This October we are getting Playstation VR goggles and
they plug into a HDMI 2 port with plans to support Playstation VR on PCs.
Several of the PS4K leaks mention a Media player update and improved performance for System + Media + VR as well as UHD Blu-ray and 4k UPSCALING. This means the Southbridge is finally being supported and it is responsible for all the features mentioned except a
faster smaller 2X more performance GPU which is still rumor from only one of the sources.
Facts:
1) Sony has a BDA licence for a PC UHD Blu-ray player but has no PC platforms of their own. Microsoft has no BDA licence for a UHD Player but a VP said at launch the XB1 hardware can support UHD Blu-ray. I believe this is true for the PS4 also.
2) Microsoft's Playready ND is mentioned in Sony PDFs for the UHD Blu-ray digital bridge to allow sharing the media between platforms in the home.
3) Playstation VR goggles plug into a HDMI 2 port
4) Sony plans to support Playstation VR Goggles on PCs. The XB1 and PS4 are embedded PCs.
5) The Xtensa processsors in later AMD APUs and dGPUs can support openVX and/or the video distortion needed by VR googles. This is also true for the XB1 and PS4.
6) The Xtensa processsors in the same above can support frame rate doubling as well as UHD blu-ray up-converting and down converting video for 1080P TVs and 4K TVs (Digital bridge).
7) UHD IPTV, UHD Blu-ray and UHD Antenna TV all use the same software stack. If you can support UHD blu-ray with digital bridge then it's likely that you can support VR on the same platform.
8) UHD Antenna TV requires HEVC Multi-view and a planned future feature for Auto-stereoscopic (glassless 3D) requires HEVC Multi-view plus depth map; It requires only half again as much bandwidth and supports generating multiple angle views which Side by side can't support. HEVC Multi-view plus depth will be used for browser VR and UHD Blu-ray 3D; both require 120FPS which is a HDMI 2 feature and a UHD blu-ray HFR feature.
Generating those multiple 3D views will take GPGPU performance that is only available in PCs and Game consoles and may never be in TVs.
Speculation:
1) It's obvious and has been confirmed by Sony that they plan to support their VR goggles on PCs. The XB1 is speculation. Why has their been no mention of dedicated VR goggle for the XB1. Sony's will be the cheapest and has the least demanding display which the XB1 can probably support.
2) Facebook's interest in VR is tied to Browser VR which I'd guess means it will be a big market. Bigger than VR games?
3) Any UHD Blu-ray player with digital bridge has the software stack and performance for UHD Antenna TV and if it's designed to support UHD Auto-stereoscopic 3D has the GPGPU to support Browser VR and UHD Antenna TV 3D.
Firmware 4.0 enables VR and supports UHD Media formats. It's a MAJOR media update supporting features that Sony is counting on for the next 10 years. They manipulated the Firmware roadmap to have 4.0 coincide with this update and the PS3 to have 5.0 coincide at the same time for it's Playready embedded and media update.
PS4 + Firmware 4 = 8 = PS3 + Firmware 5
FYI DLNA 4 is likely to be what Firmware 4.0 on the PS4 supports.....