new_TVXTheme: Can television compete with other emerging platforms in Asia?

This TVX Asia Forum (2016) is a first of its kind to specially develop the Asian community in the ACM TVX community (The Prestigious Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video). As themed “Can television compete with other emerging platforms in Asia?’, the year forum will focus on how the traditional TV industry (sometimes) cooperates and (more often) contends with different media, which are trying to create new business models.

Date & Time for the Forum

TVX Asia Forum 2016 will take place at 2:00pm on June 22nd 2016 in Chicago, USA. The event is associated to the main ACM TVX conference, initiated by the General Chairs of ACM TVX 2018 (Seoul, South Korea).

Forum Format

The format of the Forum is highly interactive, intended to form a community of academics and practitioners interested in the current status of online video and television in Asia. Four keynotes, representing different views (TV manufacturing industry, Online video business, and Chinese digital market), will be invited. Each of them will have around half an hour to introduce the state of the art, and their perspectives. One of the Forum fellows, acting as host, will then have ten minutes of response time, opening the floor then to the Forum participants for general discussion. The intention is to create a process of sustained knowledge exchange and interaction.

Keynotes

Tech aspects (2:00pm – 3:30pm)

  • Si Jung Kim (University of Nevada, USA)
    • Annotated TV Content Design
  • Shuichi Aoki (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, NHK, Japan)
    • 8K Super Hi-Vision over Broadcasting and Broadband
  • Takayuki Nakachi (NTT, Japan)
    • Quality of Services with 4K/8K Visual Communication
  • Youngkwon Lim (Samsung USA, USA)
    • Hybrid Broadcasting Issues on HDTV or UHDTV

Platform aspects (4:00pm – 6:00pm)

  • Hokyoung Blake Ryu (Hanyang University, Korea)
    • Cultural Issues of New Media Consumption in Korea
  • Sang Hee Kweon (Sungkyunkwan University, Korea)
    • C-P-N-D Model in Smart TV

Participation

The ACM TVX ASIA Forum welcomes international delegates, especially, Smart TV practitioners, new platforms and online content developers, and UI/UX researchers (not restricted to Asian delegates) who are interested in entering into the Asian market.

Backgrounds

The Asian consumer revolution is here. The conventional media consumption based on television watching (notably, one-way and push-service) is diminishing, leaving space for more interactive and cherry-picking consumption based on mobile phones and computers. Given the importance of television manufacturing in Asia, key players (e.g., LG, Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, etc.) are providing improved solutions based on bigger and better resolution, and Internet-able television sets or smart TVs. As the Internet became part of the mainstream media, many have questioned if this online medium has to power to cannibalize the traditional TV world.

A ZenithOptimedia report well represents this cannibalistic effect the Internet might have on television – and the possibility that the Internet would eventually replace television. “The average amount of time people will spend consuming online video each day will increase by 23.3% in 2015 and by a further 19.8% in 2016. In particular, this growth in video consumption is being driven by the rapid rise of smartphone and tablet penetration across the globe, together with the resulting changes in consumer behavior. Video consumption on mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) is forecast to grow by 43.9% in 2015 and 34.8% in 2016. ZenithOptimedia (July, 2015) ”

In Asia, the migration of video content to the mobile-based Internet service has been significant in the last five years, when, particular for the younger generation, online video platforms seem to have actually entered into a game-changing stage. This definitely calls for the focus of the Internet’s cannibalistic effect on television, if the conventional television-dependent business value chain does not take an initiative. Witnessing such surging popularity of new online video platforms, many television executives are pondering the best way to respond to the phenomenon.

Little is known about the underlying and dynamic relationship between television and online video from the consumer perspective. Television manufacturers (e.g., LG, Sony, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc), on the one hand, develop a similar platform to watch online video on their own TV set; on the other hand, try to provide new functions that the Internet or mobile phones cannot have, emphasizing that their new TV set could be functionally superior, functionally more desirable than the mobile phones. This is tentatively called, multi-functional ‘Smart TV’ equipped with Internet-able functions, online video contents, games, and even video-calls (e.g., Skype); however, many Asian TV companies are in doubt of smart TV’s substitutability for mobile phones. Therefore, this forum is not designed simply to examine whether or not smart TV can become a substitute for mobile phones or computers. Rather, it attempts to identify the specific underlying motivations for watching video content that increase or decrease the degree to which consumers perceive substitutability between new online video platforms and television.

This forum wishes to discuss i) issues and opportunities in the Asian online video market; ii) how Internet-able TV can compete with other easy-to-use platforms such as mobile phones and computers, and finally, iii) what business models would then best serve for TV manufacturers and online video content providers (e.g., Tencent in China, Naver in Korea etc.)

Forum Organizers

  • Hokyoung Ryu is a Professor in Department of Arts & Technology at Hanyang University (Email: hryu@hanyang.ac.kr)
  • Santosh Basapur works at IIT Institute of Design, and the general chair of ACM TVX2016

Sponsors

  • ACM Development Funds
  • ACM TVX Steering Committee
  • Department of Arts & Technology, Hanyang University