TagScreen: Synchronization of Social Television with Hidden Sound Markers

A new system that supports long-range and real-time synchronization from TVs to mobile devices

Social television allows viewers to share their opinions on their viewing experience through mobile devices. TagScreen is a software-based solution, which inserts a series of hidden sound markers into the audio track. It can track the TV playing progress, and then synchronize the TV and mobile devices. TagScreen provides a platform for real time conversations between users, allowing them to feel like watching TV together without affecting the movie viewing quality.

Architecture

Marker encoding

Signal processing

Special Features and Advantages

Supports existing TVs and mobile devices
Adopts an energy-efficient recognition algorithm specially designed for mobile devices
Supports long-range or multipath-resistant synchronization at second-level, being independent of device diversity over severely frequency-selective acoustic channels

Applications

Pulls the “Bullet Screen” comments from TVs to a second screen on mobile devices, keeping the TV free of distracting comments and providing a better viewing experience
Provides advertising opportunity or programme information on mobile devices

Principal Investigator

Dr Lei YANG

Department of Computing

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