NICTA tests social TV recommendation engine

By Merri Mack
Thursday, 16 June, 2011

TV has been changing the way we interact since it was invented. Initially it was a little black and white TV with the whole family gathered together to watch the limited programs available. Then we all had a TV in our bedroom so we didn’t have to interact with the family. The big plasma screen came in and people were back in one room watching together.

Now there are IP-capable ‘smart TVs’ - from the likes of Samsung, LG and Sony - that can take an ethernet cable in the back and provide video on demand and connectivity to other devices and services. You can interact with your TV now, with access to databases of movies and histories of the movie stars, web streaming, games, and so on.

But wait, there’s more: NICTA is working on a recommendation engine that recognises patterns and is able to correlate a number of issues through links to social media such as Facebook and YouTube.

NICTA is in the process of finetuning the recommendation engine, trialling it in 30 homes on the Parkbridge housing estate near Liverpool in south-west Sydney, in the form of a special prototype set-top box. The trial will soon extend to a further 200 homes. The impending availability of the National Broadband Network (NBN) is the impetus for the trials, as the NBN will enable far more content to be delivered and at faster speeds.

The recommendation engine looks at patterns of use of your friends and based on that data can pre-fetch video clips, movies and so on, and have it available for you before you want it. Or it might contact you on the TV and suggest you might want to watch something that your friends are watching right now.

The trials are also taking in mobile phones with 15 teenagers testing out the different interfaces and ways of having content delivered.

“This could be an added feature to sell to content providers,” said Dr Terry Percival, Director, Broadband and the Digital Economy for NICTA.

The NICTA research team for the recommendation engine, which is headed up by Dr Percival, is expanding from its present six members to 12 people this year.