The media landscape is changing, with respect to services as well as technology. Tablet devices and smartphones are ubiquitous and become the access portal to an ever increasing offer of audio and video-content. We have access to media wherever and whenever we want – alone, or watching apart together with our friends in our social network. Consumption of media is becoming ever more personal and media production is moving towards “the cloud”. For this the distribution networks need to be adapted such that media companies can respond to these changes. In this flyer TNO gives a glimpse on four core aspects in this landscape, and what we do therein. • Personalized access to content on a multitude of devices • From High Definition towards Beyond HD and Immersive Media • Future Media Services and the distribution networks they require • The importance of (visualization of) metadata TNO AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA PERSONALIZED ACCESS TO CONTENT ON A MULTITUDE OF DEVICES. Personalization plays an ever increasing role in the consumption of media. The number of TV-channels and the offer of on-demand have increased explosively, for instance with services like YouTube or emerging connected (“smart”) TV’s. For consumers it’s increasingly getting more difficult to navigate (browse and select) through this offer. TNO therefore is researching the abilities to give personal- ized recommendations: how can we direct consumers as fast and effective as possible to interesting content? We are taking the next step in this area by not only incorporating preferences by individual users but also give recommendations for groups of people. Additionally, the rise of second screen devices has an important role in the media landscape. An increasing number of TV viewers use a tablet or smartphone whilst watching a TV program, often with apps related to the content being seen on the TV or with apps to communicate through social networks about the content. In the European project HBB-Next we work towards making the second screen
Transcript
The media landscape is changing, with respect to services as well as technology. Tablet devices and smartphones are ubiquitous and become the access portal to an ever increasing offer of audio and video-content. We have access to media wherever and whenever we want – alone, or watching apart together with our friends in our social network. Consumption of media is becoming ever more personal and media production is moving towards “the cloud”. For this the distribution networks need to be adapted such that media companies can respond to these changes.
In this flyer TNO gives a glimpse on four core aspects in this landscape, and what we do therein.• Personalized access to content on a multitude of devices• From High Definition towards Beyond HD and Immersive Media• Future Media Services and the distribution networks they require• The importance of (visualization of) metadata
TNO AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
PERSONALIZED ACCESS TO CONTENT ON A MULTITUDE OF DEVICES.Personalization plays an ever increasing role in the consumption of media. The number of TV-channels and the offer of on-demand have increased explosively, for instance with services like YouTube or emerging connected (“smart”) TV’s. For consumers it’s increasingly getting more difficult to navigate (browse and select)
through this offer. TNO therefore is researching the abilities to give personal-ized recommendations: how can we direct consumers as fast and effective as possible to interesting content? We are taking the next step in this area by not only incorporating preferences by individual users but also give recommendations for groups of people.
Additionally, the rise of second screen devices has an important role in the media landscape. An increasing number of TV viewers use a tablet or smartphone whilst watching a TV program, often with apps related to the content being seen on the TV or with apps to communicate through social networks about the content. In the European project HBB-Next we work towards making the second screen
TNO AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
experience more dynamical, amongst others by exact synchronization of the second screen with the TV. In the European project STEER we work towards integrating social network information into a commu-nity-centric second screen service for enhancing the experience of live events at home.
The increase in diversity of media devices however also complicates developing services for all these devices, especially when these devices need to interoperate to deliver a media experience.In the Webinos project TNO contributes to an open web application platform that simplifies the development of applications that can run transparently on Smartphones, PC’s, SmartTV’s, home media devices and audio equipment. Part of the research in this project focusses on investigating how data and services can be shared in a secure and trusted manner between all personal devices from a single user or multiple users.
FROM HIGH DEFINITION TOWARDS BEYOND HD AND IMMERSIVE MEDIAAs High Definition Television has become a commodity, the media industry is now looking at new ways to create an immersive media experience. Video with an ultra-high resolution (four times or even eight times HD resolution), is especially interesting due to the increased flexibility for content production, better image recognition possibilities and the possibility to interact with the video. The kinds of experience and interaction this allows, is investigated by the 11 partners of the European project FascinatE. Within FascinatE, TNO is responsible for the development of new technologies for rendering of, and interaction with high resolution video. We have developed a ‘tiled-streaming’-technology, which enables video content originating from a source with Ultra-high resolution, to be transmit-ted adaptively to different types of devices, such as smartphones, tables and
Connected TV’s. Additionally TNO is leading FascinatE dissemination activities, which include presenting the project results to the outside world, standardiza-tion of technologies developed by the FascinatE partners and exploitation thereof.
In the Netherland TNO is, as one of the eleven partners of the Dutch project Cinegrid, looking at the exploitation and deployment of ultra-HDTV video techology, such as 4k (a resolution of 4094x2160 pixels) and 8k (8196x4320 pixels). With Cinegrid technology for the production, distribution and presentation of 4k video, watching movies, playing videogames and videoconferencing is becoming a special and intense experience. Additionally we are developing intelligent image recognition technology to support automated video services, such as the creation of automatic sports summaries for amateur sports matches.
