Intelligent Systems Lab Project: Ubiquitious social TV
Participants
- Moritz Jülkenbeck
- Daniel Kühn
- Torben Vollbrecht
Supervisors
- Thilo Paul-Stueve
Motivation
- Watching TV became a social event. Based on this, people often want to communicate with each other while watching.
- If not being in the same room, this can be achieved by using telephone or instant messaging. This draws away attention from watching TV.
- Using the television screen for displaying instant messages solves both problems
Application Scenario
Two persons that are in different places would like to watch television while communicating with each other. They sit down in front of their TV and start our application. They choose the channel they would like to watch using their android mobile phone. Now communication is possible using instant messaging. The messages they sent are displayed on both their TV screens.A friend of theirs joins the channel. Both are calmly notified due to a gentle sound. Now each message is displayed on all three screens.
Objectives
The project goals are- Allow textual communication while watching TV and not drawing away attention from it.
- Calmly notifying user about events such as an user joins a channel
Description
Watching TV is a social event. People enjoy sitting in front of the TV watching the same programme and discuss about it. Unfortunately, in some cases it is not possible to be at the same location. If trying to communicate, one could use SMS or phone. Both draw away attention from the television. Using our application solves this problem.
Our application system is divided into two parts. The first part is an android application. It allows the user to send instant messages, switch the TV-channel and manage their friends.
The other part is our TV application. It uses mplayer for displaying the TV-programme received by dvb-t. It also displays the instant messages.
We use RabbitMQ for sending and receiving messages. These messages contain events such as an user joins a channel, switches a channel or obviously an instant message. Another important backend is the RESTful web service. We use this for managing friends and organizing the state of a channel (eg. which user is in which channel).
Results
- Allow textual communication while watching TV and being in different places
- Being calmly informed about events
- Possibility of seeing online status of friends watching the same on the right side of the screen
- Instant messages are displayed at the bottom of the screen
- Control of television via smartphone running Android OS
Discussion and Conclusion
- The prospected goals have been achieved: Our system is supposed to reduce the amount of distraction from the TV programme as compared to other alternatives such as communication via telephones or SMS.
Outlook
We will continue the development of the system in the following term with a refined focus. In particular we aim to address the following issues:- Integration with other projects such as adapting light depending on type of film
- Improve internal representation of entitys