Vintage Column: my predictions for the London Olympics from 4 years ago

The following article appeared in Newsreel magazine, which was the sister publication to the sucessful Showreel mag. I was asked to write about the sort of technology we might see at the London Olympics in 2012. It was written about four and a half years ago, which is a long time in the technology business.

I'm not sure about my guess that there would be 1Gb/s broadband by 2012 - but the rest of it seems solid. The thing is, there's still nearly three years to go. The rate of change is so great that I would actually be less confident about making predictions now than I was four years ago.

Bluesky predictions for the 2012 Olympics - from May 2004

Freelance technical journalists develop some extraordinary skills, probably the most important of which is staring out of the window for hours on end instead of writing a chronically overdue article. Inevitably, as the deadline approaches, miraculous things happen. The ironing gets done, and the house looks spotless. Any task – the more tedious or obnoxious the better – is preferable to the prospect of sitting in front of a blank screen and bashing out a couple of thousand words on the designated subject.

This time, though, staring out of the window at the (infrequently) blue sky was a necessary antecedent to the production of this article, because what you’re about to read is almost entirely speculative, and looks much further ahead into the future than anyone should reasonably feel comfortable with. Seven years, to be specific.

I’m referring, of course to the London Olympics (or, to be completely politically correct the “British” Olympics).

From a UK perspective, this is going to be a big event. I’ve heard that it’s going to involve the biggest civil engineering project ever. When you consider that it may even make it feasible to get from the Elephant to Lewisham at more than six miles an hour, you begin to realise the magnitude of this endeavour. And it’s probably reasonable to expect that it’s going to be the biggest broadcasting event ever, too.

So, now that we know that the Olympics is coming to London, it seems like a good time to speculate about the shape and form that such a broadcast event might take. I don’t have any insider information on this (I’m not sure if anyone does at the moment) but we can at least have a stab at it. And probably the best place to start is to look at the trends already hinted at by the phenomenon called “convergence”.

If you’ve blinked at any time recently you’ve probably missed it. Convergence has happened already. IT and telecommunications are now integral to acquisition, production and broadcasting, and it’s a very long time since anyone watched a television program that hadn’t been in and out of the digital domain at some point in its lifecycle. Computers and digital communication are an inescapable part of most people’s daily routine. I’m probably not completely typical, but, today, for example, I’ve watched the live output from BBC News 24 on my laptop via a 3G datacard, and talked to colleagues in Dubai and America using Skype, the popular (and free) Voice Over Internet Protocol phone service.

While convergence trends have been discernable for several years, it’s only recently that the benefits have been available to the masses, and the rate of progress is accelerating.

There are several reasons for this. First, virtually every aspect of computing technology is getting better, faster. Processors are effectively a thousand times quicker than they were around twelve years ago. Both RAM and hard disk storage are at least three orders of magnitude cheaper as well. Harder to quantify, but just as important, is that our knowledge of how to work with digital media has grown, as well as the sophistication of software tools and our ability to compress and process video and audio.

Even if all of these factors were (merely) developing linearly, the compound effect would be an acceleration of capability. In reality, the rate of change is even faster. So much so, that it’s getting harder and harder to look even a couple of years into the future. Ironically, having to stick with existing technological standards is helping us to look ahead with a little more clarity because they have a damping influence on our ability to innovate (DAB radio in the UK is a good example of this. It uses a technology devised in the 80s that is agonisingly out of date in comparison with the compression and digital transmission techniques available today).

There isn’t the space here to invent the entire future of broadcasting, although I’m sure we could all speculate endlessly. Instead, I’m going to do a rapid “flypast” through the areas where I think we’ll see the biggest change in the way sporting events will be broadcast

Resolution

This is an easy one. The London Olympics will be broadcast in high definition. So will the Bejing games, as well as next year’s world cup. What will be different, though, with the London event is that virtually everyone will be watching in high definition. It’s probably going to take seven years from now for the majority of televisions to be updated.

But, although it’s virtually certain that the games will have “better than PAL” coverage, it’s definitely not clear what the characteristics of the acquisition format will be.

For a start, there’s no reason to expect that video cameras will be restricted to any of the current HD raster sizes (1280 by 720 and 1920 by 1080). What’s more likely is that acquisition and production resolutions will be completely decoupled from delivery resolutions. It’s easy to derive virtually any raster size from a higher resolution (especially if progressive formats are used throughout), so there’s every possibility that we’ll see camcorders with 4K resolution or above. This might seem unrealistic, but you can already buy digital still cameras (such as the Canon Ds1 Mk II) with a sixteen megapixel resolution: arguably better than film. Of course you then have to deal with the torrents of data: a single frame at this size is 50 Megabytes!

What would be the point of shooting in Ultra HD resolutions? At the risk of stating the obvious, the pictures are better. What’s not so obvious is that the pictures are better whatever resolution you’re viewing them at, because they started out with so much information. The better the original images, the better job compression algorithms can do with the material. So, although this is probably more an academic point than anything else, shooting in ultra high definition could even improve the picture on your mobile phone.

