The market’s lack of any interoperable satellite radio receiver puts Sirius and XM in violation of a condition of their 1997 licenses, the FCC said in its merger approval order released late Tuesday. Still, the agency believes the merged Sirius XM will deliver on a “voluntary commitment” to market interoperable radios within nine months, the order said.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Boston Acoustics is shipping its new Vista line of speakers priced $800 to $3,400 a pair, senior executives told a New York media briefing Tuesday. Vista is the company’s new “flagship product for where Boston Acoustics wants to live in the marketplace,” said Senior Vice President Eli Harary. “It’s an expression of what Boston Acoustics is about” and has been for 30 years -- the “best sound at the best price,” he said. Durable polyethylene-based black lacquer cabinets are among the line’s signature features, Harary said. Unlike rivals’ black lacquer finishes, which he said are done on the cheap, Vista speakers’ finish can’t be harmed by sharp objects, he said. Harary said he asked the company’s supplier for cutaway samples of Vista cabinets to use at trade shows and other demonstrations but was told that illustrating the material’s toughness would require a saw that would overheat. Still, the company won’t offer a lifetime guarantee on the finish, Harary said to our query. The speakers use “super wide bandwidth” one-inch tweeters with coupled dual-concentric diaphragms to beat phasing problems common to more conventional tweeter designs, the company said. A new organic composite cone material for Vista woofers and midrange drivers resembles paper but is made of a mix of natural fibers to reduce resonance and improve sonic accuracy, the company said. As he did a year ago (CED Aug 13 p2), Harary shrugged off media queries on whether using the name “Vista” would land Boston Acoustics in legal hot water with Microsoft. Approved uses of “Vista” exceed 700 in consumer electronics alone, Harary said. Boston Acoustics plans to distribute Vista through only about 40 custom installers and specialty retailers able to demonstrate the line in showrooms, said Phil Cohn, senior vice president of sales and marketing.
The MPAA wants the FCC to rebuff demands for conditions on a selectable output control waiver it seeks. The conditions would require new content services be streamed through all digital outputs approved by CableLabs and non- cable service providers. The Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator and TiVo want the conditions, but “there is no demonstrated public interest need” for the FCC to “mandate which outputs must be used to provide the proposed new services,” the MPAA said in reply comments filed Thursday at the commission. A “one-size-fits-all approach would not take into account potential variances between different services and providers,” it said. For on-demand streaming of HD movies to homes before DVD or Blu-ray release --the new business model for which the SOC waiver is being sought -- studios and service providers “should have the flexibility to use the technologies that are best suited to serve the needs of their mutual customers, while balancing the need to protect their content,” the MPAA said. It’s “not in the interest” of the MPAA or service providers “to unnecessarily limit access to the services or to cause consumer confusion,” the group said. DTLA said decisions on use of particular outputs can’t be left to content owners’ and service providers’ “unfettered discretion.” But that “belies the complex realities involved with the development and inclusion of various inputs, outputs, and content protection technologies on video reception equipment,” the MPAA said. Device makers’ decisions on which inputs and outputs to place on their products have “a profound impact on how consumers can use those devices and the services they will be able to receive,” the MPAA said. “However, given the dynamic nature and rapid evolution of technology today, these decisions are appropriately left to the marketplace and private sector solutions.”
LG expects to price its new BD300 Blu-ray player with Netflix streaming capability (CED Aug 1 p6) “somewhere under $500” when it ships next month in wide retail distribution, Vice President Allan Jason told a New York news conference late Thursday.
NTIA contractor IBM mailed its 20 millionth converter box coupon in the week ended Tuesday, the agency’s data show. The milestone is important because the NTIA contract pays IBM nothing for mailing the last 2.25 million coupons in the program’s first phase. There was $193.67 million available Tuesday for this phase, including money returned to the program from expired coupons. That’s enough for 4.8 million more coupons to be mailed in this phase. The NTIA has been locked in negotiations with IBM since May on a price to mail coupons beyond the base 22.25 million. An NTIA spokesman wouldn’t say Thursday what will happen if IBM mails the 22.25 million, as it seems certain to do within the next several days, but has no agreement with the agency on mailing the extras.
