Is 360 Live Event Streaming Just a Fad?

Learn more about VR and AR live streaming at Streaming Media's next event.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Jay Nemeth: We've seen 3D come and go, I don't know how many times now. I get excited about 3D myself, because I like anything that's immersive or can more faithfully recreate reality. But it just doesn't work. People don't want to wear the glasses. The gamers definitely are fine wearing the HMDs. I would say 100% for sure VR has staying power in gaming. As far as live event coverage, I don't know. I, personally, am frustrated that we produce these gorgeous pictures and on the equirectangular displays in the truck, there are deep blacks and vibrant colors and it looks amazing. And then I take a phone I bought at Wal-mart and stick it in a thing on my head, two inches in front of my face, and it doesn't look the same. You know?

If people are gonna buy into this and you want them to have an immersive experience, it has to be very close to reality and I can't see  the screen door of the display, and things can't be gray and washed out, and I can't be looking through a portal, because in real life I can see both Scott and James in my peripheral vision right now. So, you have to get all this equipment working like that and then people will say, "Oh yeah, this is just like Ready Player One. "I'm in this world."

Scott Gillies: Just to pick up on what Jay said--so 3D was something we saw six years ago come through the industry and lots of people got excited about it. Lots of money was invested. Lots of proposals, and I'd say ultimately, yes, it was a fad to a degree but there was something that was discovered which was with the increase in processing power and the power of computers you're able to actually take the-- make a calculation of what the second camera would have, the offset would have been for your ocular distance and you could rather easily convert a film into 3D without needing a whole second crew and needing to do a tremendous investment on the production. So, that I think was a valuable exercise and as we progress in computing power what we're gonna see that is possibility with VR, it may not be, like Jay said, in your headset at home, but there are experiences, and AR is not going away. It's something that, even beyond entertainment, adds to the human experience. So, I don't think it's a fad for that very reason alone. To me, and one of the things I'm really looking forward to is, and you may have seen the commercials. Seth Rogen had a commercial where he puts on a headset and he's experiencing a concert, and he's with his buddy, he's having this funny conversation and it turns out they're both in a headset in different areas experiencing a thing together. And I think there really needs to be advancement in the connective technology. Maybe it's something with 5G. When all these things converge, you start having these use cases where that's something you'd want to do with your friends. You'd want to connect. You don't want to just sit in a room by yourself with a headset on and like, I don't care how young you are, that's not really a fun experience and so, to me that's where I think you'll start seeing a tipping point in the technology and the use of the technology.