Juiced for Olympics in VR? Better grab a Samsung headset - CNET

The Olympics are venturing into virtual reality for the first time, letting you beam yourself into the middle of your favorite event -- but only if you have a Samsung Gear VR and pay for cable or satellite.

Samsung and its Gear VR headset will be the exclusive virtual-reality device to watch the first Olympics VR footage of the games in Rio starting in August, the company said in a release Thursday.

A high-profile event like the Olympics is Samsung's bid to widen VR's appeal to more mainstream consumers and encourage their loyalty. Samsung is competing with rivals like higher-end Oculus Rift from Facebook and Vive from HTC in the buzzed-about, immersive format.

By clipping a Samsung smartphone into a special headset, Gear VR makes viewers feel like they're in the middle of the action.

NBCUniversal, which holds the broadcast rights to the Olympics in the US, picked Samsung as its exclusive partner. The company also said that to unlock the VR experiences in the NBCSports app, people will need log-in credentials for a pay-TV service. So it's time to either subscribe to cable or nudge a password-sharing friend who does!

VR programming will include the opening and closing ceremonies of the games, as well as men's basketball, gymnastics, track and field, beach volleyball, diving, boxing, and fencing, as well as highlight packages of those sports, comprising 85 hours of VR programming.