A new study looks behind closed doors to reveal how UK viewing habits are shifting away from traditional broadcasting with more data-intensive streaming options now the default for many.
Lancaster University
A new study looks behind closed doors to reveal how UK viewing habits are shifting away from traditional broadcasting with more data-intensive streaming options now the default for many.
A viewing revolution is taking place. The advent of Internet TV, video sharing platforms like YouTube, and other on-demand services in recent years has massively increased flexibility and choice for viewers.
But the nature and extent of how household viewing habits have changed has, until now, relied largely on anecdotal evidence.
A team of computing researchers at Lancaster University has taken the closest look yet. They have thoroughly analysed the use of 66 computing devices, including smart TVs, dongles, tablet computers, laptops and mobile phones, for a month across 20 participants in nine UK households.
The study, which was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), provides valuable new evidence for the researchers, who are interested in our changing viewing habits and how this links to the huge increases in Internet data traffic. Internet traffic has risen by about 20 per cent a year recently, and streaming is about half of all traffic. These rises are of particular concern as data increases are often accompanied by hidden energy use, impacting on the environment.
“This study provides a highly nuanced understanding of contemporary watching practices that are indicative of wider trends in everyday life, and how this links to data demand,” said Kelly Widdicks, PhD Candidate of Lancaster University and the report’s lead author.
“Our findings, coinciding with statistics from the UK and US, show there has been a significant behavioural shift towards streaming as a default with traditional broadcast TV, or DVDs, becoming obsolete for some.”
All households in the study watched some form of video content every day – contributing to nearly three quarters of total household data demand.
Smartphones were the most commonly owned devices and a PlayStation games console was the most data-hungry device in the study, followed by TV dongles.
YouTube was found to be the most data demanding watching service – accounting for almost half of demand for watching across all households – and is, unsurprisingly, more popular with younger ‘Generation Z’ participants. Other demanding viewing services included Now TV, Netflix, Sky TV and TV Player. These were followed by social-media related video content on platforms such as Facebook and Twitch.
Researchers found that when provided with options to watch programmes in different resolutions, often higher, more data-hungry, resolutions, such as HD, were selected. Families were often watching different programmes simultaneously on different devices, so-called ‘multi-watching’, which amplifies data consumption.
The study also uncovered evidence of wasteful practices. Some participants use video streaming platforms, such as YouTube, as background music players – and do not actually watch the videos, despite the large amounts of data involved. Others didn’t always enjoy the content they watched, or found streaming services distracting from their everyday chores and activities.
They also found that participants would rather watch programmes through online catch-up services rather than pre-record them or dig out the DVD from their collections, because it is “just as easy” to do.
The researchers have made several suggestions to help reduce the energy demand and environmental impact brought about by the revolution in viewing.
These include academics and software designers working closely with network engineers to design functions, or prompts, that nudge viewers to consider less demanding forms of watching. These collaborations could also help pre-empt network load from new, data-intensive service designs- such as when Facebook introduced auto-playing of video, which significantly increased data demand on Internet networks.
The researchers also call on policy makers to give greater consideration to the energy and environmental costs associated with the Internet when pushing for faster infrastructure.
“Internet policies driving superfast access may only be fuelling more demand, as infrastructural capacity growth leads to increased demand”, said Dr Oliver Bates, Senior Researcher at Lancaster University and study co-author. “It is clear that policy-makers have not made the connection between all-you-can-eat marketing, by Internet service providers, and data demand and there is little discussion on the energy impact of the Internet within public policy.
“We urgently need to confront ‘all you can eat’ and ‘binge’ watching more broadly as the shift to Internet-based services has an increasing impact on people, society and the planet. Ultimately if bingeing is bad for our health why are service providers allowed to promote data gorging?”
The academics also suggest imposing limits on Internet traffic to cut data demand. Though they acknowledge that traffic limits run against ideas of ‘net neutrality’ in which all Internet traffic is treated equally.
“We fully support the social justice and civic participation aims of net neutrality, but we should also consider traffic limits for reasons of greater good – environmental sustainability”, said Dr Mike Hazas, Reader at Lancaster University.
“As a result, if video entertainment traffic should cost more to reflect its environmental cost, or be otherwise limited in some way, this policy would have to be applied to all video content providers: Netflix, YouTube and the rest.”
“It is time that we, as a society, work together to redefine our watching futures and begin dealing head-on with the unsustainable trajectory of this data demand,” said Kelly Widdicks.
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The findings have been detailed in a paper titled ‘Streaming, Multi-Screens and YouTube: The New (Unsustainable) Ways of Watching in the Home’, which was presented at the CHI 2019 computing academic conference at Glasgow in May.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE0IU9rKJao
Will they ever acknowledge the work of Peter Huber and Mark Mills who wrote about the high energy use of computers long ago and were derided for it?
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0531/6311070a.html#76c39a122580
Fascist Progressives always insist they speak on behalf of society.
They don’t of course.
These academics will be wanting to ration or even to start burning books, unapproved by them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars_in_China_(210%E2%80%93213_BCE)
“We fully support the social justice and civic participation aims of net neutrality, but we should also consider traffic limits for reasons of greater good – environmental sustainability”, said Dr Mike Hazas, Reader at Lancaster University.
