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The sweet spot: how people trade off size and definition on mobile devices

Published: 26 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Mobile TV can deliver up-to-date content to users on the move. But it is currently unclear how to best adapt higher resolution TV content. In this paper, we describe a laboratory study with 35 participants who watched short clips of different content and shot types on a 200ppi PDA display at a resolution of either 120x90 or 168x128. Participants selected their preferred size and rated the acceptability of the visual experience. The preferred viewing ratio depended on the resolution and had to be at least 9.8H. The minimal angular resolution people required and which limited the up-scaling factor was 14 pixels per degree. Extreme long shots were best when depicted actors were at least 0.7° high. A second study researched the ecological validity of previous lab results by comparing them to results from the field. Image size yielded more value for users in the field than was apparent from lab results. In conclusion, current prediction models based on preferred viewing distances for TV and large displays do not predict viewing preferences on mobile devices. Our results will help to further the understanding of multimedia perception and service designers to deliver both economically viable and enjoyable experiences.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    MM '08: Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Multimedia
    October 2008
    1206 pages
    ISBN:9781605583037
    DOI:10.1145/1459359
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 26 October 2008

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    Author Tags

    1. mobile multimedia consumption
    2. resolution
    3. size
    4. trade-off

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    MM08
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    MM08: ACM Multimedia Conference 2008
    October 26 - 31, 2008
    British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

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    • (2017)Enhancing Interaction with Dual-Screen Television Through Display CommonalitiesProceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video10.1145/3077548.3077549(91-103)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2017
    • (2016)The role of animal sensory perception in behavior-based managementConservation Behavior10.1017/CBO9781139627078.010(149-175)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2016
    • (2016)Behavior-based management: using behavioral knowledge to improve conservation and management effortsConservation Behavior10.1017/CBO9781139627078.009(147-148)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2016
    • (2013)User-Centered Study on Quality of Mobile Video ServicesTools for Mobile Multimedia Programming and Development10.4018/978-1-4666-4054-2.ch002(18-51)Online publication date: 2013
    • (2013)Self-adaptive scale transform for IQA metric2013 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS2013)10.1109/ISCAS.2013.6572353(2365-2368)Online publication date: May-2013
    • (2013)Compact and efficient RGB to RGBW data conversion method and its application in OLED microdisplaysJournal of the Society for Information Display10.1002/jsid.15821:3(109-119)Online publication date: 23-May-2013
    • (2011)MobiUPIEEE Transactions on Multimedia10.1109/TMM.2011.215691013:5(1077-1091)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2011
    • (2011)An Approach for Modeling the Effects of Video Resolution and Size on the Perceived Visual QualityProceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia10.1109/ISM.2011.82(464-469)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2011
    • (2010)Frequent layer switching for perceived quality improvements of coarse-grained scalable videoMultimedia Systems10.1007/s00530-010-0186-916:3(171-182)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2010
    • (2009)Context saliency based image summarizationProceedings of the 2009 IEEE international conference on Multimedia and Expo10.5555/1698924.1698991(270-273)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2009
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