to keep in mind, that just 12 months ago, there was no HTC Vive on the market. Even Daydream, Playstation and Oculus launched in just the past 6 months. So any opinion or commentary on the space feels too early.

As a VR platform working closely with brands, publishers, and VR content producers, we have seen consistent increased demand in the VR ecosystem over the course of the past year. Rather than sharing an opinion piece of whether this is the year of VR or not, I wanted to share the data that we are seeing from real business and real consumer engagement with our products.

What we see today is higher consumer engagement, higher quality content, and more demand from brands than ever. This February marked a new record with substantial year-over-year growth. Today, we have helped more than 100 brands and publishers deliver over 100 million VR ad impressions. Here are the key takeaways based on our data and case studies.

The real question to justify whether VR actually will take off is around consumer engagement. Almost every brand has asked what the uplift and engagement will be when they invest in VR. For every campaign, we have run both VR and 2D experiences to compare the performance across the same placement. We started by comparing 360° photos with 2D images. Then, we compared 360° VR videos with 2D videos. These experiments were performed across all platforms, including VR headsets, smartphones, tablets and desktops.

We measured heat-map (eyeballs) tracking, time spent in the experience, and click-through-rate for the display units. All data suggests that VR experiences gain higher attention from audiences. With higher engagement from audiences, brands can ensure that their message is delivered more effectively.

Brands are investing even more in VR technology

Initially we thought VR experiences made sense for travel and real estate. The nature of their products is one that aligns well with a 360° experience. In reality however, we have seen a broad range of VR content from brands. You may not think a VR campaign would be straightforward for insurance, alcohol, kitty litter, or even fast food companies, but we have seen brands from all verticals -- from Chick-fil-A to Cartier -- bring audiences into their narrative through this immersive media format. (Case studies are available here.)

Our takeaway: Every brand can effectively use VR for its marketing. Immersing your potential customer in your brand’s narrative is not a new objective to the marketer, and VR is being experimented with and successfully executed by creatives the same way we have seen these brands lean into online video 10 years ago.

And production value is getting stronger as well. One year ago, stereoscopic 360° content (VR content that is created for dimension of left and right eyes) was still in the lab. Not many brands and production partners knew how to film it. Today, we are serving advertising campaigns with stereoscopic video on a daily basis. We are receiving inbounds about spatial audios (360° audio), 8K resolution, 180° 3D (theater-like experience), and Web VR (Web Browser inside VR headsets). This all demonstrates deeper engagement with the medium. Brands, agencies and their production partners are learning into this technology and creating better VR experiences by the day.

Read more of this blog at omnivirt.com.

Brad Phaisan is CEO of OmniVirt, a 360° video and virtual reality advertising platform.

Turner and the NCAA said they will offer paid access to up to six games in virtual reality during the remainder of the Division I men’s basketball tournament.

That coverage, offered on the NCAA March Madness Live VR App for the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR mobile headset, will include games from the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds for the West Region in San Jose, as well as the Final Four National Semifinals and the National Championship.

They said this will market the first time that games from the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds have been available in VR. For last year’s tournament, Turner and CBS worked together on a free VR  project around the Final Four.

The NCAA March Madness Live VR app with Intel True VR is sponsored by Intel. VR coverage will be in part powered by virtual reality systems Intel acquired last year from Voke, the company behind a sports-focused VR production platform that includes a proprietary stereoscopic capture system.

RELATED: Turner App Adds VR for Final Four

This year’s VR feeds will be made available through VR Premium Ticket at the Oculus store, and support two paid options:

-Gold: $2.99 per game, or $7.99 for all six games, for “fully-produced VR coverage” that includes access to multiple courtside cameras, sounds from inside the arena, along with dedicated game commentary from Spero Dedes along with analyst Steve Smith and reporter Lisa Byington.  That trio will call the game specifically from the perspective of fans watching the live coverage in VR.

-Silver: $1.99 per game, for access to a VR experience from a single courtside camera presentation (180-degree live stream) with the same commentary featured on the CBS broadcast with  Jim Nantz, analysts Grant Hill and Bill Raftery, along with reporter Tracy Wolfson.