Once I read that paragraph everything became clear. The so called “research” has nothing what-so-ever to do with data, data streaming or internet use alone. The key to their agenda is hidden in their professed “concern” for where people are getting their information and how to possibly control those sources. Knowing that there would be hell to pay if they were to touch the alternative access to information they set about their plan by couching their actions in the warm and fuzzy words like “environmental sustainability”.
Such terms have been fed to the public using drama driven fearful warnings which actually have no basis in reality. They deal in blanket statements and the promise of safe places wrapped in lies of correlation and association. This stokes fear in their followers who yearn to be free of the endless propagandized message of uncertainty and terror. The people are kept ignorant so they remain fearful.
It’s the same old pattern: warn people of a non-existent threat, then imply that they (the ones who know) are the ones who can provide the solutions and means to accomplish the impossible task. But because the threat does not actually exist there really is no solution, only another more deadly enemy on the horizon to attack and defend against.
Hence they get to keep solving non-problems and receiving outlandish fees simply by keeping people distracted long enough for them to forget about the non-problems sold to them yesterday in favor of today’s scarier threat. These self appointed intellectuals demand high fees and positions, while passing on the burden and suffering to the lowly masses who could never be as smart as they are.
This is not about the internet. It is about controlling the narrative without getting caught doing so. That my friends is the real purpose behind the bogeyman presently named “climate change”, “environmental sustainability”, “Global Warming”, and “Protecting the Planet”,… and on and on.
But DO NOT look at the man behind the curtain. Pay attention to the “Great and Powerful Oz”.
It’s all “Smoke and Projection” folks.
WUWT is among the very few sties which provides expression and practice of our natural and developed healthy skill of inquiry and skepticism. Anything less can only lead to illness. What is amazing about science is that it helps one to not only know and understand what we think we see but to also be able to see today what yesterday was invisible to us.
I would suspect that it’s “unsustainable” only if one insists to use renewables.
But then, everything is.
I have not watched any news on mainstream media for nearly ten years now. It is so politically biased as to be unwatchable to me. Every advertisment has to but ultra politically correct. It is embarassing to be an normal Englishman now.
Worse still the media are now a destructive entity, who are harming society.
MSM cause division intentionally, for ratings.
CNN and co have done more to divide Americans than anything else. Trump has a point when he says enemy of the people
Corporate media is the worst. Brian Stelter is an evil little bald weirdo
I wanted to watch the youtube video listed at the end of the article, but I feel so guilty, I think I’ll wait ’til it appears on TV. 😣
The authors of this junk should be shelved, talk about garbage pan handling drivel.
I’d like to know the BBC’s energy consumption per viewer compared to Youtube’s energy consumption per viewer, guaranteed BBC’s number is massively larger
I wonder what the BBC’s ratio of employees to hours of output is, compared with the likes of YouTube and Netflix. Do we even need to ask?
They just want to suck the enjoyment out of everything don’t they. All for “the greater good”. God help us all.
They just want to suck the enjoyment out of everything don’t they. All for “the greater good”. God help us all.
The greater good.
🙂
Just occurred to me reading this thread what nuMedia actually is in real terms.
All those youtube channels, blogs and live streams? It is the workers gaining control of the means of production.
Media, unlike anything else in history, has successfully gone Marxist!
The fact the shamelessly left MSM are so against the growth of independent nuMedia and long for a return to the times where information was distributed vertically basically goes to prove that the Marxist/Socialist Dream was never about returning power to the masses, it was about ensuring power was held by the correct (ie THEM) people.
Marxism always ends up the same way – absolute control of the many by the few. Unfortunately the social media and general media platforms are also now being controlled more and more tightly. Many users who post “extreme right wing” views and youtubes are now being banned, censored and no platformed by the Great Controllers. I put that in parentheses because a lot of the material is no more extreme than anything you would read on these pages. If it doesn’t conform to The Agenda it will be disappeared.
“Others didn’t always enjoy the content they watched”
Wow. Seems everyone wants to sink the boot into Game of Thrones Season 8!
What about wasted movie adverts that increase computer consumption by around 20% according to the power meter I have. What is really annoying is there is no way to say I have bought one so stop pestering me any more.
I’ve known people (60 years ago) that had the TV on all day and often all night.
?w=1000
This was when the stations signed off and ran a test pattern from about 1 AM
to 6 AM:
I wonder how energy efficient the old “tube type” TVs were.
For the young:
Looked like:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wth_e1DPPSk/hqdefault.jpg
Inside view:
And the elephant in the room is: if people using their computers are using “too much electricity”, how exactly is the electrical grid going to cope with all the electric cars that we are supposed to be replacing our gas cars with?
Well, she’s a fit bird, but PhD material? http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/people/kelly-widdicks(e8ed1c40-2af5-468b-b94a-638194ee6dfb).html
“Breaking the Cornucopian Paradigm: Towards Moderate Internet Use in Everyday Life” talk about verbal diarrhoea!