The Wii started a revolution in home entertainment.  Suddenly gaming was no longer simply pushing buttons or a joystick but rather your body became the game controller.  That was a profound change for an industry and for consumers.  As a result, you became part of the game, leading to a much more natural and immersive experience.  This change was brought about by the availability of advanced MEMS devices in small packages at price points suitable for the Consumer Electronics market.

 

First the game console OEMs and then the mobile phone OEMs jumped on the new sensor technologies as a way of delivering more value to the end user, a better entertainment experience, and more utility.  Success in the gaming and mobile markets was driven by the effective delivery of a complete motion-enabled experience “out of the box.”   With game consoles, for example, you could go the store, buy a new console, plug it into your TV, and off you go: motion-enabled entertainment out of the box.  The Smartphone soon delivered a similar out-of-the-box experience with sensors on the phone enabling portrait and landscape screen modes, motion gaming, augmented reality apps and more.  These examples demonstrate how a market can explode when a valuable new technology is combined with unified hardware and software platform for developers to exploit.

 

As we watch the rise of new IPTV services, and the growth in shipments of connected Digital TVs (DTVs) and Set-Top Boxes (STBs), we see the potential for another industry, the Pay TV industry, to leverage motion technologies and benefit by delivering more value, better entertainment, and more utility to consumers.   Why is this important for Pay TV service providers and others in the ecosystem?  One study we’ve seen showed that Pay TV subscribers using motion-enabled remotes using point-and-click navigation combined with gesture recognition purchased more Video-On-Demand (VOD) and more games, leading to a 27% increase in revenue per user compared to traditional remotes.

 

There are many different ways in which motion enhances the Home Entertainment experience; from surfing the web on your TV, to purchasing and playing games streamed directly to your STB, to controlling different types of rich media hosted on the web or on the home network, to navigating next generation DTV/STB User Interfaces (UIs) or Electronic Programming Guides (EPGs).  So how can this be achieved by the Pay TV industry?  How can Pay TV service providers assume their place as leaders in the delivery of TV-centric, motion enabled entertainment in the living room?  And how can they effectively monetize these new capabilities to drive revenue?  There are many different players in the Pay TV ecosystem and they each play a role in a complete solution. 

 

Movea has solved this problem by creating MoveTV™, a new SmartMotion®solution for the Pay TV market.  MoveTV provides Pay TV ecosystem partners with a single platform on which to create a complete motion-enabled entertainment experience for consumers.  MoveTV is a unique platform that advances and simplifies the integration of motion powered entertainment for Pay TV subscribers.  For the first time, service providers, game and application developers, remote control and STB manufacturers, DTV OEMs and system integrators, can all leverage a unifying platform and easily incorporate motion control into their products using Movea’s patented SmartMotion technologies.

 

The first motion technology platform to take an ecosystem approach, MoveTV offers an integrated suite of SmartMotion technology components tailored to the needs of different ecosystem partners.  MoveTV platform components work together seamlessly on the backend and are designed to be modular, giving ecosystem partners the flexibility to adopt different levels of motion-driven functionality and capabilities.

 

The next revolution in Home Entertainment is ubiquitous motion-enabled entertainment delivered through the TV by service providers and DTV OEMs.

 

Revolution demands Evolution

 

One of the most vital components in the new motion-enabled living room is the remote control.  A new breed of remotes is arriving to market that can detect human movement through the use of MEMS inertial sensors:  micro-electromechanical gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetometers.  These are now coming in packages of a few square millimeters at total hardware cost of less than $5 for a 9-axis solution and dropping fast.

 

Movea’s SmartMotion remote control reference kit, part of the MoveTV platform, allows you to explore and evaluate our patented processing technologies using an innovative remote control design based on Texas Instruments’ RF4CE platform.  Movea is the only motion technology supplier delivered out of the box with TI’s MEMS driven RF4CE platform. 

 

In applying these MEMS sensors to deliver new capabilities, there are several stages of sophistication one can go to.  The first is simple point-and-click navigation in two dimensions.  This gives the intuitive ease of use that you would get from a computer mouse.  Devices like this are already being deployed by major service providers and they enable users to interact more naturally with menus, web browsers and casual games on DTVs and STBs. 

 

The next step is to build on the basic point-and-click remotes to deliver gesture recognition capabilities.  Gesture recognition allows simple hand motions to execute more advanced control functions on the DTV or STB.  For example, ticks or checks can be used to start a movie or select a picture.  An “X” can be used to close a photo album or quit an app, etc.  We’ve found that a simple database of less than 10 gestures can be employed to dramatically increase the efficiency of interactions needed to control a next generation DTV/STB UI.  This improved interaction efficiency is measured by the time it takes to execute a series common control actions with a motion remote as compared to the time needed to execute the same control actions using a traditional remote control.  It takes much less time to whip through a series of interactions with a motion-enabled remote control.  If it’s easier and faster, people will use it more, as indicated by the results of the study mentioned above.

 

Libraries of gestures can be provided by Movea or customized gesture databases can be created by service providers and application developers with the help of a MoveTV application called Gesture Builder, also part of the MoveTV platform.  Service providers can even enable subscribers to create their own in-air signatures; user defined gestures for authentication.  This ability to easily identify who’s watching the TV can be leveraged by service providers to enable:

 

·       Targeted advertising

·       Intelligent content recommendations

·       Parental control of TV content

·       Personalized favorites & preferences

 

Since mass adoption of gestures as an interaction mode will be facilitated by standards, Movea is actively seeking to partner with industry leaders to define and develop a common set of gestures that be used across applications and manufacturers – effectively, a universal language of gestures.

 

Gesture recognition can become even more sophisticated with 3D gesture recognition for gaming, more secure air-signatures, and advanced 3D UIs. 

 

Once you’ve got your gesture database defined, you need to enable the gestures to be recognized on your host platform, whether that’s a DTV or a STB.  Software running on the host platform needs to communicate with the remote control, receive data, recognize gestures, and communicate events or processed data to other applications running on the DTV or STB.  This motion middleware is required to deliver on the promise and value of motion control and to distribute motion services to a range of client applications. 

 

Movea’s SmartMotion Server, which runs on standard STB and DTV platforms, is the motion processing engine for digital entertainment. SmartMotion Server delivers advanced gesture recognition and motion processing capabilities for applications running on the DTV and STB.  It recognizes different device capabilities and enables communication between SmartMotion enabled devices and applications by providing a standard interface devices and applications.

 

An App for That

 

While there is data which shows that motion control and gesture recognition increase the consumption of premium services, ultimately the business model needs further proof before service providers will adopt motion technologies on a mass market scale.  So what will drive the business model for service providers in this new world of connected TVs and STBs?  We think time will show that there’s an app for that.  Mobile and Tablet apps will enable service providers to strengthen the 1-to-1 relationships with their subscribers, exploit multiple screens in the living room, and deliver an extension of their service for mobile subscribers on the road with a more consistent user experience.  Additionally, apps and games delivered to the STB will create revenue sharing opportunities for service providers and, as opportunities grow for service providers, so will they grow for the rest of the ecosystem.

 

Motion technologies will play a critical role in driving mass adoption of these new capabilities and MoveTV will help pave the way by providing the Pay TV ecosystem with a unifying platform on which to deliver a complete motion-enabled entertainment experience for consumers.

 

 

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