ANT Galio HbbTV Platform

ANT today announced the launch of the ANT Galio HbbTV Platform. This follows our involvement in the “Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV” or “HbbTV” project, a pan-European initiative that merges the delivery of broadcast and broadband services.

As a consumer I’m excited by the services that are already being developed for HbbTV, visitors to IBC will get to see some examples of these next week. I’ll be updating the blog from the show next week and will of course keep you updated.

HbbTV is based on elements of existing standards including OIPF (Open IPTV Forum), CEA, DVB and W3C, further information can be found here: www.hbbtv.org

I’ve also answered a few questions on this latest announcement here:

European initiative merges television with the power of the internet

Here at ANT we’re delighted to have been involved in the launch of “Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV” or “HbbTV”, a major new pan-European initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of news, information and entertainment to the end consumer through TVs and set-top boxes.

It’s an exciting time for the market and we’ll be making further announcements soon so watch this space!

You can find out more information on the HbbTV website and

I’ve also answered a few questions here:

The future of EPG

Every month or so Justin Lebbon interviews TV industry representatives on their views on emerging trends and technology for his new site V-net.tv, an online information sharing and networking hub for all things Convergence TV, as I blogged here before.

This time he has kindly asked my opinion on the future of EPG to which I happily answered in a form of video.

Making TV widgets talk

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is working with industry to develop a talking TV UI. A little more detail is available on the Ocean Blue Software site, but I'm looking forward to seeing (or rather, hearing) it at IBC to find out how the EPG part of it works.

I imagine that it's not just a case of speaking out the contents of a whole screenful of guide information. What the blind or partially-sighted user needs is to be able to navigate around a screenful of information to control the order that things are spoken, much like a sighted person would look around by moving their eyes.

For this to work effectively, the navigation paths would need to be logical and structured so that the minimum navigation is required to get to the info you want. I doubt you'd get that simply by mapping left/right/up/down positions on the screen display to left/right/up/down navigation, so each "talking" application must be structured with spoken interaction in mind.

Which raises an interesting question - with the trend towards 3rd party extension applications and widgets for interactive environments, would every application author have to design their app with a "talking" mode of operation (including navigation paths optimised for a talking UI), or is it possible to design the UI building-blocks such that a useful talking mode is achieved without the app-author considering it?

A widgets environment already forces some navigation structure onto applications (so that the user can navigate between widgets without all widget authors cooperating with one another) - could this be extended to make widgets talk more easily?

Sighted-users can also benefit from this area of work. For example, imagine if you could phone your STB from the office and interact with the talking interface to set a recording. Or if the TV remote control had a phone-like handset built into the back, you could check your stocks and shares widget without disturbing the video that others are watching.

Blinkbox gets content approval from BBC World service

Viewers of VOD service Blinkbox could soon catch up with popular programmes commissioned by BBC, according to numerous reports this week. BBC Worldwide has licensed the rights to offer shows, including Planet Earth, Top Gear and Spooks, in what seems like a revenue sharing deal.

The VOD service boasts 1.5m video streams to 750,000 unique visitors last month, and already has 5,000 hours of programming available, but much of the content is from US networks.

Blinkbox has an interesting proposition for the UK VOD market. Although the service has a competitive edge over BBC’s own iPlayer with its mixed catalogue of content, it remains to be seen whether its pay-tv model will work in the UK. The VOD market is fast evolving and companies such as Blinkbox are working to find a business model that works.

VOD viewers can be fickle so content could be the differentiator, but not without a good price structure, accessibility and usability features.

Challenging the conventional design

Just occasionally someone designs something that causes everyone else to ask "Why didn't I think of that?" - or even "Why hasn't someone thought of that before now?". This was very much my reaction when I first saw a design concept by Min-Kyu Choi of London's Royal College of Art.

The UK plug is generally considered the safest plug design in common use anywhere in the world. The use of rectangular pins, the cable exiting at the bottom (thus minimising the likelihood of the plug being yanked out by its cord), cable restraint and each plug being individually fused, are some of its key features. More recently the standard has been updated to require the phase (live) and neutral pins to have insulated bases.

