The aim of 2-IMMERSE is to validate a new multi-screen service capability through lab demonstrators and pilots of high quality content in homes, schools and public venues.

The goal of the project is to allow TV service providers to break free from the constraints of rendering a broadcast stream onto a single 16×9 frame and to develop compelling experiences that combine synchronised, interactive and customizable content service applications (Distributed Media Apps) to provide individual and shared content customized to the number and type of screens available and the preferences of the audience. In doing so our aim is to open up to audiences capabilities for configuration and control only available currently to producers and presenters (e.g. “show replay again here, keep the leaderboard on this tablet and the view of the crowd on that second wall screen”). We do not wish to burden the audience with the level of decision making the producer commands but to make possible local configuration and selection of media through combinations of Media Applications, thus allowing new services based on the convergence of broadband broadcast and social media.

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The project brings together a multi-disciplinary team across: computing, networking and broadcast engineering; media production craft and experience design; the creative arts and social sciences. This mix of skills, perspectives and experience will help 2-IMMERSE to deliver the technical and design challenges of:

1. New forms of coordinated multi-screen experience – Creating new content experiences based on the coordination of broadcast and broadband delivered content across multiple consumer devices (delivering the right content to the right devices at the right time);
2. New ways for audiences to engage with multi-screen content – Making available to audiences some of the capabilities previously only available to producers to personalise their experience and respond to in-the-moment needs more flexibly;
3. A new extensible platform for multi-screen experiences – A platform that has been demonstrated to support multi-screen experiences and can be extended by third parties to cover genres beyond sport and drama; and
4. New tools for the production of experiences for multiple screens – Tools, design guidelines and workflow insights that allow producers to orchestrate experiences for arbitrary multi-screen environments.
5. Seeding a community of practice – To engageg creative artists and producers to get their input to the technology and experience design; and to prompt their thinking about the challenges of designing and producing experiences over multi-screen environments;
6. Interaction design insights To develop design guidelines derived from full-scale trials of live events across two major genres in three types of location.

In 2-IMMERSE, four use cases will drive the development of prototype services to support personalized, immersive and shared live and on-demand coverage of theatre and sport. Pilots and lab experiments will guide innovation in both technology and design, and will showcase the kind of experiences made possible by the 2-IMMERSE platform. These will also act as starting points for others to extend the coverage of content genres and audience contexts within and beyond those covered by the project.