Funding for interactive lounge room

THE Interactive Television Research Institute (ITRI) based at Murdoch University has secured significant funding for an Interactive Television Audience Research Lab.

The $1.7 million facility, to be housed at the Murdoch campus, is the brainchild of a research consortium funded by the Australia Research Council (ARC), the Nine Network, the Seven Network, Network Ten, the ABC, SBS, the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association, the WA State Department of Education, Liberate Technologies, Open TV, Sun Microsystems, NDS, the University of Western Australia, and Curtin, Edith Cowan and Murdoch Universities.

The facility will feature state-of-the-art audience measurement technologies and a mock living room capable of providing simulations of digital television, broadband and personal video recorder technologies.

ITRI Director, Professor Duane Varan, will coordinate the research by academics and research students at the four Western Australian universities as well as the industry partners.

"The nascent interactive television industry continues to suffer from a lack of solid consumer research to motivate its development and the lab provides an opportunity to help remedy that," said Professor Varan.

"We are particularly pleased to see all major interactive TV players in the consortium it should provide us with an excellent forum through which to better understand the medium."

The facility's funding reflects $411,000 awarded by the ARC, $180,000 from the research consortium and over a million dollars of in-kind support.

In a separate development, a second ARC application by the Institute was also successful.

This project explores how interactive television technologies can enhance children's television programming.

"Research already conducted at ITRI has demonstrated that interactive television significantly enhances children's cognitive engagement and understanding, suggesting that it should help children's television become significantly more effective in assisting children to pursue educational tasks," said Professor Varan.

"Interactivity also allows the matching of program content with children's development, giving children the opportunity to learn at their own pace."

Project partners include the ABC, the Nine Network, Nickelodeon, the WA State Department of Education and Murdoch University.

Collectively, the projects represent over $3.2 million with over $1 million of that amount in the form of cash contributions to the project.