Understanding Interactive Television Newsletter - January 2004

January 2004

UNDERSTANDING INTERACTIVE TELEVISION (UITV.INFO)
Academic and research resources about interactive television
http://uitv.info/



Editorial
http://uitv.info/editorial/

*The revolution will be televised*
Despite the fact that the TV has remained unchanged for the past half
century, there is now a critical mass of research and products ready to
revolutionize the entertainment experience in the home. The corner stone
of the interactive television experience will be the ability to
digitally record TV content. Once digitally stored on a HDD and indexed
with related data the TV content is set free from the constraints
imposed by the medium of broadcast, and can therefore be manipulated in
many different ways. Then, the possibilities are countless: Skipping
advertising breaks (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.10/tv.html),
record, edit and archive TV content
(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1378733,00.asp), automatic sports
video analyzer that filters out the boring parts of a game
(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/start.html?pg=11), novel
advertising formats
(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.09/mustread.html?pg=7), and home
entertainment hubs for photos, music, videos
(http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1131894,00.asp) that open-up new
possibilities for extending the TV experience beyond the device itself
and toward other information appliances that offer computer mediated
entertainment.



Articles
http://uitv.info/articles/

*Affective Usability Evaluation for Animated Characters in Interactive
Television Applications*
http://uitv.info/articles/2004/01chorianopoulos/
Animated characters research for desktop computing has been very
popular, but the respective commercial implementations (e.g. the
Microsoft Office Clip) are reported to be annoying to the end users. The
explanation might be that the attention grabbing and interrupting nature
of animated characters is inappropriate for the majority of the
productivity computing activities. On the other hand, the majority of
television content has traditionally been about stories and character
development. Therefore, animated characters might be viable in an
leisure setting for entertainment activities, like interactive
television. Next, we summarize previous research about animated
characters for ITV and present a few preliminary results from a recent
affective usability evaluation study. 



News
http://uitv.info/news/

Surfers switch off TV for PCs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1062675,00.html
Web users are swapping Gardener's World for Google and Coronation Street
for Friends Reunited, according to research that shows the amount of
time they spend on the internet is outstripping the time they spend
watching television for the first time. 

Feds to Fight Digital TV Piracy
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,60931,00.html
Regulators will adopt strict limits on sending digital television
programs over the Internet to avoid the problems now plaguing the music
industry.

Groups push ad-tracking standard
http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5075086.html
A new standard for targeting and tracking digital ads is gaining
industry support, but it still has a long way to go before it gets a
collective nod from ad agencies, digital publishers, broadcasters and
device makers.

Text messages play games with TV
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3182641.stm 
Your TV and mobile are coming closer together, with game shows played by
text message set to grow, say experts.



Events
http://uitv.info/events/

ICEC 2004: 3rd International Conference on Entertainment Computing 
http://www.industrialdesign.tue.nl/conference/icec2004
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 1-3 September 2004 
Deadline: 20 March 2004

ACE 2004: International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment
Technology http://www.ace2004.org/ Singapore, National University of
Singapore, 3-5 June 2004
Deadline: 15 February 2004 

2AD: The Second International Conference on Appliance Design
http://www.appliancedesign.org/2ad/
HP Labs Bristol UK, May 11-13, 2004
Deadline: 9 February 2004

British HCI Group Symposium: Usability & Interactive Television
http://i-media.soc.napier.ac.uk/uitv2004/index.html
Conference Suite, Napier University, Edinburgh, January 22, 2004





Edited by Konstantinos Chorianopoulos
ELTRUN, EBusiness Center, Athens University of Economics and Business
http://www.eltrun.aueb.gr/





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