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Meta, known for pushing the boundaries with its Quest headsets, already offers a way for users to watch their own content. However, the experience of navigating through a file system and viewing on a basic windowed screen is far from the thrilling escapade of a full-fledged home theater. Now, the company is taking steps to revamp this experience with a new experiment.
Mark Rabkin, the VP steering Horizon OS and Quest, recently shared in a post on the social media platform X that Meta is in the midst of developing a home theater setting for Horizon OS. This isn’t just any update—Horizon OS, presently powering the Quest, is soon expected to become the operating system for a range of third-party headsets as well.
In response to user curiosity about why such a first-party effort hasn’t been realized yet, Rabkin assured that his team is actively “[w]orking on all that, experimenting with lighting and other effects to see what’s best. Also trying to figure out awesome sound.”
Meta has dabbled in theater-like experiences before. Back in 2014, when it was still Facebook/Oculus, the company introduced Oculus Cinema for the Samsung Gear VR. This evolved into Oculus Video for both Gear VR and Rift, providing a unifying way to enjoy personal content or rent movies to watch directly on the device. By the end of 2015, Oculus Social emerged as a promising venture, allowing up to five users to immerse themselves in virtual theaters to view Twitch and Vimeo streams together.
Although these initiatives are now defunct, Meta’s journey continued into 2021, when Horizon Home on Quest was updated. It invited multiple users into a shared home space to watch videos and embark on VR adventures side by side. Nonetheless, it lacked many features you’d expect from a specialized home theater app, like customizable environments and sophisticated playback controls.
As options continued to evolve, the persistent shortcoming across all of Meta’s previous apps was the hurdle users faced when trying to access traditional content. This struggle often pushed users towards more open alternatives like Bigscreen and Skybox, as well as apps focusing on specific services like Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix.
Looking ahead, Meta’s newest venture into creating a dedicated theater environment is unlikely to merge all these fragmented apps into one big cinema hub. Yet, if it can offer a seamless and immersive way to enjoy personal content, that might just hit the sweet spot it needs.
