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Comment by kllrnohj | Hacker News Reader

At $3500 though you can easily put together a decent-to-great 75-80" home theater system with the latest gaming console(s) and have plenty of money left over for multiple rounds of pizza & beer with friends over. 77" OLED TVs from Samsung & LG are only around the $2000 mark these days, after all. Compromise even just a smidge to a full array local dimming mini-LED QLED TV and you're now down to under $1k for the TV. Surround-sound soundbars that sound fantastic are plentiful below the $1k mark as well and require next to zero setup.

It seems like you need to live alone and be rich enough to afford it such that you likely already have a great home theater anyway and still be interested in the Vision Pro. Or you actually don't want a TV at all for some reason but still want a home theater experience.

That seems like a quite small market?

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I can afford a 75-80” home theater system, but I cannot afford an apartment in NYC large enough to justify buying such a system.

Most people who rent also move at least every few years, so having that large of a thing to move is a bit annoying. Not even mentioning people who travel for work and obviously cannot bring such a system with them.

It isn’t just all about the money when it comes to device purchases.

Presumably in a smaller apartment setting, you don't have any need for such a large TV (or sound system). It should scale appropriately and provide the similar experience at an even cheaper price. A 48" OLED TV, for instance, is much much easier to move.

I don't think those are really comparable. Spending a ton of money on a home theater is a large and static purchase. You put it in your home, and that's it, you can't move it easily or adapt it much. The Vision Pro, on top of having other functionalities, lets you have that home theater experience anywhere. Want o watch in bed? on the couch? outside on porch? waiting at the airport? People spend a lot more on phones because of the portability aspect.

Another HN commenter[0] speculated that the R1 chip could be part of the path towards an Apple self-driving car. Since they're no longer trying to do level 5 FSD, I think one of the absolute coolest things could be using the Vision Pro to see straight through the car into what would otherwise be blind spots. Obviously there are implications to wearing Vision Pro while driving, especially since if the device loses power you will entirely lose the ability to see. The idea still fascinates me though.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39108792

Something I've noticed in the past few years is the number of homes I've been in without a TV and the use of smart speakers placed throughout instead of a fixed stereo/surround system.

Seems quite a few folks are opting to randomly binge-stream on their laptop as vegging out on the TV is a thing of the past for them, so no need to have their living space dominated by these types of electronics.

Are those folks going to suddenly find it appealing to strap on a headset with a battery pack for $3,500 but don't want to try that out today for $500?

The appeal of the laptop/tablet/phone veg is the speed at which you can plop and start watching. Futzing with VR headset is kinda not that.

The "personal home theater!" angle has been tried, and failed, so many times now. It doesn't seem like the Vision Pro changes anything to suddenly make it a motivating feature on its own. Which I think is the more telling thing about Netflix's response here. They've been pushing VR movie watching since day 1. And yet now they aren't doing so for the AVP. That seems less likely to be a snub of Apple and more likely to be an admission of "this just isn't something people do or want currently"

The $500 headset can't really do this well. They may have demoed one in a store and realized this isn't a great experience. You will also not find a lot of people online recommending it either.

I have a Quest 3, and I would much rather watch movies on a laptop or iPad than it. The screen quality is not great. You can see the pixels due to the low-ish resolution. The contrast ratio is not great.

The screen quality is generally good enough for VR games and other VR-specific experiences, however.

It's too early right now and I feel the device needs to make strides for it to be viable for most. The various youtubers pointing out neck strain issues underscore this. We can't gauge much from early gripes on a low production device that hasn't launched yet.

Netflix's engineering staff is expensive and I imagine they learned some interesting lessons from experiments like Bandersnatch. No need to make bets for the sake of innovation, let things play out first. I'm sure there is some signaling involved for the sake of investors showing they're prudent here.

All I'm saying is - to your point - the market may be shifting to where personal consumption devices like this make sense. It's not replacing a TV so much as a laptop.

For some early adopters the experience may be far superior, and if so, a next generation device that cuts the cost and size in half may be the thing that launches things forward. Like the iPhone 3G.

Or it could be sort of a wash and go the way of the 3d TV craze from 15 years ago.

You’re forgetting just how much space that all takes up

It takes a wall. Most people that can afford a $3,500 VR toy usually have at least one wall - often at least 4 of them, even!

A lot of homes are not built with an obvious spot for a TV, especially a big one. Hence all of the people sticking TVs over their fireplaces (which is way too high for proper viewing).

A wall. And power. And furniture to hold the 50 cables and 5 auxiliary devices that go with the TV. And a place to comfortably sit that works with all of the above.

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