For sport, there are more potential benefits when the acquisition format exceeds the resolution of the delivery format.

If the pictures from a video camera are, say, four times the resolution of the pictures that are broadcast, then it’s possible to zoom in by a factor of four without any apparent loss of quality. This gives enormous flexibility to “post produce” the event. It’s effectively like having more cameras and more operators.

Once you start down this path, it takes you a very long way indeed.

In still photography, you can use software applications to “stitch” together several overlapping images. It’s a process that works surprisingly well, and can yield impressive panoramic shots or whole patchwork quilts of landscapes that have a quite astonishing resolution. (Google Earth is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of this technique).

There’s really no difference between video and still photography, except that video effectively takes a lot of photographs in a given time. So there’s no reason why the output from several suitably arranged cameras shouldn’t be stitched together, in real time, to form a giant, contiguous, moving vista, which a sports editor could then pan and zoom around, effectively framing his or her own shots.

As the software improves, even the output from cameras that haven’t been deliberately aligned can be incorporated.

(This, incidentally, has great potential for security applications, because it would give the police, for example, the ability to amalgamate the output from all the cameras at a venue, and then perform searches based on timecode and the possible location within a stadium of the suspect).

Perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this technique is the ability to invoke “virtual” camera positions.

Here’s how it would work.

It’s already possible to create 3D landscapes using the output from two cameras. Most of us have seen 3D flypasts of the surface of Mars, generated from two cameras shooting the same scene from a slightly different viewpoint.

A sports stadium is a much more controlled environment, and it may just be possible to arrange a complete array of cameras, suitably spaced, so that by analysing and concatenating the combined output it would be possible to generate a speculative “virtual” viewpoint.

This is hard enough to do with still images, never mind with moving video, in real-time. But the last ten years has shown us that if you can think about something, without coming across contradictions or sheer impossibilities, then it’s probably going to happen, given merely enough engineering skill and processing power.

Analysis

Do you remember the Channel 4 Snickometer? In case you don’t, it was a gadget invoked during live cricket matches to give viewers a visual display of the sounds from an LBW incident, synchronised to slow motion video playback of the event. This quasi-scientific approach has now been joined by Hawkeye, which uses multiple camera positions to predict the trajectory of balls.

There’s almost no limit to the amount of analysis and resultant viewer aids. It’s all a question of computing power, and, of course, there being a sensible balance between gimmickry and genuine usefulness.

Ultimately, we’re going to be able to create real-time, detailed dynamic models of sporting action of virtually any complexity. We’ll be able to apply highly evolved heuristics (common-sense or experience-derived rules), based on years of sporting analysis, to live action. We’ll be able to create entire teams of virtual footballers and athletes. A lot of the technology is here today.

You only have to look at next-generation games consoles to see how we might get there sooner than you’d expect. The clue is that these devices have not only superb graphics capabilities, but astonishing real-time “physics” engines. So, what might look like a graphical facsimile of a boxer, will actually behave like a boxer, right down to the way the virtual bones, muscles and skin react on receipt of the winning punch.

So I think we can expect to see action replays that superimpose real-time anatomical analyses. And of course masses of data to accompany the pictures.

Metadata

On the face of it, Metadata is not a sexy subject. But just wait, because metadata and video are ultimately going to become the same thing.

If we are in a position to create virtual models of reality, using advanced motion-capture techniques that don’t really on athletes wearing ping pong balls on their elbows, then, as the technology improves, the models will ultimately be indistinguishable from the real thing. At that point, we leave pixels behind and transmit video using metadata alone. (If you’ve ever used Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, you’ll understand what I mean by this). We’ll be able to broadcast great-looking video to any device, which will be displayed at the maximum resolution of the screen. There’ll be perfect slow-motion as well, because this technique is temporally resolution-independent as well as spacially. This may be something that doesn’t happen until way beyond the London Olympics, but, even so, metadata’s going to have a huge role in future sporting action.

The more metadata you can generate automatically, the more value your video has to anyone searching for it. An automatically generated metadata tagging schema, based on a standard taxonomy (a taxonomy is a hierarchy of categories, like Animals/Mammals/Primates/Chimpanzees etc) will allow productive searches by anyone who’s looking for highlights in their favourite sport. Comprehensive automatically generated metadata will help create automatically formatted web, video-rich websites, which can be completely tailored to an individual’s preferences. You can think of this in an abstract sense as giving the viewer control over the playout server’s schedules!

Bandwidth

By 2012, bandwidth will be as abundant as mains electricity. We’ll no more worry about bandwidth constraints than we would about plugging a mobile phone charger into a mains socket. And that includes mobile devices. The first 24 megabit/second DSL service has just been announced in London. In seven years time, we could have gigabit into the home, and, at last, mobile phones will show decent video.

I think it’s likely that download-store-play will replace standard, linear broadcast viewing habits. With rich metadata, video podcasting and semantically enabled Tivos, changing channels will be a meaningless activity, to be replaced by merely expressing the nature and strength of your viewing preferences.

