A consumer who reports a DTV converter box coupon lost or stolen can get it replaced, said CLC Services, the member of the IBM contractor team handling retailer certification under NTIA’s coupon program, in reply to our query. But consumers will be out of luck if both their coupons expire after 90 days, CLC said. “Once two coupons associated with that consumer’s address expire without being used, no more coupons may be issued to that address,” CLC said. If unused coupons are lost or stolen, consumers should call NTIA’s converter box hotline, 1-888-DTV-2009, CLC said. Providing the reference number that came with the coupon “will greatly speed our ability to resolve the issue,” it said. Consumers who have used coupons can’t get replacements, CLC said. No “statutory prohibition” bars private sale of an active, lawfully acquired coupon on eBay or another means, CLC said. But “our system will allow us to detect fraud at a certain level,” CLC said. “For example, if coupons that were issued to addresses in Florida are being redeemed in Montana, we can look into the situation and determine if wide-scale fraud is taking place.” We queried CLC using the FAQ section of its online “retailer support center” at www.ntiadtv.gov.
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.
Samsung has cut the MAP on its dual-format player to $799 from $999, senior executive Reid Sullivan confirmed Monday. The BD-UP5000 Duo HD Player is on schedule to reach retail shelves by late December (CED Oct 25 p7), he said. At $799, the BD-UP5000’s price will be comparably priced with LG’s second-generation BH-200 dual-format player. Crutchfield is accepting preorders on the BD-UP5000, but its site said Monday that the product’s precise availability is uncertain. Sullivan said Samsung will ship the player “in the thousands,” but demand is expected to exceed the supply. One retailer we polled, Dan Schuh, executive director of AV products at ABC Warehouse in Pontiac, Mich., said the BD- UP5000 will be available at the start in “limited supply to select dealers only.”
NTIA’s DTV coupon program “faces challenges” that could affect its outcome, the Government Accountability Office told House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., in a letter dated Nov. 19 but released Friday. Dingell had written the GAO Nov. 7 asking if the agency had concerns about the coupon program, based on GAO’s testimony at an Oct. 17 House Telecom Subcommittee on the DTV transition (CED Oct 18 p1). Since manufacturer and retailer participation in the program is voluntary, there’s much uncertainty about how many will take part, said Mark Goldstein, GAO director for physical infrastructure issues, the agency official who testified at the hearing. “Some manufacturer, advocacy, and retailer representatives we contacted expressed concern about consumers’ ability to find participating retailers that are able to redeem coupons and have converter boxes in stock,” Goldstein said. “Furthermore, uncertain demand for the converter boxes, as well as uncertainty about the extent of retailers’ participation in the program, could affect the number of converter boxes that manufacturers produce and the corresponding availability of coupon-eligible converter boxes in stores.” GAO has not evaluated whether NTIA should prepare for “a potential shortfall in program funding,” as Dingell had asked, Goldstein said. NTIA’s contract with IBM requires the contractor to set up an electronic dashboard to monitor “the number of coupons pending, mailed, redeemed, expired and canceled,” Goldstein said. NTIA officials assured GAO “that they will monitor the coupon metrics on the electronic dashboard and use this information to inform the congressional committees if they would need the additional funds,” he said. “They added that this monitoring should help avoid any lapse in depletion of the initial $890 million and receiving the additional funding” that the law provides for if needed, he said. As to Dingell’s question whether the FCC has the statutory authority to convene an inter-agency DTV task force as Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein had called for but Chairman Kevin Martin opposes, Goldstein said the FCC does have that authority under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. “FCC has several federal advisory committees that provide advice and recommendations to the commission on numerous technical, operational and consumer telecommunications issues,” Goldstein said. “All of FCC’s federal advisory committees are discretionary, meaning the committees were not required to be established by law but rather were established by FCC.” The Commerce Department and its NTIA understand the risks of voluntary participation in the coupon program and the hurdles of educating the public about the DTV transition, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told GAO Comptroller General David Walker in an Oct. 15 letter that NTIA released Friday to Consumer Electronics Daily. “But the solution is not the establishment of a digital transition czar or single government-mandated message,” Gutierrez said. CE retailers have begun “making important commitments” to the coupon program, he said, citing RadioShack’s announcement at NTIA’s Sept. 25 workshop that all its 4,400 stores will carry coupon-eligible boxes. Best Buy, Circuit City and Target since have also vowed to take part. “NTIA’s own efforts will largely be directed at educating the public about the availability of coupons to assist with the purchase of converter boxes, if needed,” Gutierrez said.
Approval of DVD “download-to-burn” policies cleared the last legal hurdle to developing a Qflix DVD “on demand” business for Sonic Solutions, Dave Habiger, Sonic’s CEO, told analysts in a quarterly earnings call Tuesday. The DVD Copy Control Association gave the approval in September (CED Sept 20 p3). Sonic thinks it will draw only minimal license revenue near term from Qflix, Habiger said. “Long-term, however, we expect to see volume-related revenue from Qflix in late calendar 2008,” Habiger said. Replying to analysts who questioned whether Sonic had expected a windfall much sooner than late 2008, Habiger maintained that the company has been “real consistent” on the timing, Habiger said. “The real significant revenue” from DVD downloads-to-burn will happen “once technology is launched in something more than a trial,” he said. Sonic thinks Qflix ultimately will draw licensing revenue from DVD and HD disc recorders, optical media and on-demand software and services, Habiger said. In Q-and-A, Habiger said he thinks manufacture-on-demand -- retailers downloading and burning DVDs to order -- will “start out as the bigger, more significant chunk” of Qflix revenue. But Habiger hedged, saying no one really knows for sure what will happen. Sonic is “still waiting for a clear format winner to emerge” between Blu-ray and HD DVD, he said. Though holiday promotions have “accelerated” Blu-ray and HD DVD sales, “total sales are not yet high enough to ignite” adoption of Sonic Solutions professional HD authoring products, Habiger said. As a result, sales of those products “continue to be sluggish,” he said.
