Venue: Landmark Hotel, London (3/7/96)
Chaired by Hugh Johnson, Head of Research at Channel 4, the MRG Conference consisted of a number of short speeches concerning recent media developments. The following covers highlights of the morning session.
Tony Twyman, Technical Consultant from BARB, gave a speech titled “Various Meter Developments Around the World” with reference to gathering viewing data. He said that meters are used to measure the state of the television set and monitors the station being watched, set switching and who is exactly watching. Typical meter methods include meters that monitor the tuning function on the television, a probe in the set that monitors frequency, a “sniffer” meter that scans signals from the tuner; and signal injection which already knows the frequencies and searches for them on the set.
Looking to the future he points out that equipment is getting more complex and inaccessible, particularly with the advent of digital television. Potential solutions mentioned are Picture Matching which matches a sample of the screen; Audio Matching which samples sounds but can take longer; Video Identifying Signals from within the video recorder; and Audio Identifying Signals. Current developments include smaller and faster meters being used, for example wrist watch and cigarette packet sized meters that can be carried by the viewer.
The speech was concluded with Mr Twyman saying that digital television makes current meters obsolete. In the long term meters that can cope with this are needed together with smaller and more personal meters.
Continuing on the theme of meters, Mike Kirkham, Managing Director of AGB, gave an insight into current AGB developments, “An AGB Initiative.” Originally terrestrial television was the only signal that needed to be monitored but now includes satellite, cable, video and digital frequencies. Signals on digital are difficult to monitor because both sound and picture are decompressed and sent by one frequency. This means that it is difficult to determine one channel from another with current technology.
Mr Kirkham says that AGB are implementing the method of picture matching to overcome this. Various samples are taken from the TV picture and are stored in a meter which is connected through the television’s SCART socket. Information is then sent through the telephone lines to the central site where the data is stored and results are obtained.
The benefits of Picture Matching are that it is taken directly from the television, there is no intrusion on the panel (sample audience) and no reliance on transmitted signals, for example on teletext. Mike Kirkham finally mentioned that Picture Matching provides an accurate measure of digital television and is also compatible with current BARB infrastructure.