However, there remain several factors about the UK plug that are sub-optimal. It is one of the largest physical plugs in the world and in particular its 3d footprint is big making it bulky and difficult to accommodate in product packaging. For anyone who has ever stood on its prongs with bare feet at 3am will contest, leaving them lying around the floor is not wise. And for anyone responsible for the forest of wiring behind their TV, UK trailing sockets are also space-consuming beasts. Mr Min-Kyu appears to have succeeded where so many before him have failed - to improve the UK plug while keeping all of its safety features and addressing the three issues I listed above. perhaps that is why people are calling him a genius.

Min-Kyu Choi's plug design - ideal for portable equipment



The design has been submitted as an entry for the James Dyson Award. Hopefully an enterprising company (maybe Choc Box?) will pick this up and turn it into a commercial product - how long before we see it and Choi on Dragon's Den?

What do you think of the design? Have you come across an innovative design concept worthy of mention? Let us know in the comments.

Internet TV is reaching its peak in the hype cycle

Gartner has published an updated version of their annual Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report for 2009.

At a glance it’s an interesting piece of research looking at the most discussed and eagerly followed emerging technologies, with Internet TV being one of them (see graph below).

If this comes to fruition, Internet TV will reach a mainstream adoption in two to five years, which I think it isn’t entirely a bad forecast. I’d be more interested to see how this plays out beyond 5 years, as there are so much more to connected TV other than just hype.

Kudos to Gartner for allowing the use of this image.

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.

BBC attracts record number of interactive viewers

A record number of people have tuned in to watch coverage of this year’s Glastonbury festival according to ITVT. Live streams, coverage highlights and catch up coverage have all been available on demand through the festival’s website and the BBC interactive red button service, which apparently attracted 6.1 million viewers.

Great job by the BBC to maximise the content they have available to them, we saw equally impressive coverage of Wimbledon on the red button. We’ve seen this for a number of music and sporting events now, what’s next?

Justin Lebbon on television and technology

The latest industry member to take a few minutes to answer some questions is Justin Lebbon. Justin has recently launched videonet (http://www.v-net.tv/) which aims to bring together the best aspects of multiplatform online information sharing and networking. Videonet will also be hosting the official IBC blog.

Tell us a little bit about your new project, Videonet

Videonet is a new online publishing and events business for pay-tv professionals. Videonet incorporates the best aspects of web 2.0 – video, blogging, social media – while mixing in online events that offer audiences an interactive and engaging information sharing experience.

Widgets have become a hot topic in the TV space, what types of widgets would you like to see on your TV?

I think aspects of pay-TV can get complicated and I’m satisfied viewing my pre-recorded content and skipping ads. I do think social media widgets will be successful – linking twitter, facebook, Instant messaging – to create a social TV experience. For me, simple widgets supplying news, sports and weather RSS headlines would work but I have an issue with mixing too much of the internet with pay-TV. I realise combining the two offers a galaxy of opportunities but it complicates the service (for me) as television is my medium for switching off and relaxing. That’s not really conducive to having “friends” pop up wondering whether I thought the goal was offside.

What do you like and dislike about the TV service you receive?

I’m very much a time and place shifted TV consumer. I love PVRs and I’ve had one for several years now and I could never go back to standard linear television. The days of mindless channel hopping are, thankfully, over. I’m generally satisfied with my TV service but, without naming my provider, I do get frustrated with how slow it is; general channel changing, selecting on-demand programming, recording items, simple EPG navigation, etc. The delay is almost intolerable. I firmly believe my provider offers the best pay-TV (and triple play) package in the UK but the feel of the service, which is so important in my view, is incredibly tired and laborious.

You’re launching a new website dedicated to the pay TV industry, what fascinates you about the industry?

Pay-TV combines two areas that interest me: technology and television. My nerdy fascination with technological developments is married with a subject that is relevant to me. Additionally, the industry is often led by the technology so there’s a great rapport between technology vendors, operators and the consumer.

As a consumer how have technology advances impacted on the way you consume content?

Technology has massively impacted the way I consume content. I now only watch the TV I want to watch and I chose when and where to watch it. Now web-based content has become more reliable and better quality, I often chose to watch live events online – like Wimbledon – over sitting in front of the television. Feels like I’m still working using the PC! I’m really looking forward to true service, platform and device convergence. Personalised and quality guaranteed content services across multiple devices around the home and beyond thrills me far more than it should. Now I have to mess around getting shows on the iPod but having content immediately accessible on my handheld, as instructed by my online EPG, is utterly thrilling for me. Apparently all of this is quite possible today and we’re a couple of years from it being commonplace.

