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Steps Towards Interactive Television Steps Towards Interactive Television Kim Halskov Madsen +, Rune Nielsen + and Svend Erik Søfeldt * + : CAVI * : University of Aarhus Aarhus School of Architecture Aabogade 34 Nørreport 20 DK 8200 Århus N, Denmark DK-8000 Århus C, Denmark [email protected], [email protected] [email protected] Abstract communication possible. In short, “we may define Interactive television may be defined as a particular interactive television as ‘two way TV’ in which the form of television in which the viewer can make viewer can make programming choices and produce programming choices and produce user input. The user input” (Jensen & Toscan 1999: 17). predominant picture as we know interactive television today is that of fairly basic kinds of The idea of providing viewers with an opportunity interaction with the programme content. From the to influence a TV programme is probably as old as perspective of the use of virtual studio technology, television itself. Primitive forms include offering we have been exploring a platform for making new viewers the opportunity to write letters pertaining to kinds of interactive television in which we take competitions, political issues and so forth that advantage of the fact that when the scenography is would then form part of the programme content for digital the viewers may affect what is being the next show, or telephone programmes, which are broadcast in a significant way and becoming active numerous in respect to all sorts of topics, from co-creaters. The core of this article consists of the posing questions to a political figure to presentation and discussion of five of the participating in competitions. experimental steps we have conducted pursuing new forms of interactive television. Our Communication using the numerical keyboard of experiences are predominantly positive but some the telephone has been used as an interaction serious issues are also raised concerning the technology, enabling viewers to remotely control a feasibility of mass media interaction. device (a car, a bow and arrow, a gun) or a co- player. A related variant of this is using the phone Key Words as a polling device by pressing the numerical keys Virtual studio, interactive television, 3D, to vote for various options. Danish television has entertainment used this, for instance, to give the viewers the opportunity to vote among five possible movies for 1. Introduction a particular evening. According to Jensen & Toscan (1999: 15), many media researchers maintain that watching television Other creative forms of communication from the is always an active and interactive process. Viewers viewers have been used. For instance, in the choose what to watch and interpret and make sense seventies, before the energy crisis, a popular of what they see, but this kind of interactivity is no German TV show used the output readings from doubt different from the use of the term city power plants as a polling tool: viewers were ‘interactivity’ among computer professionals and given a number of choices that appeared on the researchers. There seems to have developed a screen for a specified period of time; during this common agreement that interactive Television period viewers then turned on as many lamps and (ITV) is a particular form of television where other electrical appliances in their homes as viewers have the opportunity to directly influence possible, and the technician in the power plant what they see on their television set in ways which relayed the increase in consumption back to the go beyond changing the channel, adjusting the studio by phone. The choice that acquired the colour, tuning channels and so on. Jensen & Toscan highest increase in power consumption was the (1999: 17) distinguish between the programme winner. In fact, pretty much every conceivable content and the hardware aspect of what constitutes device that lets the expression of a large group of ITV. Concerning the programme content, viewer people become visible has been brought to use: in input is directly included in the programme or one Danish show, people would vote by throwing affects the course of the programme as experienced pillows out of their windows. by the viewer. The hardware aspect concerns the technology that makes this kind of two-way 1 Typical examples of ITV as we know it today terrain as a platform for making new kinds of include the following: interactive television in which the viewers affect • The possibility for viewers to choose among what is being broadcast in a significant way, several camera views during the broadcast of a becoming active co-creaters. We have not wanted sports event to be constrained by existing technologies and have • Other kinds of multi-stream that, for instance, therefore used design techniques and design allow a viewer to choose to see a remix of last representations such as prototypes, scenarios and week’s shows or to see the show of day virtual video prototypes in addition to pilot • Voting polls using the phone system productions. According to Floyd (1984), a • SMS messages that appear, for instance, at the prototype is the software implementation of an bottom of the screen early version that includes selected parts of the • Online horse race betting, one of the big desired software. A scenario (see, for instance, successes according to Michael Gass (Interactive Kuuti 1995), is a narrative description of an activity Televison, France) looking at a system from the viewpoint of the user. • ITV shopping programmes, which allow the We use the term virtual video prototype to label the viewers to place their order directly while watching kind of virtual studio production that visualises the TV shopping programme future usage scenarios of digital technology as an integrated part of the physical environment as we • Video on demand know it in the domain of pervasive computing, see • Interactive games for instance (Bardram, Bossen, Lykke-Olesen, Madsen, & Nielsen 200 or Madsen & Nielsen The predominant picture is that of fairly basic kinds forthcoming). of interaction with the programme content. More sophisticated kinds of interactive TV exist in the In this article we focus on the potentials for research lab – for instance, steerable interactive viewers’ to affect the content of what is being Televison as described by Ronald Pose (2001), broadcasted as opposed to interface design of which applies virtual reality display technology to televisions set (Petersen, Madsen & Kjær 2002) and transform the role of the producer and the viewer. ethnographic studies of use in domestic Conventionally, the producer and the camera men environments (O’Brien, & Rodden 1997) or decide the camera angle; according to Pose, the (Crabtree, Hemmings & Rodden 2002). basic idea is to provide each viewer with the possibility to individually select his or her own To provide the platform for our presentation of the viewing point, made possible by broadcasting a series of small cases we have been working on, we 360-degree view from which the viewer can choose shall briefly introduce virtual studio technology, his individual view. Pose then mentions, without which is the key technology we have been using. elaborating on the actual implementation, various Video from the cases will be made available on ideas about how the steerable interactive TV www.CAVI.dk no later than early February 2004. concept could be developed into an augmented reality system that broadcasts a live video signal Virtual Studio Technology along with details of a virtual world. The virtual studio is a video technology that makes it possible to combine videos of physical objects, Researchers from Sony Electronics Distributed such as people, with video images generated in real Systems Lab have been exploring the next time from digital 3D models; see for instance generation of interactive Television, see (Marinn, (Moshkovitz 2000 or Lervig & Madsen 2003). This Kent, J & Broadwell 2001), focusing on content production method results in productions that can scenarios, a web-oriented markup language, and be taped live with only a limited amount of editing prototype architecture. The basic idea is to postpone or broadcast directly allowing for real-time the composition process: “Rather than merging all interaction between the TV viewer and the studio in video and graphics elements together in the post- which the filming of the physical objects takes production suite, elements that will respond place. This can, for instance, be used in election dynamically to viewer interaction are distributed in broadcasts, where election results can immediately parallel, as their own separate asset” (ibid:8). One be visualized as 3D graphics, and in viewer polls, of their content scenarios concerns weather where the results can generate elements which are forecasts in which each viewer is able to inspect part of the digital 3D set. In spite of the delay 0,04 areas of a digital globe of his or her own interest. seconds to 0,2 seconds for calculations and synchronizing, the virtual studio is said to operate From the perspective of the use of virtual studio in real time. technology, we have been exploring a similar 2 For years, TV broadcasts have utilized blue screen We now have two pictures in the system: one taken technology. For example, in weather reports the by the real camera in the monochrome studio and studio host stands in front of a blue or green one generated by the computer, based on a camera surface, and this monochrome field is replaced by a position replicating that of the real camera. These weather chart in the final TV picture. The limitation two pictures are composited in the keyer, in a of this classic blue screen construction is that it is process where the background colour in the picture impossible to zoom or move the camera. The 3D from the monochrome TV studio is removed and versions of a virtual studio make it possible to work replaced by the computer-generated picture; Figure with a spatial model on the virtual set, where one 1 provides a schematic overview of the process.
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