The reach and adoption of VR technology has reached a point to support a premium, courtside  approach that consumers will pay for, Hania Poole, GM/VP of NCAA Digital, Turner Sports, said.

“I believe it’s a business model that very well could take off,” she said, noting that Turner and the NCAA will also provide some in-game highlights on Facebook’s 360 video platform to help promote the experience.

“I think it brings the fan closer to being there,” Poole added, noting that the VR experience around the tournament will also provide more in-arena audio than before.

Update:  Intel, Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA announced a broader, multi-year deal to provide “Intel True VR” technology for this year’s tournament.  Intel noted that Intel Tru VR is the new brand to emerge from the Voke acquisition.  Intel noted that it will use camera pods (12 cameras per pod) to deliver up to 48 cameras devoted to the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, and 84 cameras for the Final Four semifinals and National Championship.

In the early part of this this phase of the virtual reality era, most consumers with VR equipment paid for it, but a sizable portion of the market received VR equipment for free as a gift or as part of a smartphone bundle, a recent study from IBB Consulting found.

RELATED: Samsung Bundles Gear VR with New Smartphones

The study, based on a survey of 3,199 U.S. online consumers conducted last month, found that 56% paid for that equipment, compared to 44% on the free/bundled portion of the ledger.

RELATED Study: 31% of People Interested in VR Have Used It

On the paid side, just 6% forked out more than $1,000 for that equipment, compared to 30% who paid up to $99, and 20% who paid between $100 and $500.

RELATED: Oculus Drops Price of ‘Rift’ VR Headset

The study also found that nearly one-third (30%) of consumers interested in virtual reality already own VR equipment, an indication that the take-rate for headsets is increasing with “considerable room for growth,” noted IBB, which announced its latest round of VR research in tandem with the recent Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain.

Among other findings, 77% of consumers interested in the technology said home is their preferred environment for VR, compared to VR “zones” at areas such as museums and theme parks (24%), an airplane or train (15%), at work (12%), or a subway or bus (7%).

“Clearly, the VR usage environment matters for consumers,” Jefferson Wang, IBB senior partner, said in a statement. “As the world continues the march towards mobility, dedicated VR experience zones and airplanes may be considered safer, contained environments where VR can offer a differentiated immersive experience without the fear of having a bag stolen, missing the next stop or being looked at funny.”

IBB’s study also found that gaming (37%) is the type of VR content that is most interesting to consumers, followed by travel (22%), movies, TV and news (17%), education, theme parks and visiting virtually with friends and family (7% each), and user-generated content (5%).

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

"It's kind of hilarious that MWC and GDC happen at the exact same time. All of these headset makers need some sort of telepresence app to be in both places at once," media guru/author Robert Tercek posted from Barcelona on Tuesday, including a selfie wearing a new HMD.

(For those who cannot await the Leslie Ellis "Translation Please" explanation, those acronyms refer to the simultaneous Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, and lastly to the Head Mounted Display, an integral device for VR, err, Virtual Reality.)

The proliferation of equipment dominated the Barcelona buzz, especially a few Samsung, LG, Huawei and Sony handsets that stood out in an increasingly competitive hardware market (plus a revamped oldie from Nokia). A growing  category of ancillary devices -- such as the VR headsets, robots and IoT (Internet of Things) gizmos -- also attracted plenty of attention about the 120,000 attendees.

But perhaps the most significant output from MWC was the endless enthusiasm about the upcoming role of 5G (Fifth Generation) wireless networks -- although, as the BBC (British Broadcasting Corp.) reported, there was also considerable skepticism about how exactly that will work. Nonetheless, behind the 5G expectations was the growing acceptance that wireless broadband is a global reality that will compete with cable and other wired delivery systems.

Conveniently and coincidentally, Comcast CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Brian Roberts tangentially addressed the wireless issue during his remarks to the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco on Monday. Although Roberts' focus was on voice services via its MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) system, it's not hard to speculate on how Comcast's wireless agenda will encompass video delivery beyond the current TV Everywhere availability.