Polk Audio is on schedule to begin shipping its SurroundBar 360 DVD Theater in September, senior executives said Thursday at a New York briefing. Allocations of the $1,199 product are at the company’s San Diego distribution center, said Product Line Manager Al Baron. Polk Audio calls the SurroundBar 360 its “response to consumer demand for true surround audio and deep bass from a single cabinet.” At the briefing, Matthew Polk called it “the most difficult product I've ever worked on or designed.” The challenge was to make a system “completely technology-transparent but still deliver a satisfying experience,” he said. Every beta tester “has called back to ask if they can purchase” the product, he said. The SurroundBar 360 has a new active version of Polk Audio’s SDA technology that combines signal processing and acoustical geometry to create 360-degree sound from eight drivers, the company said. Its Power Port bass venting system “supplies clean, low-distortion bass without the clutter of an external subwoofer,” the company said. Polk Audio predicts that 95 percent of buyers “won’t feel the need for a subwoofer,” said Matthew Polk. Signal processing is handled via the system’s DVD “console,” so named to differentiate it from a normal AV receiver, he said. The console can upconvert standard DVDs to 1080i through the HDMI connector, Baron said. Polk said the company considered putting a Blu-ray drive in the console but decided not to. Doing so would have added a few hundred dollars to the price, he said.
Microtune recently has seen “strengthening demand” for its DTV tuner chips in coupon-eligible converter boxes, CEO Jim Fontaine said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. So Microtune thinks its $5 million forecast for 2008 converter- box revenue “is very solid and the potential for revenues north of $5 million has substantially increased,” Fontaine said. “The DTV converter box market is new and risky, so we are taking a conservative approach with our revenue forecasting.” But Microtune plans “to build a significant amount of product to support this upside potential,” he said. Microtune thinks box demand will “taper off” in early 2009, depending on how many consumers order coupons at the March 31 deadline and redeem them before they expire 90 days later, he said. There is talk about NTIA extending the deadline and issuing more coupons from money recycled into the program from expired coupons, he said. Boxes with advanced features might be in demand “even after the subsidies stop,” Fontaine said. “But I would think it is prudent to model that it tapers down and for the most part, comes to a close by the end of June and then just work backwards a month or two in terms of when manufacturers would buy their products from their suppliers.” As for 2008, “I guess the biggest thing that gives us confidence in the $5 million number is when we get orders from customers,” Fontaine said. Customers have asked his company not to discuss “what they're doing with their products,” he said. “But needless to say, I do believe that they're getting more exposure than they had a month ago and certainly a quarter ago.”
CEA had been urging the FCC to finish its review of the XM-Sirius merger, “and we are pleased that the matter is now closed,” a spokesman told us late Tuesday. “Uncertainty has been removed from the marketplace and consumers can now adopt satellite radio should they choose to do so.” CEA was neutral on iBiquity’s urging that the commission require HD Radio in all satellite radio receivers, and so it has no comment on the 30-day notice of inquiry on HD Radio, he said.
If today’s 45.8 percent coupon redemption rates “remain consistent,” the NTIA estimates, “current system processing capability could enable us to distribute more than 50 million coupons through March 31,” the last day it will accept coupon requests, acting NTIA Administrator Meredith Baker told House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., in a letter Friday. Dingell and House Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote Baker July 10 voicing concern that “apparent mismanagement” at NTIA of its IBM vendor contract means that it won’t have the money to mail extra coupons from funds from expired coupons that are recycled back into the program (CED July 14 p1). But the NTIA “is managing administrative funds so that more than 33.5 million coupons can be issued if demand continues,” Baker told Dingell. The NTIA began negotiations with IBM in May on “a fair and reasonable price” to mail coupons above and beyond the 33.5 million base, she said. Though NTIA has said it won’t know how many extra coupons it can distribute until it and IBM agree on a price, the agency ordered 6 million extras July 18, she said, as she had told us at a House DTV field hearing in Brooklyn, N.Y., that day (CED July 21 p1). “NTIA’s goal is to fulfill as many coupon requests as possible at the lowest cost and without changing coupon program messaging to consumers,” Baker said. The agency “is committed to honoring, to the great extent possible, consumer requests for coupons and has set aside funding for that specific purpose,” she said. The NTIA and IBM are working together closely “to ensure that sufficient administrative funds are available to achieve this goal within the statutory administrative cap” of $160 million, she said. She promised that the agency will continue to update the committee “on the status of program funding.” The Los Angeles DMA led the U.S. in DTV converter coupons redeemed through July 22 at more than 294,000, the NTIA said Monday. Nationally, the redemption rate was 45.8 percent, and 54.6 percent for residences getting TV only through an antenna, the agency said. Other DMAs with high redemption numbers, to the nearest thousand: (2) Puerto Rico, 293,000 coupons redeemed; (3) Chicago, 259,000; (4) New York, 190,000; (5) Dallas- Fort Worth, 183,000; (6) Minneapolis-St. Paul, 174,000; (7) Houston, 171,000; (8) Philadelphia, 144,000; (9) St. Louis, 130,000; (10) Detroit, 128,000. The Wilmington, N.C., area, where analog service will go dark Sept. 8, was 119th, the NTIA said. Nielsen ranks Wilmington as the country’s 135th largest DMA.
Sirius and XM late Friday put in writing additional concessions to get FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate to be the necessary third vote for approval of the companies’ merger, documents released Monday at the commission show.