Many consumers skip adverts when watching from a PVR, would targeted advertising or rewards based advertising encourage you to sit through an advert break?

I do skip ads but I don’t get overly annoyed by them. Some adverts are more engaging and creative than some of the programming we’re watching today. Targeted advertising has become a big area and the Holy-Grail is targeting individual households. A couple of vendors claim to achieve this but it’s yet to be seen. What I like about this approach is that you and I can watch the same programme and then brag about what was advertised to us. TV advertising, though, definitely needs to move with the times. Marketing has become far more targeted and measurable and television advertising has failed to deliver those metrics. It’s moving forward in the right direction as we’re now seeing success with on-demand advertising and operators will soon be able to target devices and subscriber profiles to hit certain demographics. As consumers we receive hundreds of marketing messages a day and the more relevant they are to you, the more likely you’ll respond.

Before launching Videonet you spent a number of years working on the IPTV World Series – How has the industry evolved since the first exhibition?

The pay-TV industry has evolved spectacularly since the first IPTV World Forum exhibition in March 2005. To begin with, that event was about TV over DSL; telecoms push into pay-TV. The event evolved year-on-year to incorporate all networks (IP over Cable, hybrid, etc) as other platform operators move to deploy IP-based video services over their network. Now we’re in a situation where telecom companies are ahead of the game being able to offer converged IP services over high bandwidth fibre networks. Meanwhile, cable is responding with DOCSIS 3.0 (supporting unrivalled bandwidth capabilities) and they can now deploy IP services around the home through the cable gateway. DTH providers are enjoying success with hybrid deployments. Just by scratching the surface you can see how quickly the industry moves and that’s what makes it such an intriguing industry to work in.

You work in the TV industry, so you must spend a good amount of time watching it yourself. What are your favourite TV shows and why?

Unlike a lot of other people in this industry, I rather enjoy watching television although I’m incredibly fussy about what I watch. I like comedy programmes including Flight of the Conchords, The Office, Green Wing. I do enjoy US big hitting dramas, such as: Lost (shameful, I know), ER and Hereos. I find most reality TV shows offensively contrive and awful, although I can’t help but love The Apprentice. I also watch a tremendous amount of sport, especially football and tennis.

New channels, great expectation

As the UK TV broadcast industry goes through some serious structural shake ups and looks to take a fresh approach to revenue generation, there are plenty of new TV services appearing on the horizon. In recent weeks I’ve seen some interesting developments happening in the industry including launches of new channels.

Hulu TV
Times Online reported last Sunday that Hulu, the most popular TV streaming website in US, will start streaming shows to British internet users from September 2009. “In contrast to video-on-demand services from British broadcasters, such as the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD, which restrict themselves to the output of their parent corporations, Hulu will offer shows from UK broadcasters including Channel 4, ITV and possibly even the BBC.” The service will be available free for all UK residents.

Freeview HD
The BBC recently confirmed that Freeview HD transmissions will be rolled out by Christmas. Initially only covering Manchester and Liverpool, the rollout will soon expand and eventually reach the rest of the UK by 2012. Freeview HD will show BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 at first; however it’s reported that the new Freeview HD broadcasts won’t work on many existing Freeview set-top boxes, which means most viewers will have to buy a new TV or a new STB.

ESPN
Having bought the rights to broadcast two of the six packages of English Premiership games for the 2009-10 season from Setanta, Disney owned, US channel ESPN will launch in time for the new season, according to Evening Standard.

Disney XD
Disney is launching a new entertainment channel Disney XD this autumn in replacement of Jetix, the children’s entertainment channel. Broadly aimed at six-to-14-year-old boys and their families, the channel will include a mix of live programmes and animation with a focus on sports, adventure, music and comedy.

Quest TV
Despite plans to launch in May, Discovery Channels has recently decided to postpone the launch for Quest TV till later this year. To be launched on Freeview, Quest is expected to provide factual, lifestyle and entertainment programmes from the archives of Discovery Communications and other imported material.

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.

Julian Clover on the progression of IPTV

As I mentioned last month, I was keen to start a monthly Q and A with IPTV industry insiders to discuss what’s hot and what’s not in the IPTV world. This month Julian Clover has been kind enough to share his views.

Julian Clover is a media and technology journalist based in Cambridge, UK. He has two decades of combined experience in online and printed media.

