Other Equipment and Software
Studiocode
Through the use of Studiocode software, we are able to code live or pre-recorded video footage for meaningful events or occurrences, such as every time someone presses the red button on their remote or talks to their viewing partner. By pressing the hot keys created for these behaviours, the observer is able to code these behaviours against video footage of the viewer and the program content they are watching for later analysis.
Little Brother™
In addition to ‘in-lab’ research conducted at ITRI, the Institute also engages in field research designed to study viewer behaviour in more naturalistic settings. One method which it uses relies on unobtrusive video recording (with participant consent) of viewing activity. Such measurement provides one of the richest descriptions of viewing behaviour. Unfortunately, however, the coding and analysis of such recordings has traditionally proven to be logistically prohibitive to deploy with scale. As a consequence, most such studies use an extremely limited (i.e. less than 10) sample of households. To address this problem, ITRI invented the Little Brother™ set top box which not only records TV viewing activity, but also automates much of the coding associated with viewer behaviour facilitating unobtrusive observation of relatively large natural samples.
Digital Head End
In 2003 the Institute was awarded a large Australia Research Council grant enabling it to commission a full digital television head end. The application was supported by all five Australian television networks, digital enablers (OpenTV, NDS and Sun Microsystems) and all West Australian public universities (University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University and Murdoch University). The head end is capable of encoding and modulating digital television streams across terrestrial, satellite and cable television platforms and includes back-end infrastructure to facilitate dynamic interactive services. The facilities allow for testing using ‘real world’ applications rather than simulations.
