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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> Does someone watch an entire 2+ hour movie with a sweaty headset strapped to them

I just want to say, absolutely. Except it's not sweaty.

You're not going to do it in a social situation -- it's not replacing a movie the family watches together -- but in your bedroom or home alone absolutely. Just recline on your bed/couch and watch an IMAX-sized screen in the sky above you. Surround sound in your AirPods.

I already do it with my Quest 2 and it's glorious. It's hard to imagine how good the experience is until you've tried it.

And I'm convinced that within a few years, it's going to become the main way of watching movies together with friends/family/lovers when you're geographically apart -- whether 2,000 miles or 2 miles.

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I must be old-fashioned or even anti-social, but what exactly is the point of watching a movie together remotely? Does it become some kind of group debate that constantly interrupts the movie?

With comedies you're laughing together and it's awesome. I did that constantly during COVID with friends. Especially great for reality TV shows, you can pause and make jokes about what's going on.

It's really fun to pause and chat about what's happening and then resume. Yes it's constantly interrupting the movie but that's the whole point. But because you pause you're not missing dialog or anything.

I mean, do you not see a difference in watching something on a couch with friends vs. watching the same thing by yourself?

I'll come clean and admit that as it comes to watching movies, I'm anti-social. I do not want to discuss the movie whilst watching it, at all.

Lighter content like the news, a talk show, things like that...sure.

During Covid & lockdowns, loads of people watched movies together. It's not much different from watching a movie with a friend at your own place. VR gives the activity sense of presence which is hard to describe, but basically it's even more of a social experience.

> It's not much different from watching a movie with a friend at your own place

not to sound rude, but that's a bit of a stretch.

It is much different.

Maybe not better overall for some people, but very much different it is.

> VR gives the activity sense of presence which is hard to describe

Not really hard, it's similar to proprioception

Difference is proprioception enables you to feel limbs that are actually there, which is not as good as tricking your brain to feel something that it's not there.

>not to sound rude, but that's a bit of a stretch.

Not to me. I've spent several thousand hours in VR. When it comes to watching a video with someone else online, the most immersive way is in VR. Things like the now defunct Rabb.it or Watch Together are for many technical reasons better (no screen door, don't need any bulky headset). But it doesn't feel like being there with your friend.

>Difference is proprioception enables you to feel limbs that are actually there, which is not as good as tricking your brain to feel something that it's not there.

I've witnessed dozens of people who can "feel" a virtual touch from another avatar on their avatar. VR tech from 5 years ago was good enough to already elicit such reactions. The determinant seems to me to be time spent in a sufficiently immersive virtual world. And we've had those for many years already.

When I'm away on a remote site for a week or two, it is nice to be able to watch a movie with my wife after a shift. There's something nice about the feeling of being connected even though I'm 2000kms away from her.

I don't have a Quest 2 myself, but my nephew has one and even wearing it for 15 minutes has the padding full of sweat any time I've messed with it. I can't even imagine wearing it for 2+ hours.

I own a Quest 2 and it's far from glorious. The resolution makes everything a blurry mess, and the lenses make anything off-center even more blurry.

It DOES get sweaty, hot, and it leaves pressure marks on your face.

My 65" 4k OLED TV and shelf speakers absolutely destroy the Quest 2. I have also owned an HTC Vive and a Valve Index.

I would rather do nothing than use any of them for media consumption.

If you use an app like SkyBox you can make sure the screen is outputting full 1080p detail by adjusting the size and rendering quality of the virtual screen. Nothing is blurry or messy at all -- I've actually compared against stills from the same video on my laptop. Each eye is 1920 pixels wide but it's effectively a bit wider since you have two eyes without total overlap between the two images, so it matches up for 1080p pretty perfectly. (And you can watch 4K content but you're only going to get effective 1080p resolution.)

I'm happy you have a 65" 4K TV but not everyone does, and the vast majority of content out there is only 1080p as well. And my AirPods Pro, with noise cancelling, together with the Quest's own spatial audio, absolutely destroy any regular speakers I've ever owned. And everything can be as loud as I want without disturbing anyone's sleep or study.

> It DOES get sweaty, hot, and it leaves pressure marks on your face.

I guess we have different experiences, but it sounds to me like your strap is possibly much too tight. None of those things happen to me. But I'm also using it in a room-temperature environment -- I'm sure it would get sweaty and hot if it were 90°F indoors or something.

> Each eye is 1920 pixels wide

This is like five times worse than my desktop display, which fills around a third of my visual field with a 4K desktop. It sounds absolutely miserable (and is, based on my experience with an HP Reverb G2, which is 2160x2160 per eye).

> If you use an app like SkyBox you make sure the screen is outputting full 1080p detail. Nothing is blurry or messy at all. You can do the math if you don't believe me.

1080p detail? Are you aware this detail is spread all over your field of vision? ~18 pixels per degree is laughable quality. And let's not talk about the Screen Door Effect!

> The vast majority of content out there is only 1080p

What???

> And my AirPods Pro, with noise cancelling, together with the Quest's own spatial audio, absolutely destroy any regular speakers I've ever owned.

You probably haven't owned many speakers, then.

> I guess we have different experiences, but it sounds to me like your strap is possibly much too tight.

If you don't wear it tight, it's easy for it to move slightly and you lose the sweet spot of the lenses, which is very narrow, increasing blurriness even further.