He is currently an editor of Broadband TV News and New Television Insider. He has contributed to The Channel, the magazine of The Association for International Broadcasting; Cable and Satellite International; Euromedia and the consumer title What Satellite TV.

He is also a committee member of the Broadcasting Press Guild and the IBC Conference.

Julian, as Editor of Broadband TV news, you have a strong involvement in the digital TV space, are there any areas of IPTV technology you are particularly keen to see advance?

The use of hybrid boxes is particularly beneficial to satellite broadcasters to bring in on demand content. Canal+ already have something in this area with Le Cube and you could reasonably expect other operators to be thinking along similar lines.

Widgets and applications for the TV are becoming increasing popular, how important do you think open standards are to the evolution of these applications?

You don’t necessarily need open standards, but providers do need to make their technology available to those with the know-how. The problems start if the leading platform becomes a closed shop.

The convergence of web and TV is now really coming together, what is the future scope for these services?

Ultimately, it is complete convergence, or at least close enough. It has already been proved that the family will not gather around to view the bank statements. However, it is entirely reasonable to be able to check the listings at the local cinema, and be able to get a review that has not been influenced by studio or cinema chain. The iPlayer always gets the glory, but there are many similar services from overseas broadcasters where not all the content is copyright protected. We could reasonably expect to see some of these available. The challenge will be for operators to provide convenient access while not discouraging people from taking their own paid for content.

Personalisation has become a hot topic associated with IPTV; do you think this is something essential for the progression of IPTV services?

It applies to any television platform but we have been promised personalised EPGs for over ten years, with the technology now seemingly only just catching up with the PowerPoints.

You’re based in the UK, what are the good and bad aspects of the TV Service that you receive?

The broadcasters do little to promote anything more than eight or nine programmes at any one time. There’s a lot to be said for a programme trail listing the complete night’s line-up, even if you end up ignoring half, or recording it for viewing another day. Programmes at the fringes of the schedule are ignored, and alas the same can often be said for those featured programmes on the iPlayer.

Do you think VOD will dramatically change the way we consume digital content, how have your viewing habits changed in recent years?

VOD will clearly erode the schedules, but the human need for a shared experience will ensure the big entertainment and sports shows get something resembling a mass audience. The PVR (Sky+ in my case) means that I jettison whole series, preferring to watch a series from start to finish, rather than missing episodes through not being at home.

Do you think the digital switch over will lead to an increased demand in additional IPTV services?

There’s no reason why there will be more of a demand for IPTV than any other platform. By now most people who are interested in a pay-TV option will surely have signed up. The fun starts as the pay-TV platforms attempt to attract customers from their rivals.

You work in the TV industry, so you must spend a good amount of time watching it yourself. What’s your favourite TV show and why?

I’m a complete news junkie, so can happily watch the news channels for several hours, though I’m still not sure the UK stations have the polish of their US counterparts. Coast, which has gone around the British Isles and is now venturing into Europe for the next series, has sparked an interest. But I also get lost in series that seemingly have no purpose and are allowed to meander until their US audiences tire of the format. Lost at least has an end date, but after five episodes I’m longing for Dollhouse to find a direction.

The film industry joins forces for a new business model

I’ve covered different business models for TV several times before ( here and here, as well as in a recent post titled Is cable subsription model under threat?) - indeed it is something of a recurring theme. However, a new joint movie studios initiative announced last week by Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM has the potential to really shake things up.


Epix is an new HD TV network that will air movies after they have appeared in the cinemas but before they are released on DVD or BlueRay. But consumers won't pay a subscription or pay-per-view charges, nor specifically need to request the channel is added to their package; and the service will have no advertising. Even better, the same content is available to Epix customers at epixhd.com at 720p resolution.

So what is the business model and how can the movie studios afford to do this? Well for a start, Epix is only available to customers who are taking their tv providers' TV service and Internet service. Epix believe that their service can act as a key differentiator when customers choose a TV package. Epix are also planning to install caching servers directly in the provider’s datacenter thus avoiding the need to stream HD video over second or third party Internet connections. Epix can thus take a slice of the bandwidth cost savings that their caching servers realise for the operator. Epix aren't interested in relationships directly with consumers - they are looking to build partnerships with the cable, Internet and satellite companies.

Looks like Epix could be one TV network to watch.

