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...Is 2014 the year when we will see the death of the remote control and the introduction of 24hr monitoring inside every living room? For many years TV manufacturers have made the bulk of their profits from the selling of increasingly minimised hardware at reasonable profits. This has been supported by innovations such as increasingly larger screens followed by LCD,LED,HD,3D and 4K providing yet another “next new thing” to allow them to sell a combination as yet another new TV to those who always want the latest available technology. This has provided substantial profits to the likes of Samsung, Panasonic and Toshiba and other hardware manufacturers over the years. More recently, the introduction of so called ‘Smart TVs’ has provided a new income stream as TV manufacturers have been able to provide their own ‘App stores’ to provide built in software applications to provide additional functionality to users such as Skype or Netflix integrations. This has only generated a modest amount of revenue though and is likely still generating more cost in terms of research and development at this time leading to a net loss. Both of these areas could soon be overshadowed however by a significant upcoming change in the role that TVs will play in how we interact with the services available… A rising number of TVs now ship with built in cameras to allow video calls to be seamlessly integrated and to enable gesture controls. This same functionality has been proven to allow the possibility of tracking eye movements and facial expressions. Extend this one small step further and with a Kinect style ability to recognise individuals there is suddenly a huge new market emerging for TV manufacturers to take advantage of. Relevant content Why would an advertiser want to show their advert while their target audience is not watching? Why would a teenager watching the TV want to see an advert for "shiny, clean dentures"? Similarly, your 100 year old relative is unlikely to want to take up skateboarding. This is wasted advertising money… Instead, if they know that certain people are watching, then they might want to instead show some relevant content for them or place their advert elsewhere. If facial expressions and eye movement can be tracked using the built in camera, then advertisers can suddenly learn what impact the wording of their adverts has upon specific users and tailor audio tracks to get their attention. Perhaps “Best pizza in the whole of Manchester!” did not make you look up from your smartphone, but “Best Hot Pepperoni Pizza at your door in 30 seconds!” may have you looking up and/or licking your lips… Can you imagine how powerful this could be for the multi-billion pound advertising industry? The humble TV suddenly becomes a tool to target viewers on the basis of who is in the room with different adverts shown to Peter or Paul based on their personal, perhaps even sub-conscious preferences. With the significant income that TV manufacturers could generate from advertisers to have access to this immensely valuable metadata, it is likely that they would want all of their new TVs to feature built in cameras. It is also possible that the costs of new TVs in future would be much lower as they do not need lots of new technology to support this technique as it is mostly down to video analysis of the scene caught by a built in camera. Privacy Expectations If users suddenly begin to understand though, that they have become mere products in this supply chain, then it would be only natural for those who want to protect their privacy to want to cover up cameras so as to maintain their own comfort level of sharing information. This of course would stop the TV manufacturers in their tracks and suddenly remove the input of all of the potentially much more lucrative reaction data. This is especially the case if they subsidise the cost of new sets by using the sold data to offset the manufacturing costs. So how do you prevent people from covering up the cameras? This tricky issue is perhaps easily resolved by adding a new ‘feature’ by the way of gesture controlled televisions where no remote control is available or indeed possible. If you take the remote control out of the equation then the only way to adjust the volume or change the channel will be to leave the camera uncovered to allow gesture recognition. Just before UK readers shout: “Hah! I will just use my Sky box controller or Virgin remote” or American readers grab their TiVo remotes, I would urge you to consider that these set top box providers are probably looking at the exact same market space also at the moment, for the very same reasons. It would be interesting to hear the UK Information Commissioners take on this potential development and the impact that it might have regarding privacy versus profit. So to summarise, what does this mean in practical terms as the next few years unfold? Gesture controls will be advertised as a feature TV Remote controls will no longer be provided Cameras will be a standard feature at increasing resolutions Set top box providers and TV manufacturers will compete for market share Viewers will be at risk of living in a viewing ‘bubble’ without diversity Blocking the camera will be rendered impractical / inefficient TVs will be cheaper You will become the product Shares in TV manufacturers may be a good purchase decision in 2014 Adverts may become dynamic and hosted by TV manufacturers as a service Advertisement funded TV content providers may feel impact (Think ITV...) Service provision may be funded by access to camera output Smart TVs already pose a data security risk - Mandatory cameras extend this References: Ongoing - Smart TVs on Wikipedia 28/10/13 - Getting Smart on Smart TVs: Awareness Increases Likelihood of Consumer Purchasing, Survey Shows 04/09/13 - Smart TV interactive ad formats increase brand engagement 20/12/13 - Media Devices Hit 140 Million, Smart TVs Push Increase 18/08/13 - Google patents 'pay-per-gaze' eye-tracking that could measure emotional response to real-world ads 08/05/13 - Eye-Tracking Technologies Are About To Make Advertising Even More Invasive

