Every penny counts – credit crunch helps drive digital TV sales

18 months ago, as consumers we were being inundated with credit crunch survival tips – how to save more, go out and spend less, or make our nights in more entertaining. For the digital TV market at least, it seems, the latter has proved extremely fruitful.

New research released by Informa Telecoms & Media has found that despite the global economic downturn, the uptake of digital TV around the world has continued to grow. By December 31st this year, Informa calculates that approximately 85 million TV households will be added bringing the global total to 517 million. It predicts the digital TV universe to be one billion digital households strong by the end of 2015.

Staggering stats like this bring to life the huge transformation taking place in the TV industry today as new technologies change the way in which we receive and consume TV content. But what also really strikes me is how the results of this study highlight the prominence of the TV in global society.

In the interests of saving money, more people have turned to nights at home in front of the box, especially in the last couple of years. But with the rise of digital, our viewing experience has changed significantly to include on-demand, interactive red button features and tailored content – a world away from the TVs of old. Making staying in, the new going out.

Touchable hologram revealed at Siggraph

At this year’s Siggraph, the international exhibition for computer graphics and interactive techniques, a team of R&D boffins from the University of Tokyo demoed a piece of technology called Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display.

The technology uses ultrasound to enable a hologram to move around as and when a person touches it, creating what’s called a touchable holography.

What’s more striking is that you can feel the touch sensation from the acoustic radiation pressure coming out of the ultrasound, bringing interaction between human and technology even closer.

D&AD recognises interactive widget designs by students

I came to notice that this year’s D&AD Student Awards has received some excellent entries from students around the world.

Earlier this year, D&AD, an educational charity for creative, design and advertising communities partnered up with BBC to set a creative brief for students to develop digital widgets. According to the brief, students were asked to come with an interactive idea and design for a widget that would make the most of BBC's content and present it in a compelling and engaging way.

Although this year’s entries have seen a range of interactive widget designs mostly for the web and mobile phones, none of the widgets were designed specifically with the TV in mind. Perhaps TV wasn’t specified as a platform in the brief, nevertheless it goes to show that the TV is being forgotten by a new generation of young designers, I think they’re missing a trick.

The widget design that came closest to being developed for TV was this one:


It’s something we’ve seen discussed in the industry before and the design and implementation here is very good, the next step of course is to move it from the PC onto the TV screen.

Man and Machine, in perfect harmony

Keen drivers may have experienced the feeling of their car becoming an extension of their body. It’s as if the mind’s eye expands its viewpoint to incorporate the car, and it becomes like extra limbs of the body. I imagine the same can occur for a musician and their musical instrument, or a surgeon and their medical implements, or perhaps even a rider and their horse. Psychologists probably have a name for this phenomenon...?

Of the two cars that I’ve driven recently, one exhibited this phenomenon more readily than the other. (I’m attributing it to the car, but of course it’s a trick of the mind, not of the car.) The reasons for the difference are quite subtle, but I believe it comes down to things such as this – in the car I prefer, it’s easier to control the engine speed during a gear-change, and therefore achieve a smoother, more controlled gear-change, because the accelerator pedal operates over a more useful range of movement. In the other car, the engine goes from idling speed to the red line with comparatively little movement of the accelerator, which makes it harder to match engine speed to road speed.

The key is this: for the body-extension phenomenon to occur, you have to feel fully in control which means it must have the right set of controls, and be responsive and provide feedback. If any of these are missing, then the mind trick fails, and you and the object remain separate entities.

I reckon the same principles apply to consumer electronics interfaces. If the UI provides controls that fit the tasks you need to perform, it reacts in a timely fashion when you instruct it, and you can always tell what state it is in, then there’s a good chance that your mind’s eye will expand to include the interface and you’ll feel you are interacting directly with the tasks.

The Future of interactive TV revealed

There was a great story in the Metro last week picking up on some predictions from interactive technology research house Future Laboratory based around the future of interactive TV and networked homes. Although the mainstream media has been riding on the TV on Contact Lenses headlines, I particularly enjoyed the following predictions:

1. Intelligent home entertainment management system based on humanoid avatars will be huge. What’s more these interactive avatars will eliminate the need for content search through a remote control as it will enable viewers to control TV through voice recognition or dialogue.
2. The choice for channels will continue to grow but user generated content (UGC) will equally dominate viewers preference for home entertainment
3. With TV screens networked to the internet, viewers will be able to tailor their home entertainment the way they customise social networking sites like Myspace
4. Watching a telly will no longer be passive as people will be share preferences and connect with others through their networked TVs
5. Multi-sensory technology planted on our bodies will enable highly immersive TV watching experience

Although some of these may seem a little too futuristic for some we’ve already seem some of these themes demonstrated at shows & exhibitions in the last 12 months. UGC, Avatars and Social Networking sites on the TV are more than just ideas.

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