I Hate Touch Screens

I do think touch screens have some obvious advantages, because they have no fixed layout for UI components, which means the layout can be rearranged for each type of task, and there are no nooks and crannies for dirt to lodge in (try turning your PC keyboard upside down and give it a good shake - it's horrifying what falls out).

However, for a UI that I use regularly, such as my phone, a touch screen offers very little scope for honing speed and precision of use with time, because there's no tactile feedback to indicate whether a key was pressed accurately.

I wish mobile manufacturers would put a transparent mechanical keyboard over the top of the touch display to give the keys feel, while leaving their labels dynamic. The keyboards could also be slid or flipped out of the way when the display is all just for output.

Needless Inconsistency

I'm using a smart phone with an OS that shall remain nameless (to protect the guilty), but I've found three different screens where three different operations are required to back out of a sub-menu or screen if it's been entered by mistake. There's a button with an arrow pointing left, which sometimes does it, sometimes it's necessary to touch a "cancel" button at the bottom of the touch-screen, and sometimes a menu must be opened to find the "cancel" option.

If I was playing a game it might be fun to search for these things, but here it is just tedious.

A good UI picks a small, powerful and intuitive set of interaction "patterns", preferably aligned with existing experience, and uses them everywhere. Otherwise it's like having to learn 1,000 verbs of a language when only 10 are necessary.

Five things you need to know about user interface design

A while back I spent some time on the phone explaining to someone how to read and send text messages. Navigation within the Inbox was proving far harder to explain than I’d expected, until I realised that my text-newbie was not familiar with the concept of a scroll bar (she’s never used a PC...). The phone’s display, and the way it reacted to button presses, made more sense once this was understood.

Here are five tips for UI designers, to minimise the amount of knowledge required to use a new interface:

1. You can reduce the number of new things that must be learnt by building on existing knowledge, although the text lesson highlights the fact that different people have different levels of experience, and so you can’t rely entirely on prior knowledge.

2. Choose a small set of flexible interaction patterns that can be applied again and again - don’t make the user learn several different ways to perform similar operations - let them learn something to achieve one task, then be delighted to find they can use it for similar tasks

3. Make it intuitive - if a highlight is to move left and right along a set of selections, don’t use the up and down arrow keys to do it

4. Structure the interface to match the tasks the user will perform, not the structure of whatever it controls

5. Build on conventions - car makers do this, out of necessity in some cases (steering wheel and pedal arrangements), but also in other areas (the indicator stick, for example, is common to most cars). For TV UIs, most people are familiar with the idea of something being highlighted, and four arrow keys moving the highlight from one item to the next, and those that aren’t will quickly catch-on because it’s intuitive.

More for Channel4

If you like watching daytime banter between big haired presenters and culture shocking, stress busting evening entertainment on Channel4 then you’re about to get lucky as C4 is putting up 4,000 hours of archived content online for free from 3rd July.


According to CNet UK, Channel4 will be making programmes like Time Team, Location, Location, Location, Shameless, Queer As Folk and Unreported World available via its 4oD service. However, it’s pre-warned that C4 won’t backdate all past programmes and viewers shouldn’t expect “bizarre, experimental three-part documentary from the 80’s”. In return for this classic content you’ll have to sit through a few adverts of course, 4oD is an ad-supported VOD provider like most of the VOD services in the UK, as posted in On-demand TV competition heats up previously.

In a similar vein, BBC iPlayer is reportedly working on an agreement with Youtube’s parent company Google to extend its service outside of the UK although there are significant DRM issues to be dealt with first.

What can we learn from in-game browsers?

I read an excellent article on Gamespot comparing the latest web browser technology for gamers where the browser is used as a secondary application during gameplay.

Developers have been working closely with the gaming community for some time, building promising new features that allow gamers to browse the web during a game play. Some in-game browsers (the likes of X-Fire and Steam) are still very much like standard web browsers in terms of their usability and functionality.

On the other hand, game developers GotGame have built a more innovative solution called Rogue. The quirk of it is that it allows gamers to switch to web browsing instantly and continue to engage in the game whilst users browse the web semi-transparently. It’s an impressive development that’s worth exploring.

Take a look at how it works.



The approach that Rogue have adopted demonstrates that web browsing should be built to compliment and enhance the user experience when being used in a less traditional way, something we’re also aware of when delivering web based services to the TV.