Hybrid Broadcast/Broadband TV Services and Media Synchronization: Demands, Preferences and Expectations of Spanish Consumers

Abstract

The combination of broadcast and broadband (hybrid) technologies for delivering TV related media contents is already a reality. It has been motivated by the large amount and diversity of media contents, together with the ubiquity and multiple connectivity capabilities of modern consumption devices. The use of connected TVs and companion devices (e.g., tablets, smartphones…) is gaining momentum. It enables personalized and enriched TV media experiences, by also exploiting social communication opportunities. Likewise, the media consumption paradigm is worldwide evolving from passive and isolated consumer experiences towards interactive and group shared experiences between remote consumers. Nevertheless, despite the specification of standards, such as Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV), and the efforts from operators and content providers in the last years, the adoption of hybrid TV media services in Europe is still not as high as expected. This paper presents the concept and some examples of hybrid TV media services, emphasizing the importance of including a combination of media synchronization solutions, known as hybrid sync, to guarantee a satisfactory level of Quality of Experience (QoE). Additionally, it includes the summary and discussion of the results of a research study focused on more than 1000 Spanish users' habits, preferences and expectations regarding four representative hybrid TV media services. Many valuable insights and conclusions have been derived. For instance, the current low market adoption of hybrid TV media services, despite their advantages and the high interest of consumers, and that key technological challenges still need to be overcome. The obtained results and impressions foresee the impact (or potential) of such services in the upcoming TV related media consumption landscape. Therefore, devising proper standard-compliant technological solutions (paying special attention to hybrid sync) and equipment should be continued producing appropriate contents, deploying proper hybrid TV media services and applications. As well, it should be convenient to undertake marketing and commercial efforts to boost their deployment. The contributions of this study can be very valuable to the interested agents to be aware of the remaining challenges, envisage the opportunities, and drive their efforts to maximize the market adoption of such services.

HbbTV-Compliant Platform for Hybrid Media Delivery and Synchronization on Single- and Multi-Device Scenarios

“…Several relevant examples of possible hybrid TV media services 5 , together with the related demands, preferences and expectations of Spanish consumers are provided in [6]. Some examples are: the provision of multi-device and multi-view (or even free viewpoint) TV; the concurrent consumption of various video streams (using either a Picture-in-Picture -PiPor a mosaic view, and even on different devices) or switching between them; the provision of spatial, temporal and color scalability [7]; tiled streaming (i.e., ultra-high resolution video services in which different spatial areas of the same video are delivered in different streams) [8]; etc.…”

“…Many research projects financed by the EU in the last years have been focused on the use of hybrid technologies to offer enhanced TV services, mainly based on the use of HbbTV standard. Some examples are: HBB-NEXT 6 , HBB4ALL 7 , TV-RING 8 , MEDIASCAPE 9 or MPAT 10 , among others. Many of the research studies referenced in this paper come from contributions achieved under the umbrella of these projects.…”

“…3) Full-fledged adaptive synchronization (sync, hereafter) solutions (including protocols, algorithms and adjustment techniques) to accurately time-align the concurrent consumption of the same or different, but related, media contents. This aspect is specially challenging due to the 6 Next-Generation Hybrid Broadcast Broadband, https://www.facebook.com/HBBNEXT/ (last access, October 2017) 7…”

“…Such a use case allows the content provider to offer a directorcontrolled DVB stream about an event (e.g., a concert, a sports or an e-learning event) augmented with additional camera views of the same event delivered via broadband technologies (e.g., DASH, HLS or RTP). According to authors' previous study in [6], it is a very relevant and highly valued use case, with high commercial potential.…”

PlaySharing: A group synchronization scheme for media streaming services in hierarchical WLANs

“…Amid the proliferation of mobile smart devices and the advancement of mobile wireless networks, high‐quality media streaming services have been utilized in various fields. () Smart education and smart conferencing have used mobile smart devices (eg, smartphones and smart tablets) to share real‐time multimedia content over a wireless local area network (WLAN). These technologies improve the quality and efficiency of discussion and education applications.…”