Playing any role in updating the International Electrotechnical Commission’s 62087 standardized test clip for measuring TV energy consumption is “not an area of specialty” for SMPTE, Bruce Devlin, the society’s vice president-standards, told participants in a Thursday webinar (see 1801250044). “The way that SMPTE tends to work is, if a bunch of proponents believe that SMPTE would be a good repository for that test clip because of the experts within the SMPTE community, a project could be started within SMPTE to do that,” said Devlin. “Nobody’s approached us. It’s not something the CTA have talked to us about in their liaisons. So we probably wouldn’t say 'no,' it’s just that nobody’s actually asked, and nobody’s started the work.” CTA started an “active project” with outside groups to update its seven-year-old CTA-2037 standard that references the TEC 62087 test clip on measuring TV power consumption, said Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards, in September (see 1709250043). How to measure TV energy use by more up-to-date standards has been a hot discussion during EPA’s extended proceeding to update the Energy Star TV specification for v8.0 (see 1703160039). Markwalter didn’t comment Friday.
What bothers CTA President Gary Shapiro about the net neutrality debate is that "both sides have exaggerated so badly” what they see as the likely impact of the FCC’s December vote to roll back 2015 rules (see 1712140039), Shapiro said in a CES-recorded interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators to have been televised over the weekend. “We are in a position now where there's people who have such malicious intent toward the present chairman of the FCC,” said Shapiro of Ajit Pai. “His kids are being bothered, they’re getting death threats. This is not American to go after a public official, who frankly is a brilliant guy, doing what he thinks is right, with a lot of substance and nuance behind him.” Many “good people" on "both sides” of the debate can disagree, but “the fringes and the extremes on this issue are a reflection of a very bad direction that I believe that the country should not be going in,” said Shapiro. Pai withdrew from a planned visit to CES days before he was to sit down for a Las Vegas interview with Shapiro (see 1801030054).
Ford’s goal in moving into its first test city for autonomous vehicles this quarter is to assess its “business model” in self-driving cars and begin “implementing the first cycle of new prototypes,” said President-Global Markets Jim Farley Wednesday on an earnings call. The automaker is “engaged with the local government and will announce the city in the months ahead,” CEO Jim Hackett told CES. This "is the year where you are going to see a lot of progress” on the company’s autonomous-vehicle development, said Farley on the earnings call. Testing and development work will take “the next several years until we launch in 2021,” he said. The goal “is to get people in the vehicles this year to see” how its autonomous-vehicle platform “works by itself,” said Farley.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings “was as surprised as anyone else that Fox is willing to sell” many of its assets to Disney (see 1712140038), he said told investors. “To have all those cable networks together in one bundle gives them tremendous pricing power against MVPDs,” Hastings said of Disney. “So I could see the attractiveness of it, and then they’re also putting together a Disney direct-to-consumer service which we think will be very successful because Disney has super-strong brands.” Netflix reported Monday that it beat its October forecast on Q4 net subscriber additions (see 1801220049). The stock closed 10 percent higher Tuesday at $250.29.
Netflix had 8.3 million global net subscriber additions in Q4, significantly beating its October forecast of 6.3 million, the company reported Monday. “We had a beautiful Q4, completing a great year as internet TV expands globally,” said the company in its quarterly letter to shareholders. The net adds marked the highest quarter for that metric in the company’s history and was an 18 percent increase from 2016's record Q4 7.05 million net adds, said Netflix. It credited its strong “original content slate and the ongoing global adoption of internet entertainment.” Geographically, "outperformance vs. guidance was broad-based,” it said, including 2 million net adds in the U.S., compared with 1.25 million in October's forecast. Internationally, it added 6.36 million memberships, a new record for quarterly net adds for this segment and above guidance, it said. Netflix has been “talking about the transition from linear to streaming for the past 10 years,” said the shareholder letter. “As this trend becomes increasingly evident, more companies are entering the market for premium video content.” Since the market for entertainment time is “vast,” Netflix thinks it “can support many successful services,” it said. “Entertainment services are often complementary given their unique content offerings. We believe this is largely why both we and Hulu have been able to succeed and grow.” The stock rose 8.2 percent in after-hours trading to $246.25.
