Reading Chinese horizontal/vertical leading display on a liquid-colour display television

In order to provide suitable design guidelines for TV programme designers setting Chinese horizontal/vertical leading displays, two stages are involved in this study. The purpose of the first stage was to investigate the current situation of using horizontal/vertical leading displays on LCD TVs news channels. The purpose of the second stage was to examine the effects of horizontal/vertical leading display, speed, and display field lengths on reading comprehension of LCD TVs. A three-way between factorial designed experiment (4 × 3 × 2) was designed to examine the effects of leading-display positions (top, bottom, left, and right sides), display speeds (85 cpm, 205 cpm, and 325 cpm), and display field lengths (7 and 24 characters). Scores for reading comprehension revealed that the main display position was set on the left and bottom-sides. The Hei font was the highest frequency for using on horizontal leading displays and the Yuan font for using on vertical leading displays. The Chinese characters of leading display showed negative polarity on the TV news channels (light-coloured characters on a dark background). The design guidelines of Chinese leading display on LCD TVs were: (1) display speed should be set under 205 cpm, (2) the appropriate message length recommends setting at least 10 characters, and (3) the deal position recommends arranging on the bottom or top of the screen and avoiding on the right side.

Research highlights
► Aiming at examining the effects of leading display on reading comprehension.
► Design guidelines of Chinese leading display on LCD TVs were suggested.
► Display speed should be set under 205 cpm.
► The appropriate message length should be set at least 10 characters.
► The deal position recommends arranging on the bottom of the screen.