New Bigscreen TV Channels Feature Rick And Morty, Eric Andre Show And More

Bigscreen announced that is is launching additional free TV channels today, featuring streams of popular shows such as Rick and Morty, The Eric Andre Show and more.

The new channels will join the ever-growing list of free TV streams available on Bigscreen as part of Bigscreen TV. These rooms use ad-supported public streams from sites such as YouTube and Twitch and play them in public social rooms, allowing users to join a public TV channel room and enjoy the show with the company of other users.

The new channels added today will be screening Rick and Morty, The Eric Andre Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Samurai Jack, Robot Chicken, The Venture Bros and many other shows. This brings the total number of free TV channels available on Bigscreen up to 172. The new channels  will also require users to confirm that they are over 18 years of age before entering the room.

bigscreen rick and morty

Currently, TV channel streams are only available in public social rooms on Bigscreen. However, the developers noted that they are working on a feature that will soon allow users to bring up any of the free TV channels in their own private room as well, to be enjoyed alone or with friends.

Speaking of friends, the Bigscreen devs are also developing a friends system for the app that they expect to arrive sometime this year, alongside “new servers that dramatically improve the video/audio streaming quality, a new Remote Desktop feature with ultra-low latency desktop streaming to the Quest, and more!”

Things look set to be a big year for Bigscreen — the devs recently spoke about the impact of the Quest 2 launch on their app, stating it had a ‘massive’ knock-on effect.

Quest 2 ‘Massive’ For Bigscreen, Holiday Update Available Now

Bigscreen released a holiday update just before Christmas bringing new environments and features. Plus, the developers are seeing strong statistics and retention on Quest 2.

The biggest part of the update is the new drive-in theater environment, which the developers said was the #1 most requested feature from users.

In addition to the drive-in, the app has also been redesigned over the last few months and now features a brand new user interface. The developers say that the new UI should make it easier to discover new rooms and content, which is convenient as there’s also 60 new TV channels being added into Bigscreen in this update. The channels “including major crime-drama series such as Narcos and hilarious game shows like Wipeout.”

A new TV category called “To Infinity and Beyond” is also being added to Bigscreen for livestreams and re-runs of rocket launches. According to the developers, SpaceX launches are some of the largest social events in Bigscreen and VR in general, with thousands of people all watching at once.

bigscreen drive in

The developers also noted that the Quest 2 launch has been massive for Bigscreen and has meant that the team had to upgrade their servers. According to the developers, “core metrics are up 3-5x since October” and people are spending more time in the app than ever. “The average session is nearly an hour, and power users spend 20-30 hours every week in Bigscreen. Quest has become the most popular headset in Bigscreen’s userbase, followed by the Oculus Rift S, Valve Index, and HTC Vive.”

Thanks to the server upgrade, lobbies now support 12 people (up from 8) and the plan is for room size limits to increase up to 25 or even 50 people sometime next year.

With this update, Bigscreen is no longer supported on Oculus Go, as Facebook stopped accepting app updates for that headset as of December 4. The Oculus Go Bigscreen servers will be shut down “in the coming weeks.”

Next year, Bigscreen plans to ship several features, including “a friends system, new avatars, new environment, major improvements to our video streaming, a new ultra-low latency Remote Desktop feature and more.” PlayStation VR and Mac app support are both also “on the roadmap” but without a strict timeline.

Bigscreen Update Adds Green Screen, Remote Desktop Beta Coming Soon

Bigscreen has added a green screen environment in its latest update, which opens many doors for content creators and has endless creative potential.

The update will be most useful on PC VR headsets (and Quest running via Link) where it can be paired with the selfie stick and the streamer camera tools for broadcasting or recording purposes. When using the streamer or selfie cameras in the green screen environment, users will be able to use broadcasting or editing software on a PC to key out the background and place themselves wherever they like.

This opens up heaps of possibilities for content creation — streamers will be able to broadcast using their Bigscreen avatar placed against a custom virtual environment, for example. You can check out lots more examples in the video embedded above.

The selfie and streamer cameras are not available on Quest, so the green screen environment is somewhat useless on those headsets for now. That being said, Bigscreen have said they want to add a selfie stick camera to Quest in the future.

Bigscreen says this update is the first of a couple that will focus on remote work and virtual office capabilities. Within the next 2 months, it also plans to launch a beta for a remote desktop feature. Similar to other comparable remote desktop apps, it will allow you to stream your desktop and control it on from within VR on standalone headsets like Oculus Quest. The feature will have ultra low latency (10-15ms) when streaming to Quest, according to Bigscreen.

