SMPTE, the society of motion picture and television--and digital--engineers, is teaming with the University of Southern California's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) to study on-set virtual production (OSVP).

SMPTE defines OSVP as where "physical and digital worlds interact in real-time using traditional production tools plus virtual and augmented reality, CGI, and game-engine technologies."

The two are partnering to collaborate on prototypes, demonstrations and lab testing, given what SMPTE has said are the challenges in "knowledge, interoperability, and lack of resources" in the OSVP space. ETC will be the lead researcher and the results will be shared with the wider media entertainment industry to help alleviate those "known pain points."

The goal is to come up with, among other things, "curated education, interoperability guidelines, benchmarks, workflows, naming conventions and technical solutions," and SMPTE said it is looking to produce some results in those areas within a year.

It is the first in a series of a Rapid Industry Solutions (RIS) initiatives launched last June to "address quickly evolving technologies and their application across the media and entertainment industry." ■

The Pac-12 Conference Tuesday announced it will postpone all sports competitions, including college football, through the end of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The decision comes hours after the Big 10 announced its decision to cancel all Fall sports events until at least Spring 2021. The Pac-12 and Big 10 Conferences are part of the Power Five conferences that hold major influence over college sports. It is unclear what the remaining conferences -- Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Big-12, and Southeastern Conference-- will follow the Big 10 and Pac-12 conferences in cancelling all Fall sports. 

The Pac-12 conference includes such schools as Arizona, UCLA, USC, and Oregon State. 

“The health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports has been our number one priority since the start of this current crisis,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott in a statement. “Our student-athletes, fans, staff and all those who love college sports would like to have seen the season played this calendar year as originally planned, and we know how disappointing this is.”

Related: Big Ten Conference Postpones College Football Season

Hollywood studios have made noise with virtual reality content, theme parks have put VR headsets on roller coaster riders, CNN live-streamed a presidential debate in VR, and even retailers are getting on board with virtual reality to help sell everything from chairs to appliances.

But Philip Lelyveld, virtual and augmented reality initiative program lead for the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, could only chuckle during a presentation here when he shared survey results that showed what consumers want most with their VR.

An Ericsson Consumer Labs survey from late last year found that using VR for retail (64%), VR smartphone apps (62%) and movie experiences (57%) were the top three interests among smartphone users. No. 4 on the list? All-angle tech support.

The results just go to show that the young consumer VR industry is still feeling its way around when it comes to what works with VR and what appeals to the average customer.

“The modern era of virtual reality is less than three years old,” Lelyveld noted. “It’s a new art form; it’s a new storytelling tool.”

But according to Michael Davies, senior vice president of field and technical operations for Fox Sports Media Group, sports broadcasters especially are still in a trial and error period with virtual reality.

“We’re still learning about virtual reality,” he said. “There are things you think are quite captivating but turn out [disappointing].” Something like boxing in virtual reality holds great promise, because it’s extremely close and intimate. A huge soccer field is a different story altogether. “Things that look far away [normally] look very far away in VR,” Davies said.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.

NEXT TV BRIEFS

TV Everywhere Isn’t Going Anywhere

John Bishop, chief technology officer for Akamai Technologies’ media business, looks at how people are ingesting content, and sees a sea change happening. And a big part of that is TV everywhere.

Giving consumers the option to access their pay TV content anywhere, on any device, at any time, has become an expectation, not just a nice thing to have, Bishop and other panelists agreed here on the “TV Everywhere: The Multiscreen Challenge” panel.

And this relatively new way of ingesting content isn’t without its drawbacks.

“I think the Olympics [this summer in Rio de Janiero] is going to be a massive event for [TV everywhere],” Bishop said. “I think a lot of people are going to be really unproductive at work. People are going to be watching Usain Bolt running at work at 3:30 ET.”

Barry Tishgart, vice president of Comcast Wholesale, added that TV Everywhere companies need to approach each global region differently. Unlike in the U.S., where at-home pay TV is prevalent, some countries are digital-only and mobile-first. “In some parts of the world, multiscreen viewing surpasses set-top viewing,” he said.

Google’s DoubleClick Clicks With Cablevision, Roku

Daniel Alegre, president of global partnerships at Google, last week announced the launch of DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion, with initial distribution deals with Cablevision Systems and Roku.

The news, which came during a wide-ranging keynote session here, is a step toward further injecting Google into the traditional TV ecosystem.

The Dynamic Ad Insertion tool “makes ads hyper-relevant for viewers across any screen they watch by creating individual viewer streams,” Alegre said.

Alegre was joined onstage by Cablevision chief operating officer Kristin Dolan, who described the MVPD’s bid to become a “connections company” instead of a cable company. The embrace of the DoubleClick setup, she said, fits in with the overall innovation push at Cablevision, which just rolled out Hulu via the set-top box. “How do we allow people to not only experience when they want but also take advantage of the subscriptions they have to other things?”

She added, though, that 91% of viewing on Cablevision still happens live. “It shows that a lot of people still want to watch things as they happen, which should be good news for all the broadcasters in the room.”

— Dade Hayes, B&C

Only 28% of speaking characters across 414 films and TV episodes in 2014-2015 were from “underrepresented” racial and ethnic groups, which is close to 10% below the U.S. population norm, according to a new study.

The report, from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, examined 109 films and 305 TV series and found that neither has much to brag about in terms of putting minorities and women on either side of the camera.

“This is no mere diversity problem,” said Stacy L. Smith, survey author. “. This is an inclusion crisis. Over half of the content we examined features no Asian or Asian-American characters, and over 20% featured no African-American characters. It is clear that the ecosystem of entertainment is exclusionary.”

The study comes as the Academy Awards is being blasted for its lack of minorities among nominated films, spawning the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. The Oscars telecast airs on ABC Feb. 28.

Walt Disney Co. and The CW, along with SVOD players Hulu and Amazon, got decent marks for inclusion.

Read more at broadcastingcable.com.