Reverse Engineering Times Square

The Visitor ChannelDavid Mycue with Tom Piper

Academic Media Production ServicesMassachusetts 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 streamingHandles 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 groupsOverride by “higher level” content