Developing a Multi-Device Immersive TV-Experience: User Expectations and Practices

This paper discusses the results of a closed lab pilot test featuring a documentary on a football school in Porto. The documentary was displayed as regular directed TV-content on an HD TV-screen and participants could use a Samsung Gear VR HMD and a tablet to watch it in 360°. 27 participants participated in the test and testing took place with individual viewers and in teams of 2. The aim of the lab test was to investigate how people would make use of this multi-device set-up (which devices do they use, length of the interaction, do they stand or sit down) and whether they consider this a social experience. Also, the influence of the 360° experience on the storyline was questioned. Each session was observed and afterwards an interview took place to discuss the experience. Respondents were rather enthusiastic about this experience. Even though the HMD tends to isolate people, it was still considered a social experience and people talked about the content and the experience. A main limitation of the set-up was the difference in audiovisual quality between the content on TV and the content on the VR and the tablet, which was not in HD.