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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

It'll be interesting to see how this affects the market for high-end TVs and audio systems. A very large TV is $2k, an audio system is another couple thousand (including wiring/install).

If one of these costs $3k, it becomes a pretty reasonable decision for a single person who's investing in a setup. Of course, if you want to have people over to watch a movie/game, that complicates things. I wonder if there will be a rental market for these, or how long it will take for enough people to have them that they would bring their own.

Our projector + Sonos setup feels obsolete on a going-forward basis. My guess is that in 5 years we'll use it only when 4+ people are watching something, and even then we'll be tempted to complain about how much less immersive it is, thanks to the hedonic treadmill effect.

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13 minutes later they made this exact comparison right before announcing pricing. At $3500.

That's not including the price of the custom myopic glasses, don't know about the battery.

I'm not too worried about the battery. Supposedly it's a 2 hr life, and I figure most of the time I'd be sitting down using it anyway. Presumably it'll be USB-C powered, so I could just plug into one of my power banks when it's time to charge, instead of investing in a second Apple battery.

> Of course, if you want to have people over to watch a movie/game, that complicates things.

Or sit down with your family and watch something. That's still a thing people do, right?

For sure, my comment was in the context of single people, for whom the case is the most compelling IMO. I have a family and imagine that I'll get one in the next 24-36 months, my wife will eventually get one, and our kids will beg us to use them. I do think the hedonic treadmill will be real here, and the experience of watching TV will seem lackluster by comparison.

One demographic that will continue to prefer regular TVs is the Netflix-and-chill crowd, which would be concerned about knocking visors when going in for a kiss...

> I wonder if there will be a rental market for these

It would be cheaper to rent 1 projector than 5 VR headsets.

Don't forget about the screen. The bigger issue is that many people don't have room for a projector setup. Also, there's no effective way to rent a sound system as good as this.

One complicating factor is that it sounds like you have to get these fitted/personalized for your vision or glasses. That would be a buzzkill. Same for battery life, if everyone is reaching for a power adaptor during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

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