Individual television experience

The individual television experience (or individual TV experience) is a collection of consumer demands and behavioral patterns that includes the personalization of television viewing, including the ability to watch content free of broadcaster schedules and the ability to consume content on video display devices other than the traditional ‘home’ television set, such as PCs and mobile phones.

Consumer research

The individual television experience has been identified following consumer research carried out through the Ericsson Consumer Lab into what people expect from television, a project that includes 35,000 interviews in more than 25 countries. It is considered especially relevant to the younger consumer demographic described as digital natives. Cable television service-provider UPC Switzerland has linked a more personalized television experience that includes time-shifting of television viewing to the term ‘individual television experience’.

Personalized television

The individual television experience includes the desire for TV that is personal, meaning that people want to control what programming they watch and when they watch it, and which devices they watch it on. This includes the ability to time-shift television programming.

The ability for consumers to watch ‘what they want, when they want’ – sometimes described as the ability to watch TV on your own schedule – is a publicized benefit of video on demand (VOD) services available on cable and IPTV television systems The World Cable Association describes Video on Demand as a "service that is revolutionizing the way television is being watched. It goes by your schedule; you choose what you want to watch and when you want to watch it!" In publicity about its new IPTV service, U.S. telecoms company Verizon states that "with video-on-demand from FiOS TV, you can watch what you want, when you want."

UPC Switzerland has advertised the ability for consumers to control the programming they watch, and when they watch it, under the campaign banner ‘individual television experience’. The company was recognized in the CTAM Europe Creative Awards Program for its cablecom advertising, in which a husband explains how his wife likes to go hiking or skiing at weekends while he would prefer to stay at home watching TV. The advert describes how it is now easy to "record everything at the push of a button and watch recorded content whenever you want," and illustrates the point by recording a weather report for time-shifted viewing.

Mobility and convergence

The individual television experience recognizes the demand for TV that is high quality, which includes the need for HDTV and for TV that connects consumers to their activities on mobile phones and PCs, including content creation such as user-generated content. Content mobility is considered an important part of the Individual Television Experience.

Ericsson and TANDBERG Television have directly linked the ability to deliver video across multiple television/communications platforms to multiple screens – including satellite television, cable TV and digital terrestrial TV – to the individual television experience. The ability to deliver and receive integrated video content via PCs, TVs and mobile devices is considered by some commentators to be the 'holy grail' of service providers, as broadcasting and fixed and mobile communications converge.

The individual television experience has been linked to the convergence of live television and on-demand video (such as video on demand) with broadband, mobile and fixed-line telephony services and has been portrayed as ‘converged TV’ because of its emphasis on the availability of television content to any consumer device including mobile phones. Swedish company Ericsson has argued that the individual television experience is a means for television/communications providers, and especially telecoms and broadband companies offering television services (IPTV), to improve the consumer TV experience and attract new customers and revenues.

The term individual television experience has been applied to a television delivery/consumption paradigm where four key consumer desires are met, namely TV that is personal, TV that is high quality, TV that connects consumers to other multimedia activities, and TV that is value for money. The concept is also being applied in the context of one or more of these consumer desires being present.

Multi-screen television services

A television and communications network operator that provides consumers with the individual television experience is being described as a ‘Televisionary’. A Televisionary is expected to deliver video content to multiple screens (TV, PC and mobile phone) seamlessly including high-definition video and enable consumers to achieve interactivity between the TV, PC and mobile devices, which should be able to talk to each other and have instant, real-time access to the Internet regardless of their location.

A televisionary service provider enables time-shift television services such as start-over TV functionality and the ability to transfer recorded content from one device to another, such as television recordings taken from home and watched on a PC in the work environment. This combination of multimedia content mobility and time-shifted control of viewing are core principles of the Individual Television Experience and the concepts of televisionary, individual television experience and personalized TV experience are closely linked.

A number of technology suppliers are developing products to enable the multi-platform capabilities linked to the individual television experience and televisionary, including Alcatel-Lucent, SeaChange International Inc, ARRIS and particularly Swedish company Ericsson. Adi Kishore, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading, says Ericsson has been "the most aggressive in this area with its Televisionary campaign". Ericsson has outlined the multi-platform service future in a series of Televisionary Roadshows, including in Sydney, Moscow and Cape Town.

The goal of enabling the seamless, multi-screen services at the heart of the individual television experience is considered the ultimate ambition for telecoms and broadband companies offering television services (IPTV) but is something that is still at the proof of concept stage. It will require a complicated technology and service ecosystem and new network capabilities for both fixed and wireless broadband but there are realistic expectations that this will evolve from technologies that are available today.

References

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