Field tests of two-way television audience measurement system

Peoplemeters are used in Television Audience Measurement systems to determine and record when TV receiving equipment are switched on and to which channel they are tuned, some more sophisticated systems may be able to determine which member of each household are actually in the audience at any particular time. Audience viewing data can now be obtained in real-time as different systems have been developed that can send user behaviour over various telecommunications networks as they occur. Landline telephone and data links have proven to be reliable and cost effective for transmitting audience user behaviour however this basic infrastructure is inadequate in many African countries. The two-way meter in question consist of a Viewer Behaviour Acquisition and Storage Module integrated with a GSM 3G modem for data connectivity. The Viewer Behaviour Acquisition module is embedded in a special Digital Terrestrial Television set top box (STB). A 3G data modem is integrated with the Acquisition Module, it has a standard size GSM sim card slot which is not accessible from outside the set top box. This paper is an analysis of the results obtained during experiments in the lab using an Ethernet local area network and on the field using a GSM Network. Network delay, data loss and amount of data generated were all within tolerable limits.