Of course, there will always be live broadcasts. And, although there will always be the option to be “spoon fed” with the directors take on the event, viewers will be able to select camera angles, action replays and even move a “virtual” camera to any position imaginable.

DRM

Every technology has a “damping factor” that slows down its adoption. And, as we’ve seen above with legacy broadcasting standards, they can act both as an enabling and disabling influence. With major sporting events, this factor may well be Digital Rights Management.

No one imagines that organising the greatest broadcasting event ever seen will be entirely without cost. The political and economic wranglings that surround sport are legendary and are likely to be exceeded by orders of magnitude where the London Olympics are concerned.

The combination of advanced interactive acquisition technology with the internet is a DRM nightmare. Have you ever tried to listen to Radio 5’s coverage of football matches on the internet when you’re abroad? More often than not, they’re blanked out; presumably because of rights issues.

The only way to walk this particular tightrope is to make use of detailed metadata to derive permissions for who can watch what from where. It’s a rather dry subject, superficially devoid of interest, but could scupper whole swathes of new-generation media coverage.

So, is all of the above prescient, visionary reporting, or is it third rate science fiction?

I’ll let you know in seven years.

Convergence: Time to see the wood for the trees

In between broadcasting and digital signage, there's a wide area that's completely unpopulated by business ideas and revenues, and yet, the technology is there to create a media platform that's potentially massive. I'm not going to go into too much detail here because that's likely to give away too much information that I normally charge people for; but think about it for a minute: broadcasting and digital signage are converging.

Up to now, I've always said that there are (at least) two models for digital signage: Adaptive Ultra Narrowcasting and Digital Poster Replacement. I still think this is true, but I think that the former will subsume the latter. In other words, I think that the "TV Channel" idea is even applicable, in an extreme way, to digital poster replacement, as well as everything else.

Now, what I don't mean here is that conventional TV content is always suitable for digital signage. I don't even think that people regard digital signage playlists as the same as a TV channel. It's more to do with scale and scalability.

When you have a small digital signage network, it's a bit like a coconut. Just like a planet, it has a gravitational pull, but it's so small, you wouldn't notice it - to the extent that you might as well ignore it.

But when an object is big enough to have it's own gravitational field, then you really do have to take notice of it.

And that's what I think the model for digital signage will be, ultimately. I think there will by huge networks, with aggregated and syndicated content, but (with technology help from the broadcast industry) there will be localised insertions of ads and data that will give the best of both worlds: relevant content, but delivered on an industrial scale, to millions of players.

At that point, the "gravitational pull" on advertisers and other contributors becomes too big to ignore.

Apple Cocktail is nine years late

I don't like to boast about it, but if you're going to claim to have thought of something first, it's always best if you've either got a patent on it (if you want to make money from it) or if you publish it, because at least that means you can prove it was your idea.

Anyway, nine years ago, in 2000, I wrote an article in the UK magazine, Sound on Sound, suggesting, essentially, what Apple is now calling "Cocktail". It's the idea that you can add value to digital downloads by packaging the audio track with additional videos, biogs, images etc: stuff that you wouldn't get from Limewire.

But my idea was a bit different, and possibly better. It was that you let people download things freely and legally and let friends share their files without restriction. But at some point, if you own a digital file, you have to buy a licence for it.

Now, on the face of it, that's a pretty lame idea. It would never work. No-one - including me - would fork out real money just to buy a certificate just to say that something I have already is legal.

But what if the "licence" was in the form of something that had a value in itself?

What if it came in the form of a linear PCM encoded (ie not compressed) version of the track? And what if it came with sleevenotes, password-protected video downloads and entitlement to other paraphernalia like T-shirts?

The beauty of this idea is that you don't have to change anything. All you have to do is call the CDs you buy in shops "Licences".

Oh, and you have to bring the price down, as well.

Here's the article in Sound on Sound. Look at the last paragraph.

Media Accountability

This is just a short note about something very important. If you get it right, it's completely hidden. Get it wrong and it will make your whole digital signage project fail. It's media management.

On the face of it, organising media is about as interesting as tidying up your bedroom.

But, done well, it opens up new possibilities in digital signage, and it safeguards your projects from bad media, lost media and all sort of confusion that can completely scupper a digital signage installation.

If you want to see it done properly, look at digital signage products that are derived from broadcast products. And be a little bit wary of products that are thrown together using media players and file systems that come free with operating systems.

Sorry if this all sounds a bit abstract. I'll write about this in more detail later. It's important stuff.

Pixels. The more the better. Really.

I hate to be seen as overly critical, but, in the same way you'd want to get a doctor who didn't know the difference between a suppository and a syringe struck off the medical register, you have to wonder about anyone who doesn't understand even the basics about pixels.

I read a review this morning about a new netbook computer. Unlike the hundreds of identikit devices that have exploded onto the scene like a rash, this one had a feature that made it stand out: a 1366 x 768 screen, instead of the usual, meagre, 1024 x 600; this latter resolution being just wide enough for the majority of web pages to be displayed without sideways scrolling, but still an annoying paucity short of a full screen for most people.

The reviewer's take on this improved resolution was that it would make the text harder to read.

