Does Low Quality Audiovisual Content Increase Fatigue of Viewers?

While most quality studies measure purely the subjectively perceived quality of videos, physiological measurements can give more detailed information about the perception of multimedia consumers. Thus, they provide better information about long-term effects as they are difficult to estimate by purely subjective studies. The current study uses electroencephalography (EEG) to measure effects of fatigue during watching low and high quality videos. Therefore, a usual video was chosen, after partly reducing the bit rate of the video subjects watched it and gave subjective ratings accompanied by measuring EEG. With the obtained data we showed that lower video quality produces a higher percentage of alpha waves in the EEG, thus participants got more fatigued. Since these alpha waves are an indicator for the level of fatigue.