The NAB is talking up the mobile DTV technology that will be on display at its annual show in Las Vegas in April. It spotlighted a half-dozen exhibitors -- Decontis, DTVInteractive, Dyle, Mobile Emergency Alert System, the Mobile500 Alliance and Rentrak -- that will be displaying mobile DTV wares at the show’s Mobile DTV Pavilion. “Mobile TV holds promise for consumers and broadcasters as video on-the-go becomes increasingly in demand and data plan consumption charges become more expensive for consumers,” NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan said.
Comments on a plan by Spectrum Bridge and Meld Technologies to set up a TV white spaces transmitter in retail stores that would beam digital ads to in-store TV sets are due April 25, a public notice from the Office of Engineering and Technology said (http://bit.ly/13usjLr). Replies are due May 10. In a request revised most recently on Feb. 25, Spectrum Bridge said it needed a waiver of certain FCC rules to operate the system (http://bit.ly/16WfuIT) on channels adjacent to existing TV channels. “Permitting this waiver will provide access to more channels indoors which can be utilized to provide parallel streams of content to different signs,” it said. “In many urban areas, the availability of channels for Fixed Use are extremely limited,” it said.
An “early access” program for customers seeking to implement High-Efficiency Video Coding compression for Ultra HD and other applications has been launched by video processing technology supplier Envivio, the company said Tuesday. Envivio also will team with Broadcom on HEVC encoder and decoder interoperability “to provide a proven, reliable solution ahead of commercial market deployments,” Envivio said. The companies will demonstrate their technology at next week’s NAB Show featuring HEVC streams in HD encoded by Envivio Muse and decoded by the Broadcom BCM7445, it said. “This collaboration enables faster time to market for service providers seeking to roll out HEVC services” this year, it said. The new HEVC (H.265) standard, which is still being finalized, is expected to achieve up to 50 percent bandwidth reduction at comparable video quality to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), or provide substantial quality gains for services delivered at the same bitrates, Envivio said. “In IPTV architectures, operators can increase eligibility to reach more customers and second/third screens, while in satellite and cable environments, HEVC can be used to increase the number of channels service providers can deliver in a transport or QAM,” it said. “Moving forward, HEVC is also expected to enable new viewing experiences with 4K video resolutions."
An anonymous group of TV station owners who say they plan to participate in the incentive spectrum auction attacked the plan to pay some stations more for their spectrum than others based any “scoring” factors developed by the FCC. The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition said the statute that authorized the auction “does not contemplate any role for the opinions of FCC Staff regarding the value of individual stations or classes of stations.” A scoring system based on a station’s population coverage would yield lower prices for stations licensed in communities on the fringes of large markets and undervalue the significance of such stations participating in the auction, the coalition said. “The absolute best way to assure a successful auction … is to attract the maximum possible broadcaster participation,” it said. “We urge the commission to take every opportunity to disavow any intention to manage broadcaster prices by ’scoring’ stations,” it said.
An FCC administrative law judge delayed a hearing scheduled to start next week on a carriage dispute between Cablevision and the Game Show Network (GSN), an order released Tuesday said. Chief Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippell pushed the hearing back to July 16 to make time for further discovery and to factor in any ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on a separate carriage dispute involving Comcast and Tennis Channel. In that case, the appeals court stayed an FCC order requiring Comcast to increase its distribution of the Tennis Channel network and judges were said to have appeared poised to rule against the agency during oral argument (CD Feb 26 p1). “The parties have conferred on this matter and have indicated by e-mail that they agree that it would be best for the hearing to be continued until July,” the order said. Cablevision and an attorney for GSN declined to comment.
The estimated annual operating costs to support the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee are $73,000, NTIA said in a document made available on its website (http://1.usa.gov/10bI42h). That includes paying for half of a federal employee assigned to CSMAC.
Global Tel-Link, one of the nation’s largest providers of inmate calling services (ICS), said the FCC “must continue to defer to state and local authorities” on whether prison phone rates are “reasonable” (http://bit.ly/10LEVtT). In response to the FCC’s NPRM on prison phone call reforms (CD Dec 31 p6), GTL sided with state departments of correction and law enforcement groups in defending the rates. The rates which fund “sophisticated security elements,” GTL said, are properly determined by local policymakers. ICS present “unique issues that are not susceptible to one-size-fits-all federal regulation,” the provider said. The FCC does have “broad license” to ensure “just and reasonable” interstate calling rates, “but the power is not absolute,” GTL said. “While the FCC has certain obligations under the Act, the historic regulation of prisons by the states and the unique challenges presented by state prisons and ICS, place regulation of ICS more appropriately with the states.” Dozens of prisoners and Deaf advocacy organizations have urged the FCC to step in (CD March 26 p6).
ICANN launched its Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) Tuesday, which allows trademark holders to register their brand names in preparation for the rollout of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) later this year. The clearinghouse is operated by Deloitte and IBM, ICANN said (http://bit.ly/YzwmEw). Trademark holders can register with the clearinghouse, giving them the “opportunity to proactively register domain names which match their trademarks ahead of wider public availability,” the release said. Within the first 90 days of each gTLD launch, trademark holders registered with the clearinghouse will be notified when any other entity registers a domain name that matches registrants’ trademarks. “Recording marks into the TMCH is the most effective way to ensure that IP is appropriately safeguarded across all of the new web extensions that will go live this year,” Deloitte Partner Jan Corstens said in a statement. Dan Jaffe, executive vice president-government relations of the Association of National Advertisers, told us that “a number” of ANA members that have interacted with the clearinghouse “believe the system is untested and unready.” During an ANA conference last week, Jaffe said ICANN should create a limited preventive registration mechanism, which would allow trademark holders to register their brand names and commonly abused similar names across all registries for a limited fee.
The FCC Wireline Bureau released its new high-cost loop support benchmarks for 2013 (http://bit.ly/10LBVxJ). As decided in the commission’s Sixth Order on Reconsideration, the benchmarks are now based on the sum of the capital expenditures cap and operating expenses cap, the bureau said. The benchmarks (http://fcc.us/YCLtu3) take effect in April.
Friday’s Senate approval of an amendment to allow states to collect sales tax from out-of-state online retailers that do business with in-state residents did not deal with what enforcement mechanisms should be made available to collecting states, Computer and Communications Industry Association CEO Ed Black said in a statement this week (http://bit.ly/YCMnXl). The amendment, offered by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., during the chamber’s budget vote, “does not deal with the all-important question of HOW to achieve that enforcement and collection,” Black said. The amendment does not address the issue that “the Marketplace Fairness Act would scrap the fundamental relationship between taxation and physical presence by pressing online retailers into duty as tax collectors,” he said. Because issues like these remain untouched, “to equate approval of this amendment to support for the Marketplace Fairness Act is akin to pointing to general approval for budget deficit reduction as evidence of support for specific budget cuts,” he said. “CCIA will continue to push for much more extensive consideration of this issue through regular order.”