In a short period of time, life has changed due to the outbreak of covid-19 or the Coronavirus. We all face uncertainty. We don’t know how this Pandemic will unfold and many are seeking relief as this affects our lives, our families, friends, neighbors and finances.
Sooner or later, we will get through this crisis. While there is still uncertainty on many fronts, medical professionals agree that we should limit our exposure to others and stay at home as much as possible.
So what are we to do with ourselves now that we are locked away at home?
Well, as usual, Amazon seems to offer a solution. Prime members can now get exclusive access to an expanding library of immersive virtual reality content.
Amazon’s New VR Service
The new service, named Prime Video VR, offers everything in the Amazon Prime library for display in a private virtual setting, including ordinary 2-D TV shows and movies, as well as a new curated selection of 360-degree videos. The Prime Video VR app is available immediately for Oculus Go, Oculus Quest and Samsung Gear VR and more information is available on Amazon’s Prime VR Portal.
What Can You Watch?
With a VR headsets you can watch Amazon originals, channel subscriptions, live events and more. Amazon’s VR-capable library is expanding, as they pointed to the availability of the following titles:
• The Marvelous Mrs Maisel
• Good Omens
• Guava Island
• Catastrophe
• The Grand Tour
• Fleabag
• The Man in the High Castle
• Carnival Row
• Bosch
• Jack Ryan
Getting Started
To set up the service, you need to pair your headset with the Oculus mobile app, navigate to the Oculus Store on the headset, find the free Prime Video app, download and install it and then launch the app and sign in with your existing Amazon account.
If you've got a Gear VR headset, you need to first install Oculus software on your Samsung phone.
Amazon plans to continue to add curated VR content to Prime Video for Prime subscribers to consume. Amazon members who do not subscribe to Prime cannot access VR-specific content but can still watch anything from their personal library in VR. The Prime Video VR app is free to download.
Amazon’s entry into the Virtual Reality video streaming market follows YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix. According to research from ResearchAndMarkets.com, the global virtual reality market is expected to reach $44 billion by 2024, up from $7.9 billion during 2018.
The research also indicates that much of this growth is being driven by gaming and entertainment alongside increased interest from giant technology companies such as Amazon and Google. As headsets become cheaper and more accessible, that has continued to open up more market penetration and audience for VR-driven immersive media.
It is amazing how far Amazon has come as a company. If you remember when they got started as a book seller. We still find that they probably the best source for books. In this article we discussed The Five Best Books on Virtual and Augmented Reality.
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