{"id":228952,"date":"2025-10-21T02:52:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/228952\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T02:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T02:52:11","slug":"meta-is-building-a-smart-tv-in-vr-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/228952\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta is building a smart TV \u2013 in VR"},"content":{"rendered":"

In partnership with <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Meta\u2019s new Horizon TV app, and Netflix\u2019s Spotify partnership.<\/p>\n

Big hero images highlighting select TV shows and movies, a row of app icons, a bunch of additional content recommendations: At first glance, Meta\u2019s new Horizon TV app<\/a> looks a lot like the homescreen of your typical smart TV. Something Samsung, Google, or Amazon would ship on their devices. <\/p>\n

Except Horizon TV isn\u2019t running on a TV or streaming stick, but on the company\u2019s Meta Quest headsets. Unveiled at Meta Connect last month<\/a>, the app is a big part of Meta\u2019s push to attract older, less gaming-focused audiences to VR \u2014 a push that also includes a partnership with James Cameron<\/a>, and investments into sports, and other types of leanback entertainment content. <\/p>\n

Re-creating the smart TV experience in virtual reality also represents a monetization opportunity for Meta, which has for some time now tried to figure out how to bring advertising to VR<\/a>. However, the approach also means that Meta is inheriting some of the very problems smart TV platform operators have struggled with for a long time. And if consumers do warm up to watching more content with their headsets, they\u2019re bound to realize that even in VR, you can\u2019t escape the collateral damage of the streaming wars. <\/p>\n

Meta finally built Zuck\u2019s TV app<\/p>\n

In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg made headlines when he predicted that AR and VR wearables would eventually make traditional TVs obsolete. \u201cInstead of a $500 TV sitting in front of us, what\u2019s to keep us from one day having it be a $1 app,\u201d he told<\/a>\u00a0The New York Times at the time, suggesting that a digital TV, beamed into your living room with a headset or glasses, may one day be just as good, if not better, than the real thing. <\/p>\n

Eight years later, Meta launched its closest attempt yet to make that vision come true: Horizon TV, the latest revamp of the Quest\u2019s native video app, does look a lot like your typical smart TV screen. That\u2019s no accident: \u201cWe absolutely have taken inspiration from the navigation systems that have come before,\u201d says Meta Reality Labs director of entertainment content Sarah Malkin. \u201cWe want customers to feel a sense of familiarity.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Like many smart TV UIs these days, Horizon TV is what\u2019s known among streaming insiders as content-forward. Instead of just listing a bunch of app icons, it deep-links directly into these apps and features content recommendations for individual shows, movies, and livestreams. <\/p>\n

Most of the content featured in the Horizon TV app is sourced from just a handful of partners, including Amazon, Pluto, and Peacock. There are also app icons for YouTube, Spotify, and DAZN, among others; Disney Plus and ESPN are supposed to launch on Horizon TV soon. Netflix, Hulu, and HBO are notably missing, as are a bunch of free video services like Tubi and The Roku Channel. There are also no ad-supported linear streaming channels yet, and no option to rent or purchase movies or directly subscribe to video services within the Horizon TV app. <\/p>\n

Not yet, anyway. Malkin tells me Meta doesn\u2019t have anything to announce on that front, but the company is definitely looking at such features. \u201cOur goals are really to support and provide additional outlets for the existing business models of the entertainment industry to thrive,\u201d Malkin says. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In partnership with Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Meta\u2019s new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[64,63,44,105,427,238,239,240],"class_list":{"0":"post-228952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-tv","13":"tag-virtual-reality","14":"tag-virtualreality","15":"tag-vr"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}