At this point, your bracket for the NCAA March Madness tournament may be busted but not your chances of catching a few of the games courtside. This year, fans can spend at least $3 to watch one of the upcoming games from this year’s March Madness tournament in virtual reality — marking the first time it costs viewers money to watch an NCAA game in VR.
Through the NCAA March Madness Live VR app, fans will be able to watch games from the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight in virtual reality for the first time, along with the Final Four, and national title game. According to the NCAA’s official announcement, fans will only be able to get a virtual courtside seat for up to six of the 15 games. The six games will include the three regional games from San Jose, California, the two Final Four games, and the national championship.
The gold package charges $3 per game or $8 to purchase six games. The silver package only charges $2 per game but does not offer an option to pay for six at a discounted price. The gold package gives you views from multiple courtside cameras, sounds from inside the arena, and sports commentary exclusively for those watching in VR. With the silver package you only get to see the game from one courtside camera, and the same game commentary you would get from watching the game on TV.
In 2016, the app streamed the two Final Four games and the national title game between the University of North Carolina and eventual winner Villanova University for free. This year, the Sweet 16 has quite a few marquee matchups, including UCLA prodigal talent Lonzo Ball facing against the machine that is coach John Calipari’s University of Kentucky.
When you can buy these VR tickets has yet to be announced, but should be the closer we get to Thursday’s initial games. The NCAA March Madness Live VR app is available to download now via the Oculus store.
The Sweet 16 and Elite Eight will run between Thursday and Sunday on TBS, TNT, TruTV, and CBS.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?