September 2014
www.tvbeurope.com in association with
TVBEurope v 4K Supplement User experience design
The future TV landscape, and in particular UHD, is opening up a wealth of opportunities for user interface and applications development, as operators rethink the user experience. Adrian Pennington reports
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n their battle to fight off OTT competition, pay-TV operators spy UHD as a service differentiator and as they do so need to ensure that they offer the best possible user experience (UEX). Access to content is one key to this – and MSOs are in prime position to offer live (sports) events and movies (given their existing strong links to studios) in 4K. The predictions are that select pay-TV providers in Europe (Sky Deutschland, BT and BSkyB) will launch UHD channels by 2016, perhaps as early as next year. Assuming that the technical problems inherent in live 4K production as well as the challenges to UHD distribution to the home will be solved – albeit with a quad-SDI work-around in the short-term – operators must turn their attention to the look and feel of their service on screens which range from 55-inches up to 85-inches or more.
How do you use the additional real estate of super-sized displays? And how to organise the content? How can the consumer navigate and find what to watch? How do apps fit into the overall user experience? What new capabilities can be created thanks to the screen’s sheer size? “Many people are still doing channel up and down on their TVs while at the other end of the spectrum there are many new UI paradigms from gesture and motion interfaces to recommended content using rich coverflow artwork,” says Charles Cheevers, CTO CPE, Arris. Multiple event sports such as Wimbledon or the Premier League, provide the content that allows multi-view on a single large screen. Splitting a 65-inch UHD TV into four1080p screens to watch four Premier League games at the same time, or keep an eye on four tennis matches, is a user experience that people may want to engage in given the quality of these mini-views.
“Additionally, user interfaces may change or have opportunity to better leverage solutions like Mosaic’s,” says Cheevers. “The quality of the UHD larger screen allows for 4x4 and even 10x10
“There are very meaningful services and enhanced UEXs that are feasible with the additional real estate offered by UHD” Ken Morse, Cisco
mosaics of ‘on now’ programming allowing a new dimension in being able to pick the most relevant content to the consumer in a three dimensional extension to the two dimensions of a grid guide.”
He adds, “The sometimes distracting additions to the screen such as information banners and tickers also get new life possibilities that can be added into new UI definitions. This is because the additional screen real estate allows for these intrusions to potentially add value to the overall user experience.”
There is another dimension to the UHD capable TV and the future addition of 4K UIs concerning the improvement of navigation, search and the incorporation of higher quality imagery and graphics for the UX.
“Most current UIs on 4K TVs are not 4K capable – with 4K graphics not yet feasible on the current line-up of TVs,” says Cheevers. “The STB, however, can bring this additional level of graphics to the TV with UHD resolution – providing a new palette for the UI designers to work with and aiding improvement of the overall UEX.”
There is a further opportunity to carve out some areas of the screen to exist as a viewing portal that displays the activity of Smart Home and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Allseen, Open Internet Consortium and Thread Group consortia are trying to achieve solutions that allow the TV, STB or gateway driving the TV screen to play an active role in the IoT. An example exists today of Caller ID on the TV, and other uses could be security cameras in parallel to television viewing or a live feed from a child’s Smart Glasses.
“Monetising this capability and who offers the service is the key point,” says Cheevers. “Certainly an MSO/MVPD could offer a service to support this on their gateway and STB solutions connected to the TV – and it’s an area where we believe there is merit to explore.” “There are very meaningful services and enhanced UXs that are feasible with the additional real estate offered by UHD,” agrees Cisco CTO, Ken Morse. “As consumers become more comfortable, and in many cases demanding, of a more connected life, these services will be integrated into the UX not only on UHD but across all consumer-relevant devices.”
Large screens
The brightness, contrast, colour precision, and resolution of the best tablets and smartphones rival the traditional living room TV. Even so, the large screen TV in the home remains the heart of TV viewing. In Arris’ 2014 Consumer Entertainment Index, a survey of 10,500 people across 19 countries, two out of three people choose to watch broadcast TV in the living room, and 61 per cent watch subscription paid TV there too. “The large screen in the home can also provide a consumer experience that is hard to replicate on a smaller mobile display,” says Arris’ fellow of the technical staff, Sean McCarthy. “Large TVs can provide a very wide field-of-view that gives both a sense of immersion and a focal distance that allows a viewer to relax the eyes. Smaller displays need to be held too close to the face. For the same field-of-view, the eyes would need to adopt a more extreme eye vergence and nearer focal accommodation, both of which would tend to distract from the sense of immersion.”
Companion screens
McCarthy believes that smaller screens will act as companion screens to the main TV screen. “We already see the ability for the tablet to provide individual look ahead search in a communal room environment as well as changing content source using inputs on the second screen.” Arris also believes the second screen will act as a parallel feed to the primary TV with network content being sent to both at the same time, “creating a synchronised experience” across both screens which will be used for various applications including advertising.
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