The technology used to transmit alarm and UDL data from premises to ARC and installer is becoming ever more powerful. In this series of blog's we aim to provide you with unbiased information on subjects such as SIA transmission (this edition), standards and how the advance of communications technology will continue to benefit all stakeholders in security. In our business we love technology, but you won't hear from us "you can't do this" or "you shouldn't use x technology". There are horses for courses and it's essential for end users and installers to use the appropriate solution dependent on premises, risk etc. In this first edition we'll look at SIA alarm transmission. You can watch the video .Naturally, the security sector focuses on systems which detect risk local to a given premises, making effective use of intruder, fire, CCTV and access control solutions for the host organisation. Alarm transmission services help manage those risks ‘remotely’, ensuring that event information is sent to an operator who can detect that communication has failed and then summon the relevant emergency services (police, fire) and/or key holder, security installer/systems integrator). That said, transmission networks can also be the bottleneck, sometimes reducing the amount of data that the user would like to send/see. They might also compromise the security of the premises unless appropriate security measures are in place. In this regular monthly blog, we’ll appraise some of the key elements of signalling – and we’re going to begin by examining the prime uses (and benefits) of extended format alarm transmission. Extended format alarms: a quick summary Extended format alarms help those involved to save time and money. You can avoid site visits and interruption to the end user business as well as improve installer services, manage events and faults on a remote basis. There are also improvements to be had in terms of Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) reports, adding value to the monitored service. The lowest cost transmission is via IP over radio (GPRS) or fixed line (ADSL/Internet). Even Grade 2 systems should use encryption (reference EN table 10, Option D). Why hasn’t the industry used SIA for so long? In the context of this discussion, ‘SIA’ is the Security Industry Association of America and not the Security Industry Authority you all know to be the Regulator for the UK’s private security world. The ‘SIA protocol’ we talk about next was developed to bring together many alarm transmission formats. Its benefits are detailed in due course. Sending every SIA alarm over an analogue telephone call is expensive. A system sending just an ‘Open’, ‘Close’ and ‘Test’ call in 2012 over a working year of 265 days could incur call charges of £100-plus (and certainly isn’t ‘for free’). To reduce costs the security sector turned to inputs/channels as the solution. Inputs relate many detectors to one transmitted event, the unforeseen consequence being the reduction in value of the security system and increased site visits. The event received is not the original event created by the panel, just a translation. As ‘Pins’ are a physical connection from the panel to the communications device, only a limited number of inputs/channels could be transmitted without making the device large in size. Generally speaking, up to 16 channels only will be supported (even for sites which could have dozens of zones or alarm types). Why use extended format alarms? Extended format alarms are not solely for the larger sites. Installers who implement SIA can provide a better level of service to domestic or business sector customers, identifying what has happened before visiting or otherwise eliminating a site visit altogether. We’ve seen the impact of the recession on loss prevention teams. Installers need to manage their bottom line closely as operating costs continue to increase in the recession. For their part, extended format alarms can help end users and installers alike to better manage their situations by providing detailed event information without having to visit a given site. The majority of alarm panels built in the last decade support the SIA protocol alarm format. That protocol includes site ID, date, time, the alarm type, zone, area, entry code and user (if programmed). A simple example is that a Pin 4 alarm for ‘Open’ now becomes ‘Open, J Smith’ or ‘Open, Cleaner’. BA (Burglar Alarm) is now ‘BA, Zone 2, Reception’ etc. By transmitting SIA to the ARC, reports become richer and more useful. Loss prevention professionals or installers now have access to the original data from the panel. This speeds up the understanding of an event, or helps the installer diagnose a fault without having to go to site. Why can the industry use SIA now? Using digital transmission technology, SIA can be sent more cheaply and securely than before. A hybrid alarm transmission systems is a solution which uses a radio IP path (GPRS) as the ‘Primary’ method to transmit alarms, network polls and provide UDL (Upload/Download, ie remote management/service) to the alarm panel. The cost of GPRS bandwidth to transmit every SIA event, UDL and network polling per annum is less than 15% of the cost of sending three alarms per day over PSTN dial-up. A pure digital alarm transmission system will use the IP fixed line path (ADSL) as its primary and radio IP (GPRS) as the back-up.