Location: Swinton Park – a luxury castle hotel set in 200 acres of parkland, lakes and gardens – near Masham, North Yorkshire. The castle is surrounded by an estate in which guests have access to rivers, reservoirs, moorland, dales and beautiful countryside bordering the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Dates: 6th to 10th March 2006

Five intensive days (and four late nights) of brain-storming, market research, prototype/concept development, end-user profiling, mentor meetings, group meetings and ‘run-thru’ presentations culminated in a 15 minute pitch to two BBC commissioners (Jem Stone and Jason DaPonte from the BBC internet commissioning team).

The mentors made the difference between a good event and a great event. A well-trained and highly motivated team - they kept the energy up and the attitudes positive. Daily briefings were a must - reminding everyone of their goals, the key messages and helping us all to make adjustments where necessary.

Reminiscent of BBC TWO’s Dragons’ Den, where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure business funding, each team’s Friday presentation was the climax of the entire event. Although ten companies were invited – not all of them, including Save9, walked away with a BBC project commission on the final day. The lucky few deserved their accolade – they delivered great pitches (some very entertaining) and innovative ideas that had to be explored for their potential.

I’m sure most of us came away with much more than we had expected; a great experience, the kudos that comes with working with the BBC, some free publicity and business contacts that will hopefully last for years to come. A major bonus of the Yorkshire Innovation Labs 2006 is that each team will also be invited to another BBC workshop to pitch to venture capitalists and business angels - for exploring other development opportunities and financing.

In summary this was a significant event for new media companies in Yorkshire such as Save9 – with the BBC clearly demonstrating their interest in the creation and growth of new media talent within our region.

Save9's project proposal aims to address all three of the main elements of the BBC's internet strategy - how the BBC makes content available on-demand, how people navigate BBC content and how people engage with BBC content.

Background

Broadcast TV permeates the lives of millions of people across the globe and on-demand video content is reaching an ever-increasing audience. Innovative digital television services are in abundance and the cross-over between linear media broadcasting and interactive media on-demand is blurring. It is not unusual to find internet web browsers built into modern televisions or for viewers to use interactive services supplied via digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. IPTV is a prime example of broadcasting and Internet convergence that has support from major electronics manufacturers such as PACE Micro Technology (PACE announced the worlds first ever hardware H.264 IPTV set-top-box in June 2005)...

http://www.pace.co.uk/corporate/newsroom/pacenewsitem.asp?id=10270&template=0

Project Summary

An opportunity now exists for Save9 Limited, in conjunction with the BBC Innovation Labs, to explore the potential of flowing synchronous meta data, split into topics of interest, with current digital video content via TV transmissions (DVB-SI) on a set-top box and/or on-demand digital recordings accessible through the MyBBC Player (or BBC iMP - integrated Media Player). http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp

Tech Note: DVB transmissions include a metadata transport layer called service information (DVB-SI). AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in conjunction with an EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) and the BBC Infax database is another possible value added service that would simplify the roll-out of this concept without the need to affect original broadcast transmissions at all.

Our main task for this week is to develop a prototype 'plug-in' that works with the MyBBC Player and/or an in-built digital TV-web browser that could theoretically support the user-insertion and viewer playback of annotated video content. The result would be an enriched and interactive BBC experience that is attained through the true convergence of broadcast television and internet services – with a minimal resource burden from broadcasters such as the BBC.

How it works - User Profile Scenarios

Key thought - 'Bubbles in a stream'

Example Scenario - THE ENTHUSIAST

'Frank', our imaginary sports enthusiast, is a UK Manchester City fan who eats, drinks, breathes and sleeps football. Frank feeds his interest through a range of media types; websites, newspapers, TV and radio. Frequently there are times when Frank gets very emotional about his sport - so much so that he would like to clearly demonstrate to the world why Man City's lead scorer (i.e. Andy Cole) is such a genius or how a particular section of the BBC televised game was ruined by a referee's decision. Frank may even want to highlight a few seconds in their most recent televised match to explain the off-side rule to his american friend. :-)

Using Save9's Synchronous Hyperlinking plug-in for the MyBBC Player Frank can now watch an entire digital video stream of any football match and insert topics of interest ('Bubbles') that can span from a split second to an entire section of the video. For example - at 15 minutes and 12 seconds into the second half a superb goal is scored by Andy Cole - is at that precise moment when Frank decides to insert a 'Bubble' comment icon and associated text/graphics into that defining video moment - captured for the posterity of his fan club (or even the whole of the UK!). Such annotations are accessible to other viewers who may watch the video at their leisure. Franks comments can be visualised in a side panel window via a simple toggle on/off button.

GUI (Graphical User Interface): A narrow window immediately below the media video screen represents the 'Bubbles' of annotations in the video 'Stream'. Put simply, different 'Bubbles' of information topics are represented by simple icons that stream slowly from right to left, as the video plays forward.

The power of our interactive concept is realised when you consider that almost any interest group can add topics of interest so that other parties may consume that content whether it is embedded graphical/video/textual data or a link to a 3rd party website. The 'Bubbles' stimulate interest depending upon the topic classification's icon. E.g. a 'i' icon for information, a star icon for a movie actor, a musical note for a piece of interesting music or a tree icon for an item relating to nature.

More later...