FUTURE MEDIA SERVICES AND THEIR NETWORK REQUIREMENTSThe worlds of television and internet are merging together. We get more and more (portable) devices allowing for media with higher resolution and quality, and increas-ing interactivity, at any time and any place. The infrastructure allowing for these advanced capabilities must develop in
Webinos simplifies the creation of media applications for different devices.
In the FascinatE project a video panorama is recorded with a resolution of 6976 by 1920 pixels (7Kx2K).
order to keep up with these innovations. TNO is working on the development of Content Delivery Networks (CDN), which will facilitate the transport and rapid availability of this audio-visual material. TNO primarily contributes in the field standardization of CDNs, focusing in interoperability, interconnection and federation. Our goal is that CDNs can handle the ever increasing need for high-bandwidth media streams by improv-ing the interconnection between different CDNs. The addition of internet access to the traditional TV enables new interactive services. These so-called smart-TVs offer platforms which can be utilized by different parties. With representatives from the industry, and in close cooperation branch organization iMMovator, TNO has investi-gated the opportunities of the MKB with regard to these new interactive TV platforms. This study shows that fragmen-tation of different platforms and technolo-gies is presenting a major obstacle for the implementation of new services. However, it is expected that this fragmentation will decrease with the advent of Hybrid Broadcast Broadband (HbbTV). HbbTV is an European standard which specifies how a party can add services like playing back a missed episode, additional background information and interactive game shows to a TV channel. HbbTV services and –devices are increasingly becoming more common in the Netherlands. TNO is involved in the HbbTV forum Nederland which, together with many industry partners, works towards a successful introduction of HbbTV in the Netherlands taking special care for interoperability and ease of use.
Additional informationConnected TV – possibilities for SME’s: http://www.immovator.nl/branche-innovatiecontract-connected-tv
HbbTV Forum Netherlands: http://bit.ly/LQvkCn
THE IMPORTANCE OF (VISUALIZATION OF) METADATAThe amount of available media content is enormous and continuous to grow faster and faster. In order to manage this ever growing number of media-bytes, the development of innovative technologies is key. Only by diving deep into the contents of the media source, sufficient information is extracted to manage large collections. TNO applies two methods to let people handle large quantities of data: media mining and data visualization.
We apply advanced media mining tech-niques such as image recognition, speech recognition and language analysis to automatically extract metadata from audio and video content. The extraction of this metadata enables us to develop innovative media services. An example of such a service is the “Metadata Extraction Service” (MES) that was developed with partners in the project of the same name. The project focused on the synergy between different modularities and resulted in a generic platform to automati-cally process A/V content. The MES platform is the basis for a number of services, which include:• Multimodal search engine for A/V
content (“Please give me all scenes in
which Barack Obama was on and in which the subject was “The Netherlands”)
• Notification services (“Your organization/brand/CEO/… is in the news right now!”)
• Trend analysis, based on radio and TV• Reputation management
When presenting large quantities of data, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. In this case data visualization is essential. By visualizing the data the right way, humans are capable to easily discover relations and patterns and hence extract information from the data. In the past, TNO applied its knowledge on data visualization to analyse the impact of social media on TV pro-grammes and to discover flaws in dikes that are equipped with sensors.
TNO AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
FascinatE enables immersive media-services, in which a tablet device can be used to take control of the camera.
The Metadata Extraction Service enables multimodal search in TV-broadcasts.
Visualisation technology can be used to gain insight in relations between media-items.
OUR APPROACHTNO is an independent research organisa-tion whose expertise and research make an important contribution to the competi-tiveness of companies and organisations, to the economy and to the quality of society as a whole. TNO’s unique position is attributable to its versatility and capacity to integrate this knowledge.
This versatility is visible in the different ways TNO helps its clients in the media industry. TNO participates in large-scale European and Dutch research programs focusing on media-innovation and media distribution technologies.
Herein we (co)-shape developments and often seize the opportunity to demonstrate the possibilities of the technologies and services of tomorrow. We are connected to the developments in the media industry, which enables us to advise business regarding media-innovations.Often we also give policy advice, for instance regarding the topics of net neutrality, copyright, Digital Rights Management and open standards; for both government as business.
TNO also helps developing new concepts, and can perform assessments or evalua-tions of the impact and possibilities of emerging technologies. Furthermore we also have broad experience with Intellectual Property creation.TNO can work directly for clients, but also has possibilities for co-financed projects, in which businesses partially fund research.
TNO AND THE FUTURE OF MEDIA
TNO.NL
TNO focuses its efforts on seven themes including: Information Society: TNO researches the impact of the information society and stimulates the introduction of new services, applications and policy, based on the latest ICT, media and aerospace technology.