And that brings us back to Barcelona, where FCC (Federal Communications Commission) chairman Ajit Pai assured the world that his Open Internet objectives would pave the way for greater access to content.

During a panel discussion after his speech, Pai repeated his remarks about the value of light touch regulation. He again cited the new unlimited data plans recently introduced by four major U.S. wireless carriers as an immediate "positive result" after he announced plans to eliminate net-neutrality restrictions.

Pai said he believes the market is already responding positively from the previous "climate of uncertainty," although he confessed that "these are business and political issues that are above my pay grade" -- a remark that generated a chuckle from the audience, according to people in the room.  

Netflix Plan
Keynoter Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, a company nearing 100 million subscribers worldwide, carried on the unlimited data narrative, announcing, "A number of pioneering players will start providing unlimited data at lower speeds." He did not specify any details.

"You can enjoy it and not be worried about data caps," said Hastings, according to a Reuters report. He explained that Netflix has been optimizing video for internet delivery to deliver "amazing" pictures at speeds as slow as 300 kilobits per second.

"We are investing at many levels ... to ensure the experience on mobiles, desktops, and the Internet is just instant," Hastings said, although he avoided issues such as net neutrality.

Meanwhile MWC's major buzz centered on the role and timetable for 5G, considered by many to vital to the IoT evolution now in progress.  Still, there were skeptics. The BBC quoted an unnamed mobile carrier executive who asked, "Who's going to pay for it?" and an arms merchant (i.e., equipment vendor) who called the 5G hype comparable to the "irrational exuberance" of nearly 20 years ago during the dot-com bubble and extensive investments in fiber networks.

Related > Liberty Global CEO: 5G ‘At a Crossroads’

And back in San Francisco, the Games Developers continued to promise more visual and interactive breakthroughs, including tools for more immersive mobile games and virtual reality experiences.

Collectively, this week's digital developments -- and promises -- were a converging reminder about the looming competitive intensity for attention, bandwidth and money.

Showing some sizable demand for its new console-connected virtual reality system, Andrew House, global chief executive of Sony Interactive Entertainment, told The New York Timesthat the CE giant had sold about 915,000 PlayStation VR units as of Feb. 19.

That’s a solid start for a product that went on sale in the U.S. last October for $399, and hooks up to the PlayStation 4 as well as the newer, higher-octane PS4 Pro. It also puts Sony on pace to beat an internal goal of selling 1 million PS VR headsets six months in, the paper noted.

RELATED: PlayStation VR Lands on October 13

That early progress also presents some promise to higher-end VR platforms, which are well behind adoption of simpler and less expensive viewers that work in tandem with compatible smartphones.

That initial success also gives the PS VR a leg up on PC-connected VR platforms such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The paper noted that SuperData Research believes that there were 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 Vive headsets sold by the end of 2016.

SuperData announced last week that it expects VR hardware revenues to reach $3.6 billion in 2017, and rise to $37.7 billion by 2020.

RELATED: Global VR Hardware Revenues to Reach $3.6B in 2017: Forecast

House told the pub that he had some doubts that VR would get a lot of consumer traction in the early going, and expects supplies of the product to improve by April.

“It’s the classic case in any organization — the guys who are on the front end in sales are getting very excited, very hyped up,” House told the Times. “You have to temper that with other voices inside the company, myself among them, saying let’s just be a little bit careful.”

He’s not alone in that thinking. 

“I just think it’s going to be a ten-year thing,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said with respect to VR on the company’s earnings call this month. “We’re still early in our ten-year plan for virtual reality, but we’ve made some progress.”

Virtual reality hardware is poised to hit $3.6 billion in 2017, and surge to $37.7 billion by 2020, SuperData Research predicts in a new consumer report focused on the emerging sector.

The firm, which sees hardware to outpace VR software sales until 2020, expects VR software/service revenues to reach almost $1 billion this year.

The study also predicts that 21 million “premium” VR headsets will ship this year, more than tripling 2016’s totals, while 59 million “light” mobile VR headsets will ship in 2017, versus 84 million in 2016. A recent study from Strategy Analytics also found that mobile VR platforms are still way out in front, but represent a small share of overall VR revenues.

