Reverse Engineering Times Square The Visitor Channel David Mycue with Tom Piper Academic Media Production Services Massachusetts Institute of Technology Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Background  Times Square large-panel video reaches mass audience  Reverse engineer to reach an even larger audience Create “Visitor Channel” test platform Link Boston hotel, cultural, retail and entertainment venues.

NTSC video as a common denominator  NTSC was always a compromise (29.97 fps, interlacing)  Flawed model to distribute video and text Video signal not designed to carry data NTSC standard reduces clarity of moving text content and/or images Fails to capitalize on available efficiencies (text, images) TV channels, News channels (Bloomberg, MSNBC, etc.) cannot easily adapt to data transmission

Video on PC-devices is easy Data into video is inefficient TV real estate is segmented into multiple data regions Video reduced to 400x300 NTSC as data channel

NTSC Text encroachment Video is now reduced to a 400x200 area.

NTSC as strict data channel Screen graphics over NTSC squanders bandwidth Underutilizes major resource

Visitor Channel  “Reference project” opportunity Incorporate broadcast TV into multi-resolution (1920x1280 to 160x120) digital display Accessible by multiple devices (PDA, cell phone, etc.) Links to hotels Received at WiFi hotspots

Visitor Channel streaming  Handles high quality video  Streaming “Big 3” handle MPEG2  DVD players on PCs play MPEG2 video  MPEG2 is ubiquitous transmission format  Forward compatible - MPEG2 streams can be HDTV

Visitor Channel streaming  Handles data much more flexibly and efficiently  Define multiple independent “real estate” areas  Handles text as text streams (RealText)  Handles images as image files (RealPix)  MPEG4 will add more features (primitives)

Simple Case: Selectable Video Streams

Visitor Channel capabilities  Channel advertising  Interactivity (control of each content area )  Specialized delivery over all devices  Distributed control of information  Color coded information for specific groups  Override by “higher level” content