That's a bit like winning the lottery and complaining you've got to spend some of the money on a safe.

And anyway, does it make the text harder to read? Possibly, if you've got marginal eyesight, because it will be slightly smaller. But you can use that resolution to either fit more text on the screen, or, if your astigmatism completely defeats you below a certain distance and text size, you can make the text bigger.

And when you do, it will look better as well, because you've got more pixels to accurately describe each character in a given font.

This type of misunderstanding is endemic in the digital signage industry. It's the biggest reason why some displays lose impact: because they're fuzzy. Even with digital interfaces almost universally available now, if you don't prepare your graphics at the native resolution of the screen, and - even if you do - if your screen isn't set to its native resolution, then the results will be dismal.

On the other hand, when you get it right, graphics look crisp and vibrant, even on cheaper displays.

Understanding resolutions in digital signage should be as fundamental as understanding hygiene in surgery.

Amscreen. Time will tell.

I'm not saying anything.

But it's good to have Amscreen in the industry. If people think they can do better, then let them do better. There's nothing wrong with that.

There are no real quality standards or expectations in this industry and if it takes Amscreen to make people decide what's good and bad, then that's probably a good thing.

(Video courtesy of DailyDOOH).

Details of my new network company

Here's the scoop on my new network company. It's a sophisticated MPLS core network designed to give the kind of service you need if you're setting up or running a digital signage network. It's run by me, and our other supremely talented people, with the backing of some much larger organisations.

Content Networks Limited
Security and simplicity for
digital signage

Content Networks is a completely new kind of network service specifically for digital signage, designed to take the complexity and uncertainty out of setting up content-oriented data connections.

At the heart of Content Network's technology is the ability to set up private networks over a wide area. Imagine having a hundred screen locations throughout the UK, all behaving as if they were on a Local Area Network. That's how simple it is. It's like having your own private internet.

With Content Networks, you don't have to be a small number in the big, impersonal world of telecommunications. Instead, you get a personal and efficient service.

We handle the installation of the network and we set up your private wide area network to work the way you want it to. We have short install times - as little as a few days for 3G connections.

Scared of Viruses and Hackers? There's no need to be as this is non-internet facing, with advanced firewalls and security policies. If you need the internet, it's via a single, secure, centrally managed gateway.

How does it work?

1) The Simple View: We have built an advanced Core Network (the physical infrastructure consisting of switches and routers) that is able to deliver secure, private connectivity to pretty well any location. The connectivity can be provided via ADSL, Leased Lines, Ethernet, 3G and even Radio if required. Content Networks, will design and implement the most appropriate network for your needs and ensure it is scalable for future growth.

2) The Technical View: We have a Cisco based "MPLS Core Network". The core network is the central part of a communications network and it is connected to an Access Network (the copper, fibre or mobile connections that cover the UK), which we use to set up virtual private networks (VPNs) to customer premises using the most effective connectivity for the requirement. We have interconnects with Tier 1 carriers and our own APN for mobile connectivity which gives us the reach required to offer a fully scalable solution.

To a customer, it's just like having a secure Local Area Network, with permanent, private IP addresses

How secure is it?

What we are delivering here is an MPLS based solution which means that traffic management is more efficient, providing greater reliability and increased performance. Our service is not a vanilla solution like a traditional ADSL connection. Whilst traditional ADSL connectivity can deliver content, there are security risks associated with 'local internet breakout' based services. Our service is provided as standard with no internet access (as digital signage does not need to 'surf the web') and is therefore not visible to the outside world. If you need internet access for RSS feeds etc, it's through a centralised breakout in our core network which allows internet access, controlled by a central security policy.

How do I set it up?

You tell us how you want it to work and we'll set it up for you. We will do a full requirements capture, draw up the network, discuss with you the benefits of the way we have designed it and once signed off, we will deliver it.

Is it reliable?

Our core network technology is fully redundant. For extra resilience, you can specify wired/wireless failover. What this means is that if your wired connection fails for any reason, the system will seamlessly switch to a wireless (3G) connection

What does it cost?

It's hard to compare our solution to standard offerings in the market. We are not delivering a standard 'vanilla' ADSL solution that can be bought from any ISP. We provide an MPLS based service, capable of being delivered over multiple types of access technology - not just ADSL. Our service is non-internet facing. It is secure and private and we offer the added benefit of 3G failover technology should the service be mission critical. For our 3G solutions, we have a next day, pre-9am fully-configured replacement router service. This provides continuity of service as it just slots back in and works.

Our MPLS based ADSL connection may cost slightly more than a standard ADSL connection but in return we we can set up the VPN tunnels far more cost effectively and quickly than would be possible with a standard connection. Management visibility and control of those connections is also greatly enhanced. We supply Cisco routers at the customer premises rather than cheaper consumer oriented routers, because Cisco routers are business grade, fully supportable and - above all - reliable.

For our 3G solutions we use enterprise class 3G routers with built in SIM and wireless interfaces, rather than cheaper routers with USB dongle attachments. This ensures we can offer a quality of service that far outstrips our nearest competition. These routers cost more to buy, but support over the lifetime of the project costs considerably less. The routers can be remotely configured and set up to monitor and alert users should there be an issue with a particular location.