RELATED: High-End VR Platforms Struggling for Market Share

SuperData Research, which puts Google Daydream in the “premium” category, expects 6.8 million of those devices to get into consumer hands this year.

RELATED: Google Unveils Daydream View VR Headset, Controller

And while retail demos are the most popular way U.S. consumers get interested in VR before buying products, “poorly managed” demos and people with little knowledge of those products is having the opposite effect by causing friction and lowering adoption and interest.

RELATED: Analyst: Best Buy Oculus Demo Shutdown 'Doesn't Bode Well' 

On the augmented realty (AR) end of the market, Pokémon Go earned 96% of all AR software revenue in 2016, the research firm said.

SuperData Research also predicts that Mixed Reality and AR will earn a combined $30.4 billion in 2020, and that MR devices will eventually overtake VR revenues.  

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:

Jaunt, the startup that specializes in cinematic virtual reality cameras and systems, said it has hired Jean-Paul Colaco as chief revenue officer.

RELATED: Jaunt VR App Hits PlayStation VR

Colaco, who reports to Jaunt president and CEO George Kliavkoff, previously was SVP of advertising at Hulu, and was SVP of advertising and business development at Vessel, the OTT service that sold its technology and software to Verizon last fall. Colaco is also late of spent more than a decade The Walt Disney Company in roles that includes SVP of business development.

“In looking for Jaunt’s first chief revenue officer, it was clear that JP was the best person for the job,” said Kliavkoff, in a statement. “With broad experience and a proven track record for generating revenue within the digital video space, he is the perfect complement to our management team. Personally, I am excited to work with JP again and believe Jaunt’s momentum will only accelerate with his help.”

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The hiring of Colaco follows the recent appointment of Jaunt CFO Fabrice Cantou.

Jaunt’s VR app supports platforms such as iOS, Android, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, PlayStation VR, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Web browsers.

Jaunt has raised more than $100 million. Its backers include The Walt Disney Company, Evolution Media Partners, China Media Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Google Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Axel Springer, ProSiebenSat. 1 SE, The Madison Square Garden Company, Peter Gotcher, the late Blake Krikorian, and Sky.

Video will continue to drive mobile traffic in the years to come, but a subset of traffic tied to virtual reality and augmented reality services and applications will also be on the rise, according to a new study from Cisco Systems.

Worldwide VR-related mobile traffic is expected to reach 141 petabytes per month in 2021, up from 13.4 petabytes in 2016, Cisco predicts its latest study -- Mobile Visual Networking Index (2016-2021).

Cisco also expects the number of VR headsets worldwide to rise five-fold during that span, from 18 million in 2016 to nearly 100 million by 2021, with more than half of them to be connected to smartphones.

AR-related traffic is also expected to grow to 20 petabytes per month by 2021, versus 3 petabytes in 2016.

Looking at mobile’s bigger picture, Cisco sees video consuming 78% of global mobile traffic by 2021, compared to 60% last year. The average mobile traffic per user is also expected to rise to 8,423 megabytes in that five-year timeframe, up from 1,456 MB last year. By 2021, there will be nearly 12 billion mobile-connected devices (including machine-to-machine modules) and 1.5 mobile devices per capita, versus 8 billion and 1.1 per capita in 2016.

From a raw data standpoint, global mobile data traffic will hit 49 exabytes per month, or 587 exabytes annually, by 2021. That annual run-rate would be equivalent to 122 times more than all global mobile traffic generated in 2011.

Live video is also poised to become 5% of mobile video traffic by 2021, representing a CAGR of 108%.

Also by 2021, Cisco believes that 53% of mobile traffic will travel on 4G networks worldwide, compared to 29% on 3G networks, and 9% on 2G networks. 4G will become the dominant mobile connection type by 2018, rising to 56%, Cisco predicts.

WiFi, a central component of most cable operator wireless strategies, will also continue to play a starring role with wireless.

