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ShapeShifting TV is the future
Testing the appetites of TV viewers for personalized viewing, BT has introduced a project called ShapeShifting media in which viewers text messaged their thoughts on how a film should unfold.
October 18, 2007
ShapeShifting was created through a European Union-supported collaborative project called NM2, which developed a software suite that can be used by media producers to conceive, develop and test new media forms that take advantage of broadband networks to personalize TV viewing.
The technology was tested through eight experimental productions, including a film developed by The University of Art and Design Helsinki and broadcast on Finnish national television from December 2006 through January 2007. The film allowed viewers to text ideas to the network and interact with the producers to shape the story according to their personal tastes and wishes.
"The project was a success," says Doug Williams, BT's NM2 project director.
"The film, called Accidental Lovers, was broadcast on four nights, and 12 versions of the story were shown. Viewers were able to text in their thoughts to the screen and see and hear the story adapt itself in response the text messages." said Williams at the Broadband World Forum in the German capital Berlin.
Engineers working with NM2 and ShapeShifting TV say the new delivery system's key characteristic should help keep the experience personal while supporting storytelling forms where viewers and their preferences shape the narrative.
The software analyzes viewer responses by names, location, character, action type or other salient features. An engine then looks through the material and fills the story templates created by the director or writer.
While the Accidental Lovers project was deemed a success with more than 300,000 viewers and about 2,300 people responding with text messages, it was not truly personalized. Individual viewers were not provided with individualized stories by the network. Instead, the stories were based on the aggregate response of viewers.
"Accidental Lovers was a tremendous success - it used the software developed in NM2, but it was a hybrid," Williams says. "The goal is to see similar high production stories delivered over IPTV networks to a TV."
BT began thinking about ShapeShifting TV more than 10 years ago as its researchers worked on understanding how broadband would change the market for media. With broadband, BT realized the tools were in place to distribute large amounts of moving images to homes.