The bottom line is that the Total Cost of Ownership with Content Networks can be significantly lower than using vanilla data connections and routers.

Can you really do digital signage over (wireless) 3G?

Absolutely and we are doing so at present. Our understanding of 3G/HSDPA technology is second to none and we have been working with this medium for a number of years. We have our own private APN (interconnect into the mobile network) and can provide Fixed IP solutions that enable the delivery of content, management and control to individual sites. We can also use the 3G technology to provide automatic failover from an ADSL connection for business continuity.

3G technology has developed over the last few years, with ever increasing speeds and coverage and huge advancements in the router capabilities. We would be happy to provide more details around this.

How are we different to the BTs and Virgin Medias of this world?

A standard BT or Virgin Media product will be broadband ADSL, which may look like it has a great price, with wireless routers included, free wi-fi minutes (which you don't need) and so on, but are these the best options for digital signage?

They are good value if you just want to set it up for Internet access and email, but these are not the priorities for digital signage. Digital signage networks need reliability, the ability to manage the connection, traffic prioritisation, remote access and management, potentially centralised content distribution, virtual private networks that can be centrally configured, and more advanced router technology that can deal with advanced protocols.

In effect, digital signage needs a network that has been specifically designed to deal with digital signage content and delivery. Whilst there is nothing wrong with the BT ADSL products; they have been packaged to deliver web and email services to consumers, not private, secure content services that are part of a revenue generating business.

Content Networks can deliver MPLS ADSL connectivity for not that much more than standard BT products, but as we have highlighted before, the Total Cost of Ownership of using a network specifically designed for this type of data is considerably less than that of using a generic "free for all'" service.

We also offer flexibility. Our network services can be installed in short timescales and both our DSL and 3G solutions can be re-located with short notice, enabling digital signage companies to vary their programmes, sites and campaigns.

We don't 'traffic shape' our network. Most ISPs offer packages with what they describe as "Unlimited Downloads", but what this often means is unlimited..up to a point. if you go over what is deemed to be an acceptable limit, they will throttle your connection back to Kbps speeds, rather than Mbps speeds. This can have a dramatic impact on the ability to deliver content. We control our own bandwidth and do not traffic shape. We work with you to identify how much bandwidth you will require and we work with that. We won't throttle your bandwidth, and so won't cause issues when you don't need them.

Companies should see Content Networks as their network partner rather than a network supplier as we will work with you to design the best solution for the job. Our technical engineers have designed bespoke systems for Police Authorities, Formula 1 Racing teams and Cinema chains; systems that have had to deliver critical network services.

www.contentnetworks.co.uk

Private Networks

I've just set up a company called Content Networks. Its simple aim is to enhance the lives of digital signage operators with Wide Area Networks.

We actually own a "Core Network'; the part of a network that configures and routes the rest of it. It uses MPLS, the protocol of the Tier 1 data carriers, and we use it to set up private WANs to look like LANs. It really is that simple.

If you've got a signage network with branches all over the country, this is the way to do it. No messing around with floating IP addresses. You can have fixed line or wireless, or both, with automatic failover between them. The whole network is fully redundant.

And it's secure. It's not even visible to the Internet, so there's zero possibility of being hacked.

Very exciting. It's going to transform Digital Signage in the UK.

We've just signed up our first customers.

This is going to be big.

More news as it happens.

Video. It's just video.

Something occurred to me immediately after my last post, which is that even if you think Digital Signage is all about animated posters, then what you are actually talking about is high defininition video.

In fact, if we regarded all digital signage as, technically, HD video, it would be much easier to cope with. Complex composites could be "flattened" into a single video sequence, and everything would flow more smoothly than it typically does now.

But that's only if your digital signage software really understands video. And that means more than just playing it in a small window.

So, keep an eye on the digital signage companies whose products have evolved from a broadcast background.

Actually, digital signage is all of these...

Just a quick note, inspired by this Daily Dooh post, to say that Don Sperring (who I had the pleasure of meeting last June) is right about digital posters; but Digital Signage is more than just a digital poster replacement: it's also a narrowcast TV channel, and it's an information portal.

Which of these it is in your application depends on what you're trying to do. Advertisers want digital posters, but with longer dwell times, they might want narrowcasting. And information providors might want a combination of these.

I think it's important to say that digital signage has a wider scope than JUST advertising, or JUST broadcasting, or JUST information. Look at combinations of these, and the potential's exponentially bigger than just one element on it's own.

This is how to do it...

It's easy to forget that the point of digital signage is to deliver a message. You normally don't have much time do to it; dwell times and attention spans are lamentably short, from an advertiser's point of view.

So you might not think that this example is a very good one. It's an ad from the eighties for the UK city Milton Keynes; a completely new city built on ultra-modern planning principles, with a rectangular street grid, tree-lined avenues and low-rise buildings.