Cisco sees fixed/WiFi traffic surpassing fixed/wired traffic starting in 2018, and 63% of mobile traffic to be offloaded by WiFi by 2021.

Total public WLAN and community hotspots reached 94 million last year, and will explode to 541.6 million by 2012, led by deployments in the Asia Pacific region, and driven in part by community WiFi/homespot growth, use of TV Everywhere apps, and public transportation access. Later, Cisco sees WiFi capacity trading, the Internet of Things and connected cars (in-car WiFi) also playing a significant role.

As for average mobile speeds, they are set to rise 3x worldwide – to 20.4 Mbps by 2021, while WiFi averages jump to 32 Mbps.

Cisco also found that 10% of mobile users consumed 10 GB per month in 2016, while 65% consumed more than 2GB per month. 

SubVRsive, a “full-service” virtual reality and augmented reality company, has landed a $4 million “A” round from WPP, and has named former Hulu exec Johannes Larcher as CEO.

Founded in August 2015 and based in Austin, Texas, SubVRsive has developed VR experiences with partners that include Lionsgate, MTV, Comcast and Showtime. Showtime, for example, worked with SubVRsive for a VR  of a recent bout between Deontay Wilder and  Artur Szpilka, and for The Circus, a documentary series that followed the campaign trails of then-presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The startup also teamed with Comcast to help capture the company’s presence at last year’s SXSW conference.

RELATED: Showtime Wraps VR Around ‘The Circus’

According to the company, its helps partners conceptualize their VR experiences, and is also involved in their pre-production, production, post-production and deployment. In addition to producing 360-degree videos, it also builds custom apps. 

Larcher, SubVRsive’s new CEO, handled Hulu’s business outside the U.S., including the launch of Hulu Japan (Hulu launched service in Japan in September 2011, and Hulu’s Japan business was fully acquired by Nippon TV in April 2014).  He was also part of the team that crated paid search at Overture Services (now Yahoo! Search), and was CEO of Academy123, a provider of homework help and self-study guides that was acquired by Discovery Communications in 2006.

SubVRsive said company founder Austin Mace will work closely with Larcher in a new role of chief creative officer.

SubVRsive investor WPP recently joined a group that is investing $50 million toward VR projects with IMAX.

Fox Sports and LiveLike will add a dash of VR to Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons.

They’re teaming up to offer a virtual, digitally-rendered suite during the game that will present highlights from the game in near real-time via the Fox Sports VR app for iOS and Android devices and tight integration with the Samsung Gear VR platform.

They said the VR experience, offered during Super Bowl LI, will enable users to pick from six different cameras placed throughout NRG Stadium in Houston. They expect to provide 20 of the most exciting plays from the game, as well as prepared content for pre- and post-game.

Though use of the app in tandem with Gear VR and Cardboard headsets will provide an immersive 360-degree experience, viewers will also be able to view it via the app without a headset.

Other partners include Avid, which will provide the experience’s augmented reality graphics platform, Twizted-Design (data-driven graphical integrations, EVS (UHD replays technology), and Ateme (multiscreen UHD and HD encoding).

The Super Bowl LI partnership is one of several recent ones between Fox Sports and LiveLike, which also teamed up for MLS Cup late last year, and last fall’s Big Ten championship football game.

RELATED: Fox Sports Lands Audi as Sponsor of MLS Cup VR Coverage

A key difference is that those previous offerings stitched in a live 2D feed of those games into the digital suite. For Super Bowl LI, the intention is to provide the near real-time highlights and to offer a taste of VR, given that many people will be watching the game in relatively large parties.

“I believe this will be the first of many Super Bowls broadcast in VR, making February 5th a historic day for both LiveLike and for the larger VR industry as a whole,” Miheer Walavalkar, co-founder and chief business officer of LiveLike, said in a statement.

“We are thrilled to bring what we believe is the most innovative sports viewing experience to the Super Bowl via the FOX Sports VR app” added Michael Davies, SVP of field & technical operations at Fox Sports. “The LiveLike platform helps us bring viewers inside the stadium for the best moments throughout the game and replay them from the six different camera angles in virtual reality.”

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.

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