Your 4 - Predicted Consumer Service From Channel 4

For My Negotiated Project I Predicted The Future Of Channel 4 & The Services It Could Provide For A Selected Consumer Group

I choose Young Adults - Age 16 - 23 because this group of consumers are the consumers Channel 4 have recently stated that they want to get involved with more.

The service I predicted is called Your 4 and I constructed a presentation as if it were a Your 4 manual given to a consumer to describe what Your 4 has to offer.

(On this post there are some images from the slides)

Your 4

Your 4 is a 24 hour on demand service from Channel 4 which entitles viewers to view the television they love any time they want to. Unlike 4OD, Your 4 can be viewed from your television with a monthly subscription and can be viewed from the Your 4 satellite box or adapted to the Sky, Virgin or other cable and satellite services.

The advantages that you get with Your 4 is that you can view any programme Channel 4, E4, 4 Music, More 4, and Film 4 show at any time without having to record or download. Unlike 4OD you can view programmes that have been shown at any time so you don’t have to watch within 30 days, which means life can go on without having to worry that you have missed your favourite programmes.

Your 4 offers a personal settings page with passwords, a favourite programmes page, personal preference advertisement, a favourites teletext page, a music play list page and internet connection.

Getting Started

You will either need to plug in the Your 4 box and connect the scart lead into your television. If you already have a Sky or Virgin Media box then you will just need to insert the Your 4 Card into the slot to get started. It will take a few minutes to recognise and download but once downloaded you will never need to take out the card and download again.

It will start up automatically and assign a number for the channel you would like the view the service from. Once chosen it will ask you how many users you would like to add onto the service. (Once chosen you can go back again later to add more.) Your 4 will allow up to 10 different users and will save all personal settings under that user.
Once a user is chosen, you can start to personalise your page (you can personalise your page at any time whilst viewing Your 4).

The Your 4 Chip Card

The options on this page are

To personalise the account: So change fonts, colours, images, sounds and layout of the account.

To create new user names and passwords: To enable other users and password protection for each individual account.

My 4 Television: Choose favourite programmes, select programmes that you would be interested in viewing and choose programmes to watch from as far back as the first episodes.

My 4 Music: Save playlists of favourite music videos and radio podcasts.

My 4 Internet: Enables internet browsing and a favourites pannel for websites.

My 4 Advertisement: Enables the consumer to choose the advertisement they are most interested in i.e. Health, Shopping, Fashion & Beauty, DIY, Charities, Food.

My 4 Interaction: Get up to date with the latest competitions, involvement within the programmes, special offers on merchandise and also have fun by playing games, quizzes, chatting with others and starting own blog.

My 4 Text: Your 4 Teletext with a favourites option.

Susan Marchant’s User Settings For Your 4

Susan is a 21 year old student from Kent.

Her favourite Channel 4 programmes are Hollyoaks, Big Brother, Desperate Housewives, Friends, The Simpsons, 90210, The Inbetweeners and Gok Wan’s Fashion Fix.

Susan likes to browse the web and is a member on social networking sites Facebook and Myspace. She loves getting involved with competitions and enjoys to write her own blog.
Susan works hard through the week so she likes to kick back and enjoy a whole day of television on a Saturday. She loves Your 4 because she doesn’t need to worry about stopping and starting her work to catch a programme.

Her favourite thing about Your 4 is that she can have her own user name which means her younger brother can’t interfere with her settings and everything is more personal to her. She likes the fact that she can log out and go and do other things without having to worry about her brother accessing her account.

Susan has chosen to receive advertising on Fashion and Beauty and Shopping. She has two music play lists and likes to chat with her friends whilst listening to them.

Susan decides to receive updates on her favourite television genres including wildlife, soap operas, dramas, fashion and lifestyle.

She also gets updates on the 4 Music artists and bands that she likes. This includes Girl Aloud, Britney Spears, The Sugababes, Leona Lewis, Take That and Rianna.

She has a friends option on her chat room service and it updates her on what they are up to as well as what programmes they have been watching and what music they have been listening to.

There is an option to share play lists and founded social networking groups online.

(Image from watching in small screen)

Watching Television On Your 4

After choosing a programme to watch you can decide if you want to view it in a small, medium or full screen. When in a small screen there will be images of the programme with text and information about other related programmes surrounding it. You also have the option to chat, read messages and view teletext whilst watching a show.

There are options to pause, rewind, fast forward and save to special folders (names by the user), view full screen, medium screen or small screen, view programme information, view related programmes, chat whilst watching a programme and view images from programme.

Create User Profile

You have an option to add a profile of yourself on the Your 4 services. You can add as much or as little information as you like onto your profile and it enables other users to find out a bit more about you and even get to know you through chatting and messaging by finding out what things you have in common ext.