Look closely at the ad and what you notice is that it tells a story. It's quite long, but it builds to a climax, and makes the point - that "isn't it a shame that all cities aren't like Milton Keynes" - just as the music is receding to an almost subliminal level. Cheesy, yes, but for me, it's just about the perfect advert. And the music? Spot on.

I've yet to see anything even one tenth as good as this on our industry's new medium.

Splitting Hairs

Digital Signage is often spoken of as analogous to television, with a channel for each screen, or group of screens.

I think the definition is very much wider than this, and that Digital Signage is a medium that can be molded into almost any role.

But, going back to the tv channel analogy, I would just point out that, these days, a television channel isn't really a television channel any more. With VOD, of which the BBC iPlayer is the best example I know of, linear TV channels are an endangered species.

But how does Digital Signage relate to Video on Demand? Not obviously, but actually quite closely. Except that with Digital Signage the choosing is done by circumstances (a data feed, exceeding an environmental threshold, geographical location, number of people standing in front of the sign, iris recognition (eventually) etc).

All of which strongly suggests that digital signage (I hate calling it DOOH, but people search for it!) has a long way to go before its full potential is realised.

Bargain of the century

In the sixties and seventies, it's what you'd have called a Radiogram.

Well, actually, it doesn't have a radio, it does play video, and you need to plug it into a stereo.

But it's just about the bargain of the century. I've been listening to it all day, courtesy of an 8MB USB memory stick I've plugged into the side of it.

It's a digital photo frame. It plays Divx videos, shows you pictures, plays music, and has a perfectly usable, if clunky user interface.

But that's OK, because it cost £24. That's all. It's one of those moments when you realise that electronics - measured by function - just keep getting cheaper and cheaper.

If you want one, they've got several hundred of them here.

Egregious Digital Signage

Just had to write about this.

I was in a branch of Tesco Homeplus this afternoon, and saw what I can only say is one of the worst examples of digital signage I've seen for a long time.

It's a pity, because it was there for the best of reasons: explaining how to deal with the store's rather complicated system for buying things. Seems you can't just take stuff to the tills, but have to look at the label to see whether you have to order it, just take it to the checkout or have it delivered to your home.

Whatever.

The screens didn't look too bad to the "untrained" eye, but there was just about everything wrong with them. And it was carelessness more than anything.

There was a "video" insert in the middle of the screen that was playing some sort of animation - which was of a pretty high quality; but it was the wrong aspect ratio for the space set aside for it. So there was a black border above and below. Not the best sight.

And then, puzzlingly, and completely pointlessly, there was a slowly scrolling ticker at the bottom with the words "Welcome to Tesco".

In the top right was a clock, and top left was a logo.

What they should have done was just make the animation full screen. It would have been easier and the end result would have been better.

Less, you can never stress enough, is more.

European LED Mountain

Eurovision Song Contest. Spectacular, pointless, unwatchable, unmissable. All of those things.

Whatever.

The headline statistic for me was that thirty percent of the world's LED screens were used in the stage set.

That's a dubious statistic if ever I've heard one.

But even if there's a small element of truth in it, it sheds some insightful light on the LED video screen industry as a whole. Which is that it's obviously very small in comparison with other industries. If that was a third of its cumulative output in Moscow, then three times that number isn't very big.

And that's not surprising, because they're still very expensive, and will probably continue to be despite diminishing component costs.

The problem for LED screens is that customers demand higher resolutions, and in order to achieve, say, a six millimetre pitch (that's the distance between the LEDs) rather than a twelve millimetre one, you don't just have to double the number of LEDs - you have to square the number, because you're talking about an area rather than a linear dimension.

LEDs aren't the only components, but they're one of the most expensive. And they draw a lot of power. All of which is to say that LEDs aren't an ideal technology for outdoor large-scale video, but they're the best we've got at the moment.

The real importance of 3D

I'm researching 3D quite a bit at the moment. I'm fascinated by the idea that you can extrapolate new camera angles from multiple existing ones. If you can do this, then, ultimately, "camera angle" will just be another setting you can manipulate in post production.

I think we're reaching a point with technology where this should be possible to a high quality, although real-time viewpoint interpolation may be a few years off.

One side benefit of being able to generate new viewpoints is that to be able to do this, you must first have been able to generate some sort of 3D model of the space in front of the cameras. That's a huge advantage for several reasons.

It takes ages to create 3D models of environments using conventional tools like Maya. Just creating a realistic street scene could take months, and cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. With viewpoint extrapolation, you could do it in real time.

And then, once you have your 3D model in place, you can start to apply environmental phenomena to it, like fog, depth of field, as well as integrating effectively with totally synthesised elements and characters.

There are surprisingly few papers on this technique, mainly, I suspect, because research is going on behind closed doors.

We're starting to see a few products, though: Microsoft Photosynth goes a long way towards it, and could surely be adapted for video, given enough processing power. Photosynth creates a 3D Point Cloud, not a vector model, so you'd need the equivalent of a 3D "autotrace" process to create a genuine 3D model that could form the basis of proper 3D environment; but I don't see why that shouldn't be possible - especially because with video there is so much more information than with still images.