The feature will also have social capabilities, with other users being able to see others’ desktop streams and collaborate from within VR. This will all be part of a big ‘Quest 2’ update, which the developers say is coming soon.

The green screen update is available now for Bigscreen.

‘Bigscreen’ Brings 50+ Free Steaming TV Channels to Social VR Viewing Platform

Bigscreenthe social VR platform that lets you stream your computer’s screen to others, just got a substantial update that brings with it 50+ streaming TV channels, including sports, gaming, movies, anime, news, and more.

All streaming TV is served up for free directly from Bigscreen and shown in its public theater rooms around the clock. Some channels may not be available in all areas, however we’ve confirmed that a majority are at least available in Europe.

The update comes to all supported platforms, including HTC Vive, Valve Index, Windows VR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, and Samsung Gear VR.

Public Bigscreen TV rooms support up to eight users, although a channel can technically support “thousands of people,” Bigscreen CEO and founder Darshan Shankar writes in a blog post.

To accomplish this, Shankar says the company created a new VR video browser technology that can load video streaming and livestreaming sites such as YouTube, Twitch, Pluto, and Comet. And while the platform’s peer-to-peer screen sharing has been greatly optimized, direct streaming means there’s no upload bandwidth requirements.

The UI has also been modeled after smart TV interfaces, which favors one-click actions instead of laborious text insertion.

Image courtesy Bigscreen

Here’s a quick list of some of the channels you can jump into today:

  • Movies & TV: Rifftrax, MST3K, Anime, Pokémon, Pluto Movies, Comet, Shout! Factory, and more
  • Gaming & Sports: Red Bull TV, 24/7 Poker, 24/7 Trivia, CBS Sports, FOX Sports, Top Twitch (Ninja, Shroud, Sodapoppin, Timthetatman, Lirik, DrDisrespect, DrLupo, Pokimane, Summit1g), and more
  • News & Finance: NBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Sky News, Newsy, Cheddar News, RT America, Weather Nation, Crypto News, and more
  • Random: Monstercat, Lofi Hip Hop Beats Radio, Comedy Central, NASA, SpaceX, 24/7 Cats, and more

In a few weeks, Bigscreen will also be announcing its own Bigscreen TV events, new TV channels, and a new cinema environment. At some point this summer, the platform will also release a friends system, and premium 3D Movie Nights in partnership with major movie studios. Upcoming events include:

  • July 11–14 — Overwatch League Playoffs
  • July 21 — SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch
  • August 25 — The DOTA 2 International Grand Finals

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Brings 50+ Free Steaming TV Channels to Social VR Viewing Platform appeared first on Road to VR.

‘Bigscreen’ Overhaul to Bring “massive new features” Over Next 3 Months

The developers behind Bigscreen Beta, the social VR app that lets you stream and share your desktop’s screen in VR, have been pretty quiet over the past year, although that’s about to change in what studio CEO & founder Darshan Shankar calls some “massive new features” coming to the app.

“We have been heads down totally overhauling Bigscreen with some massive new features that will be rolling out in a series of updates in the next 3 months,” Shankar says in a reddit post. “The biggest problems, bugs, frustrations you have had with Bigscreen Beta have been fixed in this update, along with some beautiful new features.”

Bigscreen Beta’s first update of the year is slated to arrive in two weeks to Steam (Rift, Vive, Windows VR), Oculus Store (Rift), and the mobile Oculus Store (Gear VR, Oculus Go).

Image courtesy Bigscreen

The first big reveal: a new avatar system that brings even more choices so you can create a unique you, replete with new hats, hair, and beards. According to the video (linked below), Bigscreen is also getting new environments and “even more features.”

“We plan to spend the next week or two testing this before releasing it to the whole world,” Shankar says, referring to the first update.

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Bigscreen Beta is a free app that lets you mirror your desktop in VR, be it in a social environment for collective viewing or gaming, or alone in your own personal movie theater. The app has seen several updates since it was first released in mid-2016, including support for up to 12 users in bespoke ‘Big Rooms’ and vastly improved streaming quality.

Since all Bigscreen rooms are peer-to-peer encrypted, both voice chat and desktop screens stream directly to people in the room; they aren’t hosted on the company’s servers, meaning only one friend needs a Netflix account to start that all-night viewing party.

Users looking for a preview can help test out the new functions by joining Bigscreen’s Discord channel (invite link). If this is only the first update to an admittedly “massive” overhaul, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

The post ‘Bigscreen’ Overhaul to Bring “massive new features” Over Next 3 Months appeared first on Road to VR.