Why you don't need television anymore

Online streaming, VR offer a dynamic viewing experience

"This is awesome!" That was me, a few years ago, back when VR was coming out of the shadows, boldly proclaiming itself as something more than just an underground experiment.
Fast forward to 2017, and it's finally happening! Virtual Reality - the entertainment nirvana, etched in the dreams of a generation by Star Trek's holodeck - is about to arrive in your living room.
This year, a new breed of immersive content will be beamed to your eyeballs: immersive video games, never-before-experienced live performances, virtual teleporting to distant planets. The only thing that's stopping this virtual revolution is how to convince people that there's more to this virtual hype.
In 2014, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, one who has never been shy about sharing his vision for VR technology, boldly stated to PAX East attendees that VR devices would and should replace TV sets. He claimed VR headsets would be cheaper for consumers and offer a more dynamic viewing experience.
"Why in the world would you buy a 60-inch TV that, even if it were dirt cheap for that, it's still going to cost a lot to ship it and make it from raw materials," Luckey said. He added, "A VR headset is going to be much better and much cheaper and you can take it anywhere." According to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, "More than one million hours of video have already been watched in Gear VR. So we've only just started to explore what's possible with video in VR."
Imagine finishing your morning gym routine and while you sit and cool down, you put your VR headset on and watch the morning news, or even grab a quick look at your social media updates. Or picture yourself traveling in the metro, streaming your favourite TV series for a binge-watch session. Why drive yourself to a movie to see a film with complete strangers when you can put on your VR headset and share the movie with your family in your own private theatre in your living room?
Call me crazy, but I foresee TVs and set-top boxes on their way out, giving way to the more interactive and immersive experience of virtual reality entertainment.
These scenarios might seem farfetched. But think back to the early 90s. Imagine someone telling you back then that, in 2016, people would throw away landlines to replace them with smartphones that can not only make phone calls but also handle your daily computing needs. Or that it would be impossible to find a DVD rental store on the streets simply because you'd be downloading your movies on demand. Or whisper to someone from the 80s with a large camcorder on their shoulder that one day people would be using their pocket phones to shoot, edit, publish and watch videos, and they'd think you were drunk. And yet, here we are.
This goes to say that a lot can change in a couple of decades, and the growth in VR technology has been nothing but exponential. Many of us may think that these bold claims are preposterous, because we'd be comparing today's TVs to VR headsets as they exist now. Saying one will replace the other is absurd, based on today's technology.
It's akin to looking at a behemoth CRT from 15 years ago, and ridiculing someone who envisions that in the future we will be hanging our TV sets on the wall like a photo frame. Amazing improvements have been made to the Oculus platform over the last couple of years. In fact, more breakthroughs have been made in VR hardware and software over the last 48 months compared to the last 10 years' progress. And Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus is a clear sign of where the industry is headed.
Virtual reality headsets may or may not replace TVs and computer monitors in the future, but it's not wild to think that some type of lightweight VR goggles or headset with motion tracking and AR implementation would replace the traditional TV screen. And I'm not talking about the $10 cardboard goggles that you need to slide a phone in, but sophisticated headsets that have their own GPUs, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules, and advanced optical lenses that offer greater field of view for life-like immersion. The thought that some form of affordable, wearable display with unbelievable levels of immersion would become commonplace in our living rooms isn't science fiction anymore. Take, Microsoft's Hololens, for example. Even science-fiction focused TV network Syfy released its new series, Halcyon, in mixed installments of traditional and VR episodes.
Whatever path VR technology takes, it's worth pushing developers and creators to look beyond the current state of the art and conceive the almost inconceivable future of 20 years hence. The idea that there won't be TV sets or set-top boxes anymore may or may not be crazy. But it's not about replacing TV, it's about substituting the environment in which we consume media entertainment, and the possibilities of exploring and interacting within those media content. And it's certainly not out of the realm of what's possible.
The writer is the director and co-founder of Merlin Digital. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.