And with video, you could probably generate a 3d space with one camera, as long as it was moving; but only for static objects, of course.

3D is more than just another dimension

Like it or not, 3D is going to be big. It's also going to be a headache for viewers and content producers, literally if the current techniques don't improve radically.

Does it have a role in digital signage? Yes, in specialised formats.

It's actually been around for five or six years now, in the form of lenticular displays - much like the old "animated" postcards you used to be able to buy, that showed two or more different scenes as you rotated the card. Of course the resolution suffers, and the animation quality isn't great; but it's an effective low-tech method of grabbing people's attention.

Whether it turns into a mainstream medium depends on how much the display technology improves, what it costs, and how easy or difficult it is to make the content. There's a big move in Hollywood towards 3D movie making, and perhaps some of this enthusiasm will filter into the advertising domain.

But I think there's a much bigger use for 3D technology. And it's nothing to do with watching adverts in 3D.

You see, if you're filming in 3D, then you must be using more than one lens. And you'll end up with a recording of the same scene from two different viewpoints.

As processing gets cheaper and more abundant, it's going to become trivially easy to use the image from one lens to "correct" any deficiencies in the other lens. By having a way to compare between the two lenses, you have the means to correct the image in either of them.

I would imagine that lenses are by far the most expensive part of any camera system. They are precision devices that are less amenable to mass production than, say, a sensor, or a circuit board.

Modern professional lenses are simply so good, though, that you might think they don't need correcting.

That's largely true of Prime lenses, but zoom devices often have quite severe problems at their extreme ranges.

So, you could either use 3d-facilitated correction to allow you to film at the more extreme ends of a lens's performance envelope, or you could make an even bigger difference by using much cheaper lenses in the first place, and use each to correct the other.

In fact, you might even end up with a "cluster" of very cheap lenses, that, together, can give an outstanding picture.

There are much further reaching techniques than these, which I'll deal with in a future post.

Digital Wallpaper

I don't want to sound big headed about this, but it looks to me like most people don't really get the Amazon Kindle.

Yes, it's a fantastic portable reading device. Yes, I want one. And no, I can't get one, because I'm in Europe.

But what's really exciting about it is that it uses Digital Ink.

Digital Ink is not an LCD or LED technology. It's not OLED. In fact, it's not any kind of technology that emits light. And it doesn't consume power, either.

What was that? Doesn't consume power?

Not once the page has "turned". It only uses energy when the image is changing. Thereafter, the image stays there until it's changed again.

Now, I've thought for quite a long time that we're all obsessed with video. We expect every new device to have some kind of video capability: just look at Smart Phones.

But I really don't see why every display device has to be able to play moving images.

That's where digital ink really, er, shines.

Eventually, digital ink is going to be very cheap. It will be in colour. It will probably display video, as well, but that doesn't matter.

What does matter is that we're on the verge of being able to replace just about every printed surface with an electronically updatable one.

At that point, digital signage signage will be the world's most powerful medium.

I'd never say that...

Writing a new article on the effect of accelerating technology on the broadcast and production industries.

It's inevitably going to mention the Red One, which has almost singlehandedly validated a prediction I made about five years ago in Camcorder User Magazine: that soon (in about five years, actually) there would be no real distinction between digital still and digital video cameras. This was at a time when small digital compact cameras had a res of between two and four megapixels; but even those pitiful resolutions are still HD in video terms.

I was told at the time by people in the industry that you'd never be able to get the information off the sensors quickly enough for video.

So, here's my tip for making predictions: whenever someone says "never", just substitute "about five years".

New article on business aspects of digital advertising

Just had a new article published in AV Specialist - one of the best broadcast technology magazines (but distributed mainly in the Middle East and Africa).

It's about the business aspects of digital advertising.

(Note that the link loads a magazine e-reader. Once you get used to it, it works rather well).

Nano screens...

Struggling to get comments working sensibly on this new blog so I'm posting responses in the blog itself for now. Here's a good one on the last post from Adam Grzesiczak:

"Problem is how we are seeing the world and how screens are build.

What we basically need is not to light up the pixels [LED for example] but change the pixels/picture on atom level, which we can do it using nano technology, let me explain.

We are trying to get pixels smaller and smaller and put millions of them in 1cm square and somehow light them up, pixels, LED, EInk, etc../

But if we want perfect screen, without pixels, you have to start changing image on atom levels and light them with normal light, then you are not gonna see the pixels but natural image, that what you are seeing now [not the screen] look at your wall, desk, water, bike, car you can see it but its not a screen, the light is coming from the sun and is reflecting by those things and coming into your eye [photons].
So we need to create dynamic screen which is gonna be able to change his nano structure [atomic structure], not lighting up the LEDs. More simple, create Dynamically changing atomic structure which you can control, sound easy but it's not...

That's the next level of Digital Signage and the world we live in.

I think changing image into vector graphics it's a good idea so brain will think that is not a screen.

How brain see and memorize things its a different story, perfect world for digital signage is Matrix which I hope will never come...
Otherwise you gonna have HDMI extreme input on the back of you head, plus couple of USB :)"

Pixellation

I've never been a fan of pixels.

