Sony will return to the main CES exhibit floor for the first time in a decade with a lavish display larger than any other at the event, senior executives told reporters at a N.Y. news briefing Tues. But the company wouldn’t tip its hand about whether it will use the show to make definitive Blu-ray product and marketing announcements.
CableLabs and NCTA executives met with FCC Media Bureau representatives Nov. 4 to rebut Verizon’s call for an “open standards-setting body” on 2-way plug & play specifications with a role for its FiOS mobile TV technology (CED Oct 25 p6), it was disclosed in an ex parte filing at the Commission. Contrary to Verizon’s plea that the FCC avoid locking into “cable-centric” standards for 2-way plug & play support, the cable industry’s use of DOCSIS “is an essential part of interactive cable communication and is already integrated in silicon for set-tops and DTV chips,” CableLabs and NCTA said. DOCSIS has made inexpensive cable modems possible, spurred direct cable competition with DSL, and become a worldwide ITU standard, cable told the Commission. Although Verizon takes issue with cable-centric standards, it has used “cable-initiated” specifications for many applications, CableLabs and NCTA said. Requiring multi- industry standards-setting “before innovation or market advances would significantly delay the development of competitive offerings to consumers and would open up the specification development process to political gaming -- such as efforts to hobble DOCSIS and competing home networks,” they said.
The FCC Tues. urged CE makers and retailers to “clearly label and identify the tuning capabilities of new TV sets” or use other means to inform consumers “whether or not specific models are able to receive” off-the-air DTV signals.
IBiquity Digital’s next round of funding will be “a liquidity event, which we have always assumed would be an IPO” that would raise proceeds of $50-100 million to support the expansion of HD Radio, CEO Bob Struble told Harris Nesbitt’s Media & Entertainment investor conference in N.Y. Mon.
Thomson has reviewed the CGMS-A/VEIL proposal incorporated into draft legislation to close the analog hole (CED Nov 3 p4), “and we believe this solution to be a viable option,” a senior company executive told House Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chmn. Smith (R- Tex.) in a letter dated Nov. 2, according to a copy furnished by Thomson to Consumer Electronics Daily. A day later, MPAA Chmn. Dan Glickman, testifying before Smith’s subcommittee in an oversight hearing on digital content protections, defended CGMS-A/VEIL as a technology endorsed by IBM and Thomson (CED Nov 4 p6).
CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro decreed a “big victory” when the FCC voted Thurs. to speed its final DTV tuner deadline 4 months to March 1, 2007. The Commission also expanded the rule to sets smaller than 13”. Shapiro said those commodity-priced TVs will become “an endangered species” because adding a costly DTV tuner will price them out of the market.
Legislative drafts on broadcast flags for audio and video and filling the analog hole were debated at an oversight hearing Thurs. of the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee. Chmn. Smith (R- Tex.) said in his opening statement that the subcommittee’s aim was to learn what impact the measures might have on consumers and the content industry if enacted, and whether there was room for “common ground” among the sharpest opponents in the debate. At the hearing’s end, Smith said he was surprised at the level of disagreement among subcommittee members, let alone the witnesses.
“VEIL” (for “Video-Encoded Invisible Light") technology figures prominently in a discussion draft of Hollywood-backed legislation for plugging the analog hole, according to a copy of the draft we obtained. The draft, for a measure that would be called the Analog Content Protection Act of 2005, is one of 3 prospective bills -- along with broadcast flags for video and audio -- scheduled to be discussed today (Thurs.) at a House Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing, where leaders of the content and CE industries are to testify, along with key consumer groups.
An “unprecedented and multi-faceted” 4th-quarter marketing and ad campaign is planned to trumpet Howard Stern’s Jan. 9 debut on Sirius, the satellite radio provider told analysts Tues. in a quarterly conference call.
A nervous CE industry awaits the outcome Thurs. when the FCC decides whether to advance the deadline by which all TV sets 13” and larger must contain a DTV tuner. If the FCC does speed the deadline by 6 months to Dec. 31, 2006 (CED June 10 p1), CE makers would have only 13 months to comply.