Skip to main content

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to be broadcast in 360 — here's how to watch

A Thanksgiving tradition is getting a modern upgrade — this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be broadcast live in 360 degrees on YouTube, while a new app offers spectators a virtual reality parade experience carved from the event’s vivid 90-year history.

The 360 video, broadcast through sponsor Verizon’s YouTubechannel, marks the first time that the live footage of the parade is available anywhere outside NBC since the annual event first aired on the network 64 years ago. While viewers can still find the parade on their TVs, YouTube’s 360-friendly format allows the parade to be broadcast from all angles.

Recommended Videos

This year marks the parade’s 90th anniversary, with the lineup expected to include floats representing every decade since the start of the tradition. Verizon will be broadcasting the parade from 360-degree cameras in five different locations along the route. The broadcast will be available on Verizon’s YouTube channel from 360-friendly browsers, as well as mobile devices.

Macy’s YouTube channel is also sharing behind-the-scenes peeks at the parade leading up to the event, including a 360 tour of the studio where the parade’s iconic balloons are dreamed up. The series covers everything from the balloons to the float construction.

Macy’s Parade Studio Tour (Part 1): The Design Room

And if the live 360 view isn’t intriguing enough, the department store is also offering glimpses into past parades with a new virtual reality app for both iOS and Android mobile devices. Macy’s Parade Time Traveler can be used with a smartphone’s camera outside Macy’s flagship New York City store to show virtual reality balloons from multiple eras heading down the street. The app also works in local Macy’s stores or from any location to add parade floats to any scene.

The app allows users to choose a decade to see a computer-generated VR experience based on the parade’s history, including how the apparel of the crowd has changed. Users can also create a parade from the comfort of their own kitchens (or sofas) — the app introduces those iconic parade balloons in any setting.

The parade kicks off at 9 a.m. ET on Thanksgiving Day — Thursday, November 24.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
Watch Tesla’s humanoid robot pull some snappy dance moves
Tesla's humanoid robot dancing.

Tesla has shared a new video showing its Optimus humanoid robot pulling some rather impressive dance moves.

While the nifty footwork might not be much use for the industrial settings that the robot is destined for, the 60-second clip effectively showcases its increasing agility and lifelike range of motion.

Read more
No, a lifetime VPN subscription doesn’t mean ‘your’ lifetime
iPhone with VPN service enabled in hand over a blurred background

Folks who signed up for al lifetime subscription with VPN provider VPNSecure have been discovering the true definition of “lifetime” when it comes to such deals. And it’s not the one they'd hoped to hear.

After new owners took over the company, these particular customers recently had their lifetime subscriptions canceled. The new operator of VPNSecure told them that it didn’t know about the lifetime deals when they acquired the business, adding that it was unable to honor them.

Read more
SanDisk’s latest drive sets new benchmark for consumer NVMe SSDs
The SanDisk WD Black SN8100 PCIe Gen 5 SSD with and without heatsink variants

SanDisk has officially introduced the WD Black SN8100, its latest high-end PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD targeting PC enthusiasts, gamers, and professional users. With sequential read speeds of up to 14,900 MB/s and write speeds of 14,000 MB/s, the drive sets a new bar for consumer SSD performance, surpassing some of the best NVMe SSDs currently on the market, including the Crucial T705. 

The SN8100 uses a standard M.2 2280 form factor and is available in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. It’s worth noting that the 1TB model offers lower write speeds, up to 11,000 MB/s, compared to the higher-capacity versions, which reach up to 14,000 MB/s. 

Read more