The UHD Alliance has “absolutely no intention of letting the trademark lapse or become abandoned” on the “Mobile HDR Premium” certification logo for qualified smartphones, tablets and laptops, President Mike Fidler told us Wednesday. The logo has had “clear usage in the market since early last year,” said Fidler. The trademark “is fully valid and in force and will continue to be an integral part of our premium mobile strategy,” he said. “The Mobile HDR Premium mark will continue to be a very visible part of our marketing communications and anticipated expansion as we move forward into 2018.” Fidler had no explanation why the alliance was unresponsive to a Patent and Trademark Office examiner's report rejecting the application to register Mobile HDR Premium as a certification mark. PTO declared the application dead Dec. 27, but the alliance has two months to petition the agency to revive or reinstate it (see 1801160024 or 1801140001).
HDR10+ Technologies applied Jan. 2 to register the stylized logo unveiled at CES for the Fox-Panasonic-Samsung royalty-free dynamic-metadata high-dynamic-range platform (see 1708300040), Patent and Trademark Office records show. The two filings -- one for a range of possible consumer tech device applications, the other for "software as a service" uses and for videogaming and streaming-video purposes -- were filed about 36 hours before the “3C” consortium debuted the logo. PTO records show HDR Technologies is headquartered at a Beaverton, Oregon, address that is home to the VTM Group, a consulting firm that runs the Open Connectivity Foundation and helped organize or run other tech groups in which Samsung had a founding role. VTM also runs the AirFuel Alliance. Warner Home Entertainment has pledged HDR10+ content support. "Technical specifications haven't been finalized," a Fox spokesman told us. "Our plan is to begin licensing once that happens and hopefully that won't be too far off. Everyone is working to get it done as soon as possible."
The National Retail Federation hailed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday to take up a South Dakota case on whether online sellers can be required to collect sales tax the same as local stores. “Antiquated sales tax collection rules have resulted in an uneven playing field that’s making it harder for Main Street retailers to compete in today’s digital economy,” said NRF President Matthew Shay. “This is a basic question about fairness, which all of our members deserve whether they’re selling in stores or online.” NRF also backs federal legislation to allow states to require out-of-state sellers to collect sales tax and to resolve details on how collection would take place rather than leaving it to each of the states to interpret how to do so, said Shay. At issue in the case, South Dakota v. Wayfair (docket 17-494), is whether the Supreme Court should repeal its 1992 decision that sales tax laws were too complicated for retailers to know how much tax to collect unless they were physically present in the customer’s state. NRF argued in a Nov. 1 amicus brief that modern computer software renders those concerns obsolete. Online merchants' groups, including the American Catalog Mailers Association, counter that the state sales tax landscape remains overly burdensome and that the states have offered no meaningful alternative to the physical-presence requirement. South Dakota has no state income tax and relies on retail taxes for much of its revenue, it argued in an Oct. 2 writ of certiorari petition. The state’s “low-density, rural population has a particularly strong incentive to take advantage of tax-free sales from internet retailers, who now quickly deliver everything from major appliances to everyday necessities throughout the country,” it said. The National Conference of State Legislatures also hailed the decision to hear the case, saying it has “long supported marketplace fairness as states are losing tens of billions of dollars per year in uncollected sales taxes.”
The NextRadio FM-listening smartphone app is enjoying a “very good” Q4, between Samsung’s agreement to unlock the FM chips in its Galaxy phones and JVCKenwood’s CES announcement adopting NextRadio for the connected car, said Emmis Communications CEO Jeff Smulyan on an earnings call.
LAS VEGAS -- The heads of ATSC, CTA and NAB raised glasses of champagne and sparkling apple cider Tuesday to toast the release of the last of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards. The toast came on the opening morning of CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Grand Lobby.