Spatial scene adaptation in broadcast environment

The heterogeneity of handheld terminals in terms of screen resolution, processing capabilities or available decoding memory is a challenge for multimedia services that have been tackled by many scene adaptation techniques so far. In broadcast environment, the adaptation intelligence must be transmitted along with the content and may induce critical costs that must be minimized. In this paper, we propose a broadcast-friendly adaptation technique of the spatial layout of multimedia content based on the use of incremental scene updates. The advantages of our approach have been evaluated on a T-DMB digital radio service and compared to other adaptation techniques applicable to broadcasted multimedia services. Experimental results show that fine-grained spatial adaptation on constrained handheld terminals can successfully be achieved through adaptation scene updates with a limited bandwidth overhead

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Archaeologies of Sound: Reconstructing Louis MacNeice’s Wartime Radio Publics

This article approaches the problem of reconstructing the culturally situated audience experience of radio programming through the example of Louis MacNeice's wartime radio broadcasts, notably "Alexander Nevsky" and "Christopher Columbus". The article draws on audience research reports, internal correspondence, and close analysis of the broadcasts themselves in order to triangulate a listening experience that, though it ultimately cannot be recovered, can be better understood through its proximate cultural traces

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation

Assessing quality of experience of IPTV and video on demand services in real-life environments

The ever growing bandwidth in access networks, in combination with IPTV and video on demand (VoD) offerings, opens up unlimited possibilities to the users. The operators can no longer compete solely on the number of channels or content and increasingly make high definition channels and quality of experience (QoE) a service differentiator. Currently, the most reliable way of assessing and measuring QoE is conducting subjective experiments, where human observers evaluate a series of short video sequences, using one of the international standardized subjective quality assessment methodologies. Unfortunately, since these subjective experiments need to be conducted in controlled environments and pose limitations on the sequences and overall experiment duration they cannot be used for real-life QoE assessment of IPTV and VoD services. In this article, we propose a novel subjective quality assessment methodology based on full-length movies. Our methodology enables audiovisual quality assessment in the same environments and under the same conditions users typically watch television. Using our new methodology we conducted subjective experiments and compared the outcome with the results from a subjective test conducted using a standardized method. Our findings indicate significant differences in terms of impairment visibility and tolerance and highlight the importance of real-life QoE assessment