Files of consumers who apply for DTV converter box coupons will be stored “in a building with doors that are locked during and after business hours,” the NTIA said in a Federal Register notice proposing a new system of records under the Privacy Act. The records are necessary to identify households that qualify for and receive coupons toward the purchase of a converter box, the NTIA said. Comments on the proposal are due Dec. 26, it said. If no one comments, the new system of records takes effect when another notice is published in the Federal Register, it said. Visitors to the facility where the records are stored must register with security guards and will be accompanied by authorized personnel at all times, the notice said. Paper records “are stored in a locked room and/or a locked file cabinet,” it said. Electronic files with Privacy Act information will be password-protected, accessible only to authorized personnel, it said. It lists eight conditions under which a record may be disclosed, including as part of a criminal investigation or when a member of Congress requests it on behalf of a constituent, but only after that constituent asks the member to intervene. The records will be kept in Kansas City, Kan., Wichita, Kan., and Beaverton, Ore., the notice said. That’s where IBM team member Epiq Systems has offices. Epiq will be responsible for accepting requests for coupons and mailing them. Under the DTV statute, consumers may begin requesting the coupons Jan. 1, but the NTIA has said its contractor won’t begin distributing the coupons until it’s sure that enough coupon-eligible boxes are available for sale at retail.
The CEA wasn’t able to persuade the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject Comcast’s request for speedy review of the FCC’s CableCARD order (CED Nov 21 p7), but the CEA “will continue to support the FCC’s decision to require Comcast to permit the development of a robustly competitive cable equipment marketplace,” a CEA spokesman said. CEA will file an intervenor brief with the court Jan. 28 backing the FCC order, he said. Final briefs are due Feb. 29. Oral argument hasn’t been set.
“Velcro radio” was the codename XM and Sirius coined for the first “proof of concept” interoperable receiver prototype they developed under a joint venture they formed four years ago, Sirius told the FCC in a letter Friday that replied to the commission’s Nov. 2 request for extensive data and documents about the proposed satellite radio merger (CED Nov 7 p2).
Silicon Image’s two new HDMI transmitter chips for mobile devices, introduced Monday, are six times more power- efficient than the components they're replacing, Director of Marketing Stevan Eidson told us in an interview. The SiI9022 and SiI9024 devices boast maximum power consumption of 50 MW at 1080i and 80 MW at 1080p, Eidson said. Their predecessor, the SiI9020, had peak power consumption of 300 MW, he said. The new chips are HDMI Version 1.2-compliant, but will support the x.v.Color feature found in HDMI 1.3, he said. The SiI9022 is aimed at camcorders, digital cameras and other products that live off consumer-created content, he said. The SiI9024 adds the HDCP content protection engine and authentication keys, he said. It’s targeted at portable media players and mobile phones that carry Hollywood- generated “premium” content, he said. Having a dedicated HDCP hardware engine built into the SiI9024 eliminates the significant software complexity usually found in HDCP implementations based on a separate microcontroller, Eidson said. That complexity helped feed the frenzy of interoperability problems among HDMI devices, he said. Moving much of the HDCP authentication from software to hardware increases its robustness, since it eliminates the need for the software to perform “timing-critical” jobs, he said. Integrating the keys removes the EEPROM costs that otherwise would be passed onto consumers, he said. The new transmitters also have “CEC” functionality, allowing a consumer the convenience to operate a HDMI-enable camcorder through a DTV set without an extra remote, Eidson said. Having CEC as an integrated function cuts costs because the feature typically requires an external microcontroller, he said. The SiI9022 and SiI9024, now sampling, will be available next month for less than $5 each in volume quantities, he said.
The format war is hurting Blu-ray and HD DVD sales, Cinram, which replicates discs for both, said publicly for the first time Monday. Cinram’s “near-term outlook” for next-generation HD discs is “not as optimistic as it once was,” CEO Dave Rubenstein said in a quarterly earnings call. Cinram had hoped the format war “would be resolved after this holiday selling season,” Rubenstein said. But HD DVD supporters have made “special incentive arrangements” with retailers and studios and that’s likely to prolong the format war “at least another year,” he said. “In our view, this stalemate has further stalled the adoption of either format and put a significant damper on player and disc sales alike. Any of the near-term upside potential we had hoped to benefit from with high-definition discs has been curtailed by these developments, and accordingly, our ability to substitute declining DVD revenues and margins with high-definition revenue and contribution margins has also been diminished.” Cinram has cut its revenue and profit forecasts for this year and next because DVD production volume is expected to decline, price erosion is especially strong and Canadian currency has surged against the U.S. dollar, Rubenstein said. Still, “our core business is solid,” he said. DVD volumes, though lower than expected, “are not falling off the cliff,” he said. “Our general views on the DVD industry have not fundamentally changed,” he said.
Funai faces more than $7.7 million in fines for what the FCC called “willful and repeated violations” of its V-chip rules. Funai executives couldn’t be reached for comment on the allegations, made in an Oct. 31 notice of apparent liability released Thursday.