I THINK WE ALL KNOW people with media rooms in their homes. Secretly or perhaps not-so-secretly, we all want one.
A 100-inch screen that drops from the ceiling with an HD projector, surround sound, subwoofers in the floor, popcorn machine and beer tap… Okay now I’m getting carried away.
But if the consumer has all this high tech gear (and the stats say more are moving in this direction), what is he sitting down to watch? Broadcast TV? Maybe, maybe not. What if what’s on TV isn’t good enough to maximize the abilities of the media room? Does he change the channel? Pop in a DVD? 
What this consumer is looking for is an immersive TV experience, says Fred Mattocks (right), CBC Television’s executive director of production and resources. While compelling stories or popular sports will always key the immersive experience, the audio as well as the video have to be perfectly compelling, too.
If the viewer is going to make an appointment, a date, to sit and watch a program, in the not-too-distant-future it’s got to be an all-over standout experience. Something that will draw them back to the channel again and again.
What follows is an edited transcript of a recent chat between Mattocks and cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien on immersive TV, its more common brother utility TV and just where Mattocks and the CBC sees the TV market heading.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s start off with what is immersive TV, from your point of view?
Fred Mattocks: Immersive TV is TV that totally absorbs the user in the experience… gorgeous television you make a date with. It’s television that offers a total experience: visually immersive, aurally – in other words, films. It gives a stage for great stories and great characters and great landscapes.
GOB: How important is the audio component of it? It seems to be a bit forgotten sometimes.
FM: In the television business traditionally – and I hate to say this – audio is traditionally forgotten. It’s never dealt with as carefully as it should be. But in the immersive world, it’s absolutely essential. It’s absolutely important.
And that poses production and creative challenges. When we started doing Hockey Night in Canada in HD, this year, we didn’t actually know, from a creative viewpoint, what the right soundscape for Hockey Night in Canada was.
So we’ve had to invent it. And that’s a good thing. It’s a new creative challenge. We have to give the viewer the immersive experience that’s as good as, or as I like to dream, even better than being at the game.
GOB: Now, when you say you had to invent it, can you be a little more specific about that?
FM: Well, what happens is our audio people have to think about what’s the right soundscape? What’s the right sound environment for the viewers who best appreciate the Hockey Night in Canada experience? So, you’ve got all kinds of sound elements there. You’ve got the announcers, the clips and slow motion and so on. You’ve got the actual rink noise. You’ve got the ambiance. You’ve the crowd noise. What’s the right level of those and how do you place them around the viewer, so that the experience is as fulfilling as possible.
GOB: Okay. What about the cost of doing immersive TV?
FM: It’s not cheap. Producing anything in HD can cost more than producing in standard definition television but it really depends on what your starting point is. If you’re producing big bucks drama on 35 mm, then HD tends to be cheaper. And that goes for many commercials which are, right now, produced on 35 mm film. In the standard definition world, though, the sort of accepted rule of thumb, right now, it’s about 10% (more expensive).
GOB: Is the cost coming down? Or, how quickly is it coming down?
FM: Well, I can’t answer the question specifically. Yes, the costs are coming down because technology costs are coming down. So, that’s one thing. But they’ll also come down as we become more familiar with it. Right now, scenic design costs, for instance, in an HD production are probably far more.
(Set elements) that in traditional television you used to be able to get away with – or shortcuts – you can’t get away with them anymore.
GOB: Such as?
FM: If you’ve ever been on television sets, you’ll see, for example, something that looks like wood, that isn’t wood, or – I remember my first ever television program, where part of the set was painted egg cartons. On air, it didn’t look like that.
So all of those shortcuts that we’ve learned to use – because of the resolution in standard definition television – we can’t use anymore in high definition. So, we’ve got to spend more time and care in building scenic elements, costumes and makeup and that kind of stuff.
GOB: What HD standard are we going to settle on. Is 1080p where everyone’s headed?
FM: It’s a 1080 world – there’s absolutely no doubt about that. I believe that we’re headed for 1080p but that’s not driven by the broadcast industry; that’ll be driven by the consumer.
There was an article I recently read that said 1080p will be just a high end curiosity – that consumers will never pay for it and nobody could tell the difference. I heard the same arguments in 1999 about HD – having HD at all, that is. It’s just wrong.
I have seen 1080p displays and I have seen Blu Ray and HD DVD content played back and I can tell you – you can see the difference. It’s quite remarkable.
I think that inevitably, the consumer electronics industry, which has been very, very smart and aggressive about meeting the consumer demand for quality, will (go to 1080p). At the end of the day, it’ll be up to broadcasters and other content providers to catch up and our competition will be high definition DVDs of whatever format. That’ll be what we’re measured against. And I think that’ll will inevitably pull us to a 1080p world.
Having said that, it’s not going to happen overnight.