I mean, they're square, whereas virtually nothing in the real world is.

But I like them even less now that just about everyone has an opinion on them, which is usually that the more of them you have, the better.

You can hardly blame them (people, not pixels, that is) because digital cameras and screens keep getting better - visibly so; and, at the same time, they seem to have more and more pixels. So it's an easy causal connection to spot.

Except that it's not necessarily true.

And I'm not even referring here to the increasingly commonly accepted truth that if you have too many pixels in a restricted space the resulting electronic noise will outweigh the resolution benefits. Nor am I talking about the fact that if you have gazillions of perfectly nice pixels but a horrible lens you'll get an accurate capture of a terrible optical image.

What I mean is, we don't see in pixels.

The way we see is at least an order of magnitude more complicated than any electronic/digital imaging device we've ever build. Software emulations of our brain mechanisms have at least twelve simultaneous processes going on to identify and track an image. And none of them use pixels.

Ultimately, the closer we get to the actual point of perception (is there such a point?) what we are seeing is objects, not pixels.

We percieve a face, a zebra, a pair of glasses, and a bannana (although, typically, not in the same scene). When we remember an image of a face on the television, we don't remember the pattern of pixels: we remember the features.

And we have, in our heads, a database of features. That's how we recognise things: from a kit of parts.

And this, I think, is the future of video.

Demonstrations of Ultra High Definition, with as many as sixteen megapixels per frame (as opposed to around 2.5 mexapixels for "standard" high definition) are incredibly impressive. But unless they show more "objects", then, ultimately it's pointless.

What this means is that when we compress video, we shouldn't be looking at patterns of pixels, but identifying objects, and storing them in a heirachical set of characteristics.

Playing them back would be a case of redrawing the scene with vectors rather than pixels.

And, as we all know, vector graphics always look sharp. Whatever the resolution of the playback device.

Interestingly, what we now know as "artifacts" would come in two varieties with vector video:

As the bandwidth drops, faces would become less recognisable and more generic.

And as the data connection fails completely, instead of seeing the "multicoloured chess board" type of artifacts that you get with MPEG, instead of a face, you might get a teapot.

Nobody's talking

One of my ongoing themes is simplicity. I think most portals into the digital world are too complicated - especially when it comes to information exchange.

It's complicated, of course, because the world is complicated. If we were just binary beings, the only thing we'd want (or could) say to each other would be "I'm 1" or "I'm 0"; but in the real world, there's an unimaginably large number of states we could possibly be in. Multiply this by the number of states that everyone and everything else could be in and you're in the region that might as well be described as infinity.

So you have to simplify things.

You could do this by simply ignoring a lot of options; and that's OK if you're working in a specialised field.

In practise, what you have to do is agree on the categories of information that you want to exchange, work out all the variations that you want to be able to describe, and then come to some sort of mutually acceptable means of interchange.

Sounds arduous, doesn't it? Yes, but in narrow industry sectors this tends to happen anyway.

Except that it doesn't seem to be happening in digital signage.

You could argue that XML, JSON, SOAP, WSDL and stuff like that are standards; but I'm not talking about that level of interchange.

What I'm talking about is the ability to exchange bookings, schedules, screen layouts, hybridization schema, and so-one. The ability to make any digital signage content work on any player.

Without it, we're wasting too much of our time devising bespoke solutions, and not enough effort in trying to make the industry grow as a whole into the massive media phenomenon we know it's going to be, someday.

In fact, I do have answers to these. I'll hint at some examples over the next few posts.

Digital, er, whatever.

I actually started this blog in 2007 - or should I say, I set it up then. Such was my enthusiasm for blogging that I not only omitted to write anything for it, I actually forgot about it completely until I came across Blogger again by accident, and found that I was logged in due to my Gmail password being valid on both accounts.

So, there I was, faced with the pitiful sight of a two year-old blog with precisely zero entries.

Well, that's all changed now, because I'm busy trying to stoke up enthusiasm for some of my ideas around digital signage, digital advertising, and the daddy of them all: Digital Presence.

What's Digital Presence?

It's the idea that every organisation needs to have a marketing or information presence in the digital domain, which can include web sites, video, brochures and - of course - digital signage.

What's different about this idea is that rather than being a new and untried marketing method that relies on flaky and somewhat unproven technology, it is - very simply - an extension of what your organisation is probably already doing. You're already making websites. You're already putting videos on YouTube (and if you're not, then you probably should be); and you've already got a server somewhere with all your digital assets.

So, getting into digital signage could be as simple as putting a slightly repurposed version of your website (or part of it) on a display somewhere. Might not sound very exciting, but if the information's there, already, then it's not too difficult.

There's a lot more to this, and some of it is commercially confidential, I'm afraid. But you're going to see more and more of Digital Presence as I roll out the concepts in real installations over the next months and years.

I'll keep this up to date with developments, and might ask for a few opinions along the way.

(By the way, there's a digital signage company in the UK called Digital Presence, and, in the interests of full disclosure, I'm a shareholder).