VR is a bit of a contrarian tech. It’s a tool for focus. It shuts down the noise. Some described it as the headphones for the eyes. I find a good session of Google Earth VR very refreshing and meditative. Fully focused on enjoy wonderful places around the globe without interruptions and leaving the appartment.

In your use case, the equivalent looks more like AR, having a PiP of the show on the corner of the lens while going about your day.

Even my grandparents can have a chat over the top of the boring part of a programme or eat their dinner whilst watching the news.

Nothing sounds more tedious than having a conversation with somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see.

Couldn't the whole family enter the same VR environment? Why limit it to just yourself?

Then you'd be free to chat over the top of the boring bits...

I agree that replicating the full social context of TV will be difficult

Because they could just share a screen in real reality?

Iff they're in the same place.

Try that with relatives living in three different places across the country.

Indeed. Much less hassle, much less expense, many fewer tradeoffs, and much more social.

> somebody whose attention is being drawn by something that only one of us can see.

Typically whatever is seen in VR is repliacted on the monitor, so it's not true that only one person in the room can see what's going on in VR.

At that point it's just background noise. But I'll grant you that. I think those shortcomings are just a matter of improving current VR technology to make it less invasive more than an absolute limitation of the medium.

Which is almost exactly what they said about radio when TV was new

Well, they got that right. Missed other stuff about TV's appeal.

Who is “they” and what was actually said?