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Who’s watching what, where and when? Opinion


Richard Asquith, global chief executive officer Kantar Media Audiences, shines a light on the world of multi-screen television measurement


Watching fellow train passengers tuned into their own personal TV sets, whether on a smartphone or tablet, downloaded or streamed, no- one can deny that the way people watch TV is undergoing a revolution. Separating fact from perception: although the world is undoubtedly changing, research (from Thinkbox) shows that most television programming is still viewed live and on traditional TV sets. Old habits die hard, it seems. Beware business as usual: but, in an era where almost every consumer carries around a computer, and therefore a TV screen, in their pocket, it would be short-sighted of the TV industry to carry on as though nothing has changed. Steve


Jobs’ vision in launching the iPhone and iPad has created a generation free to watch video content wherever and whenever it wants. While still relatively small-scale in terms of numbers, this is highly significant, as it’s driving such a fundamental change in the way people behave. It’s also creating huge challenges for audience measurement, and companies like Kantar Media are developing new ways to measure who’s watching what, where and when. But will this put an unreasonable burden on the traditional audience measurement panels? And while viewing on new devices is still proportionally small, it can be hard to reconcile the


additional costs of obtaining these figures. A hybrid future: different, complementary ways of measuring viewing are emerging: panels provide detail about individual people, while large-scale census measurement from web players provides more granular data. The next step is to bring these together to create a hybrid model of measurement. In a number of countries, this is exactly what is being planned by the bodies that oversee TV audience measurement. And it raises some new and interesting challenges for the TV measurement industry. Measurement companies will need to integrate multiple data sets without creating a


Testing the UHD 'wow' factor 4EVER By Adrian Pennington


A big debate in technology vendor and pay TV operator circles is not whether to move to UHD TV but whether to skip phase one, which is based on resolution alone, and wait for a fuller fat version in phase 2. This version, recently


advocated by the EBU, includes provision for High Dynamic Range for better contrasts, high frame rates for improved clarity of motion; and wide colour gamut for, naturally, better colours. Consumers are more likely to buy new sets and subscribe to emergent 4K content services if they can better perceive the difference from HD. French collaborative


research group 4EVER (Enhanced Video ExpeRience)


Flash dance: Testing HFR at 200 and 300fps on hip hop dancers


has conducted a number of experiments into UHD phase 2 and presents its findings here. “All of the three demonstrations are new and shown from an objective point of view,” said Maryline Clare- Charrier, project leader. “We do not sell cameras, we do not sell displays. Phase 2 is so new that no broadcast cameras are capable of acquiring such content in realtime. And hardly any TVs are capable of displaying it.” 4EVER says its subjective evaluations show that UHD


Move over LCD, DLP Leyard By Ian McMurray


LCD and DLP video wall are widely used in traditional broadcasting studios, but the


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company claims that these display technologies have inherent defects. These include unsatisfactory colour saturation, reproducibility and contrast ratio, as well as poor colour matching, low screen uniformity and high maintenance cost.


phase 1 by itself does allows a new improvement, but only up to 10 points on a scale of 100. “So we want to see how other dimensions than spatial resolution can help the quality of experience,” she added. These include no blur in motion, better contrast sensations to match reality (important in news or documentaries) and a wider gamut of colours “to reach what the human eye is capable of identifying.” A further innovation from


the group, which comprises France Télévisions, Globecast, Orange Labs and ATEME, is realtime decompression of HEVC HD at 100 frames per second and possibly up to 200fps. It can also lay claim to being the only, perhaps the first and only, booth at IBC gathering HDR, HFR and WCG demonstrations in one place. 8.F12


As LED technology develops, the company notes, LED screens with smaller pixel pitch LED displays have been launched, enabling broadcast studios to use LED screen as background walls. Leyard’s LED TV series


products are said to enjoy the advantage of high contrast ratios up to 5000:1, refresh rates


perception of ‘black box’ analytics. The prospect of integrating proprietary information from broadcasters will also need to be tackled with clear, rigorously policed rules of governance.


Although this is challenging for both broadcasters and measurement companies, extracting data from the growing TV ecosystem offers significant rewards. Return Path Data is being linked to consumer data sets such as credit card data and car buying information to create more insights that will allow broadcasters to better monetise their activities. We’re also looking at qualitative social TV data, while continuing to deliver the trusted trading


currency the media business relies on. Content remains king: it’s important to acknowledge that, in the midst of all this change, the fundamentals of television viewing remain. People will always be drawn to the shared experience of watching TV together. And audiences will continue to demand great video content. There is no denying that measuring how and where people get their television fix is increasingly challenging. However, our industry’s ongoing innovation and development of new systems is beginning to illuminate this altered TV landscape. 1.F75


Buzz around social media Pixel Power By Carolyn Giardina


Buzz is a new software accessory for Pixel Power’s playout devices designed to allow users to scan, moderate and broadcast social media interactions. “To be able to take what your audience is saying about you and put it on screen quickly and safely is a huge advantage. Buzz puts this at anyone’s fingertips,” said Pixel Power CEO, James Gilbert. Buzz is designed to


make it easy to select tweets and other comments by using an integration approach and a simple user interface. Multiple social media feeds are consolidated, and users can accept, format


higher than 3000Hz, high colour saturation and reproducibility, and seamless matching along with Leyard’s exclusive screen correction technology that is said to offer a high degree of screen consistency over its lifetime. It offers products for control


room applications. Here, as well as the advantages the company


Gilbert: “It is so simple to use”


and publish messages. Ahead of its IBC launch,


Buzz was already being used by TV Guide Network during live coverage of the Big Brother house for Big Brother After Dark. Added Gilbert: “[Users] can define a graphics template to match the look of their show, and quickly and simply pick the right messages out of the incoming feeds. Most important, it is so simple to use that it will be hard to put the wrong content to air.”


7.A31


claims for its broadcast offering, it says that its displays offer high grey-scale reproducibility in low luminance, together with low power consumption, low noise, low heat – the latter two being key characteristics in an environment in which screens are watched for extended periods of time. 5.C09


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