You know, we’re in the unusual circumstance now that in the coming year, (as HD cameras and other equipment) become more broadly available and as the price falls down to the range that the consumer can afford, that consumers will have better quality equipment in their living rooms, than broadcasters will have in their studios.
For the first time, the consumer will have better quality stuff and this is the first time in broadcast history this has happened. I think this shows a fundamental shift in the consumer experience. So anybody who’s thinking about broadcasting in the old way of thinking of the high quality equipment of the producer and the low quality at the consumer end, has missed the lesson of last three or four years.
There are two million Canadians who spend somewhere between three and five thousand bucks a piece for an HD set. And there are others who have spent thousands to put home theatre environments in their houses in the past three or four years and they’ve done all of that in the name of quality.
It’s up to the broadcast industry to meet their challenge.
GOB: How far away are we from the broadcast industry meeting that challenge and being fully high definition?
FM: We’re a ways from that. Can I say when we’ll be 50% there? I don’t know. You know at the CBC, the bulk of our content is still produced in standard definition – but that’s changing as fast as we can afford to change it, and I’d say that it’s probably true for other Canadian broadcasters who produce original content.
Those whose business model is based on buying content from other people are trying to buy as much HD as they can and they’re doing that as fast as they can afford to. So you know, things will probably move faster than broadcasters are comfortable with, from a business basis – but probably won’t move fast enough to make consumers and producers happy.
Having said all that, I think it’s going to happen faster than anybody would predict.
GOB: Do we need to set a deadline for HD conversion, the way the FCC did, in the States?
FM: I think it’s absolutely necessary that Canada set a conversion deadline and the reason is until you set a deadline, you have no cost certainty about what where we’re going here.
(Without a deadline, it) limits our ability to divert resources to an HD network and HD production and all of the kinds of things that are required to produce more content in HD. The second you have a deadline, you know what you’re doing. Whatever the deadline is, you’re in a better position than not having one at all.
GOB: But where does that leave you in terms of all the towers – about delivering high definition to the smaller markets, over the air?
FM: The whole point is, some consumers are always going to want to get their television programming, whether it’s HD or SD, in a world of maximum choice – the 500 channel world or the 1,000 channel world, or whatever the number is. And so, ultimately that’s going to come from cable or satellites or perhaps broadband. At the end of the day, that will be what some people will want. And they won’t mind spending $500 or $750 or $1,000 a year for the privilege.
But it’s my assertion that there may well be enough consumers in Canada who are interested in having their ten channels that they really want – having it in maximum quality and getting it for free or for one time purchase of an antenna, in whatever shape that takes.
GOB: But does that mean if you’re going to deliver HD to Sudbury without a tower, you would look to charging a subscription fee, or no?
FM: Well, we’re a long way from that. You know, we’re just exploring the idea. We actually don’t know and the CBC hasn’t decided what we think the future is.
Look at what they call Freeview in the U.K. It’s a digital, over the air service – six million Briton’s are watching Freeview. Now that’s a different market than Canada with different properties, consumers and different habits, but, at the end of the day, what we’ve got to recognize is, everything is changing in the digital world. You know, I believe television is undergoing a profound change and immersive television is just one part of it. The other part of it is, the morphing of the rest of television into utility television.
GOB: I was going to ask you about that, just to sort of wrap it up. I mean, how much commodity TV will there be and how much immersive TV do you end up doing, in the end?
FM: That’s both a business question and a brand question and I think commodity television – or utility television, as they prefer to call it – is really all about television that’s an accessory to people’s lives: Television you can use. Television that’s there on your command.
GOB: News and those types of things?
FM: The news, sports, weather. I’m a traveler – so if I’m in Calgary – what are the CBC radio frequencies in Calgary? A simple map will tell me that.
Let’s say I saw a comedy show last night. I can pick up the three best acts. You know, each one is ten minutes long, so all kinds of things you can think of that exist in the space and television is going to be a part of that. It’s not going to be all of that. The interactivity is absolutely a necessary part of it
Utility television will be a very, very big business in this country and a lot of people will make money at it, but it has very, very different properties from immersive television. At the end of the day, how much of each you do, really depends on what your business is.
I think the public broadcaster has to be in both places. We have to be in the immersive space because that’s where you tell stories that people care about. That’s where you reach out and touch people where they live and that’s where they see themselves in a way that they recognize and they respond to and they identify with.
In the utility world, that’s where you provide service. So a guy standing at the bus stop, talking to his friend while he’s waiting for the bus, they’re talking about last night’s hockey game and then want to see the final play, he should be able to push two or three buttons on his cell phone and be able to watch the 90 seconds (of highlights).
That’s a kind of content that makes a lot of sense – news makes a lot of sense. On dressing their kids to get them ready to go school – having instant weather makes a lot of sense. These are all commodity-utility television kinds of apps.
