BBC To Broadcast Some Of The World Cup In VR

The BBC have announced that all 33 matches broadcast by the BBC will be viewable for free on BBC Sport’s VR 2018 World Cup app, which will be available onĀ iOS and Android devices, as well as the Gear VR, Oculus Go and PlayStation VR headsets. It seems PC owners with Oculus Rifts and Vives will not be joining the party, and of course you will need to be the UK to access the streams.

You’ll be able to switch the viewĀ from a “luxury private box” on high or from behind either of the two goals, which seems a bit limited but would replicate the feeling on being in the stadium.

If you’ve got a 4K TV then you will also be able to stream the matches from the BBC iPlayer app in UHD, but you’ve going to have to be quick, the number of users granted access will be limited to “tens of thousands of people”.Ā  I guess the BBC hasn’t got the bandwidth to let everyone stream in 4K yet.

“With these trials we’re giving audiences yet another taste of the future,” saidĀ Matthew Postgate, BBC chief technology & product officer.

We will let you know when the app is available.

Source: BBC

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News Editor, very inappropriate, probs fancies your dad.

4 Comments

  1. Not only are they doing it in 4K, but it’s also HDR and 50fps. Taking up 40Mbit/s.

    By my calculations, even if it’s just 10,000 streams, that’s about 0.1% of the worldwide internet traffic. (Someone check that. I’m going off an estimated figure of 100,000 petabytes a month I found from a quick googling)

    I’d guess as a percentage of UK internet traffic, that could be 20 times higher. So 2%. But that’s based on 10,000 streams, so the lower end of the “tens of thousands”. In theory, that could be anywhere up to 20% of the normal UK internet traffic being used to watch some people kick a ball about for 90 minutes.

    I’m predicting the whole iPlayer will fall over in the first 30 seconds. Probably when I decide “Bloody football! I’m going to watch some Scandinavian crime drama instead!”. There’ll be plenty of swearing if it does.

  2. I’m boycotting the the world cup as it’s in Russia.

    • Qatar after that! Where next? Jimmy Saviles basement!? ?

  3. They could make all the teams play naked and I still wouldnā€™t watch. Ok no, I would actually watch that – they should totally make this a thing ?

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