I don't wear my glasses tightly, and they still leave a mark on my nose.

> 1080p detail? Are you aware this detail is spread all over your field of vision?

I'm aware that the field of view on the Quest 2 is fairly narrow, so expanding the virtual screen to close to the full width of the field of view winds up to actual 1080p yes. And it's a great comfortable size for a virtual screen. You're free to confirm the math yourself, but you're not losing detail.

>> The vast majority of content out there is only 1080p

> What???

That's factual. Even most new TV shows aren't in 4K yet, nor is most of the movie catalog. Fortunately it's slowly growing.

> You probably haven't owned many speakers, then.

Right, I've dropped a few hundred on speakers. I'm much happier dropping a couple hundred on AirPods than many thousands on a set of surround-sound speakers to get comparable quality... that I can't even use at the same volume because it would bother people.

As a data point, the time I bought a 10" subwoofer for use in my home theatre was when my thoughts on headphone use changed.

Prior to that I'd used some decent (but not "fantastic" headphones).

Nothing compares to the whole-body experience of watching a movie with good bass speaker setup. Large bass speakers literally vibrate your whole body rather than just your head.

It's a huge, huge improvement over headphone. :)

> As a data point, the time I bought a 10" subwoofer for use in my home theatre was when my thoughts on headphone use changed.

Now get a bass shaker: https://www.amazon.com/Dayton-Audio-BST-1-Tactile-Shaker/dp/...

I have one mounted directly to my bed, and it simply can't be compared with speakers.

Oh, that looks nifty.

Er... why mounted on your bed though? :)

> Er... why mounted on your bed though? :)

I use my computer sitting or laying down in bed. So that's where my sound system is—mounted to the bed. It's extremely comfy.

When I moved from laptop to desktop, I built a new laptop for the desktop so that I could continue to use it from bed.

> I'm aware that the field of view on the Quest 2 is fairly narrow, so expanding the virtual screen to close to the full width of the field of view winds up to actual 1080p yes. And it's a great comfortable size for a virtual screen. You're free to confirm the math yourself, but you're not losing detail.

Resolution and detail are not the same thing. We need to talk about Pixels Per Degree here. A 65" 1080p TV at reasonable viewing distance (3m) has ~70 PPD. The Quest 2 can barely do 20 PPD!

I can personally count the pixels of the Quest 2 (and the space between them!). I have to get extremely close to my 4k TV in order to be able to see the pixels.

> That's factual. Even most new TV shows aren't in 4K yet, nor is most of the movie catalog. Fortunately it's slowly growing.

Most of the new TV shows I watch come in 4K 10bit HDR with Dolby Vision. It's rare when one doesn't have the option.

No, resolution and detail are the same thing in this case. Either you can clearly make out details or you can't.

Pixels per degree are irrelevant for regular 2D entertainment content when you can vary the virtual screen size. Obviously your 4K TV which occupies a very small slice of your vision has more PPD. And obviously a virtual screen which is more like IMAX-sized has less PPD. But it doesn't matter at all once you're already seeing every pixel of your content. Because if you're already seeing every pixel of the source material, an increase in PPD achieves literally nothing except for a sharper user interface (not content).

> Most of the new TV shows I watch

And different people watch different content. I'm happy for you that yours are mostly 4K. But even prestige shows like White Lotus and Succession are still only 1080p.

Both White Lotus and Succession are available in 4K, FYI.

No they're not.

If you Google either of them with "4K" at the end, all you get are questions about why HBO hasn't made them available in 4K.

There's no 4K streaming and no 4K Blu-Rays.

Unless you have a link that says otherwise?

https://collider.com/max-4k-streaming-collection/

Headline and subhead:

Max Adds Over 200 Movies and TV Shows in 4K Ahead of Official Launch

'Dune,' 'Succession,' 'The Conjuring,' and regular and extended editions of 'The Lord of The Rings' franchise are among the added titles.

> Because if you're already seeing every pixel of the source material, an increase in PPD achieves literally nothing except for a sharper user interface (not content).

Pixel size matters, you are not supposed to be able to clearly discern every pixel of the content you are consuming.

> Pixel size matters, you are not supposed to be able to clearly discern every pixel of the content you are consuming.

If that's really important to you (why?) then you can adjust your position in the virtual world until the viewing angle is the same as your TV or whatever the ideal size is.

> This is absolutely asinine.

> That we are even having an argument about something this basic is insane.

You may want to re-read the HN guidelines. Remarks like these are not appropriate for HN.

Thanks! Edited.

Feel free to adress my point anytime!

You know as a parent (feels weird to write that) this highlights an entirely weird product oversight for me: is anyone doing shareable low-latency wireless headphones? Because in terms of putting things on your head, that's exactly what me and my wife need - a way to watch things at night without constantly riding the volume control, with shared audio (and microphone pick ups or something so we can talk to each other).

You're totally in luck if you're in the Apple ecosystem. With AirPods, you can do that easily from iOS or on your Apple TV. It's zero-latency in the sense that it automatically delays the video to match the Bluetooth latency, so the image always syncs with sound:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210421

https://support.apple.com/guide/airpods/share-audio-on-apple...

Plus they just announced some more intelligent noise cancellation that let’s through more important stuff.

My wife and I do that with our AirPods. We can even pair them both with an Apple TV and watch tv with perfect audio without waking the kids up.

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