Channel Master plans the CES debut of its SMARTenna+, which it describes as the world’s first over-the-air smart, processor-enabled indoor TV antenna available to consumers. It uses “active-steering” technology from components manufacturer Ethertronics, and has built-in amplification and noise-filtering, so it automatically can find the “optimal antenna settings for the available channels, with the option for fine-tuning via a push-button control,” said Channel Master. That combination of features increases viewer “convenience and flexibility while maximizing the number of channels received across all VHF and UHF channels,” it said. The SMARTenna+ has a built-in tuner, which scans the available channels on the “initial plug-in of the antenna,” said Joe Bingochea, executive vice president-product development. It can receive from seven different positions, he said. “It will scan all those seven different positions, and will determine which one of those positions can receive the most channels.” The scan takes about two minutes, he said. Improved Channel Master algorithms reduced the scan time by more than 75 percent, he said.
LAS VEGAS -- As a pre-CES media advisory Friday said heads of ATSC, CTA and NAB will convene in a “milestone ceremony” on the show's opening morning to commemorate completion of the last of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards, broadcast consortium Pearl TV announced a “collaborative project” with Sony Electronics to develop a “channel navigation tool” to be deployed and tested in the Phoenix “model market” of 10 TV stations (see 1711140053).
Roku’s first Christmas Day as a public company had its glitches. “We are aware that some Roku users report seeing an error code 001 on the TV during the Roku activation screen,” said a Roku customer support “service interruption” bulletin posted Monday at 9:50 a.m. PST. “Try disconnecting and reconnecting the power adapter,” said the bulletin. “You should be able to continue after restart. We are working diligently to address this issue and we will update this article with any changes. You will not need to do anything, or contact support. Please just try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.” Less than an hour later, at 10:45 a.m. PST, customer support reported that “systems look good and all should be working normally now.” Roku is “not commenting on the specifics” of the service interruption, including whether it came under the crush of a high volume of Christmas Day activations, said spokeswoman Tricia Mifsud.
BlackBerry hopes the partnership agreement it signed last month with Teletry will bring “more consistency” to its patent licensing program, plus “a broader reach” that will result in “higher IP revenue,” CEO John Chen said on a Wednesday earnings call. Under the agreement, Teletry “can sublicense a range of BlackBerry patents to the majority of the smartphone manufacturers worldwide,” Chen said. BlackBerry picked Teletry because of its “track record in licensing,” he said. BlackBerry retains ownership of its 40,000-patent “portfolio,” and will continue to operate its own licensing program, he said.
Channel Master's business keeps growing, mostly due to cord cutting, Joe Bingochea, executive vice president-product development, told us, with cord-cutting homes rising. Contrary to TiVo reports showing a slight dip in the cord-cutting trend in Q3 (see 1712130008), “we haven’t seen anything to suggest it has slowed down in the last quarter, as far as our business is concerned,” he said. Among the company's customers, all watching TV over the air, by antenna, "there’s not one consistent pattern of streaming services that they’re supplementing their OTA with," he said. Bingochea sees long-term viability in the OTA business. “I think there’s still some life left in OTA,” even though the major broadcast networks are becoming available in over-the-top formats, he said.
Into Tomorrow radio broadcaster Dave Graveline spared few words in blasting CTA and CEO Gary Shapiro, as well as the viability of CES, for the fact that his company won’t have a broadcast booth on the show floor for the first time in 23 years. CTA wanted Into Tomorrow to pay $17,600 this year to build its broadcast “pavilion” in a secluded “alcove” of the Las Vegas Convention Center, but the company refused, blogged Graveline Friday. CTA at previous shows gave Graveline the space for next to nothing, he said, suggesting Shapiro was taking retribution for not having been interviewed often enough on Into Tomorrow: “It’s not all about you Gary Shapiro, it’s about your Exhibitors!” The association respects and appreciates "how Dave and his Into Tomorrow team have covered CES and other CTA events over the years," said spokesman Jeff Joseph in a statement Monday. "As a general rule, we do not pay our CES Media Partners or other broadcast outlets to cover our events, and as we communicated to Dave several months ago, following our 2018 show we can no longer justify continuing the financial subsidy we uniquely provided for several years to his company. Respecting our long relationship, we did, however, offer him space in one of our broadcast towers for CES 2018."
The $66.1 billion acquisition of much of 21st Century Fox (see 1712140003) would let Disney “greatly accelerate our direct-to-consumer strategy,” and is one of the “most exciting aspects,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors Thursday. “Creating a direct-to-consumer relationship is vital to the future of our media businesses, and it’s our highest priority.” Iger repeated what he said in August when Disney upped its stake in BAMTech to 75 percent and announced it would pull its films from Netflix in 2019 (see 1708080065). The American Cable Association and groups generally opposing consolidation have concerns, with experts split on regulatory prospects (see 1712130010).
Amazon and Google patent applications “provide insight into the surveillance that is possible via smart home devices” like Amazon Echo and Google Home, with “troubling legal and ethical implications,” Consumer Watchdog reported Wednesday. CW conceded filing a patent application is no guarantee a company will commercialize inventions. It recalled that patent applications for the Google Glass and Amazon Kindle “seemed outlandish when they were filed,” until they resulted in “very real products for the applicants.” To "anticipate and meet consumers’ needs in new ways, digital assistants make increasingly invasive forays into users’ private lives. As users accept these intrusions, they give up their personal data, and with it, their privacy and security,” the study said. With the smaller-sized Echo Dot and Google Home Mini, Amazon and Google have “begun to foray beyond the living room and into the bedroom,” it said. “There, they can infer from your interactions with the device when you wake up -- and maybe even who you wake up with.” An Amazon patent application published Aug. 17 “describes using voice signatures and behavior to distinguish between members of a household,” said the report. “This could help Amazon determine whether to advertise birthday cake to your spouse or to your six-year-old.” A Google application published in October 2016 describes methods of speaker recognition through use of “neural networks." Google didn’t comment.
“Cost is a challenge” in developing self-driving vehicles, said Hilary Cain, Toyota North America director-technology and innovation policy, on a CTA podcast Tuesday. “When you look at these test vehicles you see out on the road, the cost of the sensor suite is ... oftentimes more, than the cost of the vehicle.” There’s “a little bit of truth” in all consumer surveys, whether showing consumers are excited about autonomous vehicles or are scared, she said. “I don’t think anyone’s talking about forcing this technology on somebody who’s terrified by it. But certainly we want to make the technology available to those folks who are excited.”
ATSC’s A/331 document on signaling, delivery, synchronization and error protection was approved Dec. 6 as a final 3.0 standard, said Monroe Electronics, which said the Advanced Emergency Alerting (AEA) specification “is based primarily on designs” it submitted. The document “specifies the technical mechanisms and procedures pertaining to service signaling and IP-based delivery of a variety of ATSC 3.0 services and contents to ATSC 3.0-capable receivers over broadcast, broadband and hybrid broadcast/broadband networks.” South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute contributed IP, as did Fraunhofer, LG, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony and Technicolor. The AEA spec "is part of a non-proprietary standard," Ed Czarnecki, Monroe senior director-strategic and government affairs, told us Tuesday. "Our goal was to contribute an element in ATSC 3.0 that would enhance the overall value of next-gen TV.” AEA's messaging feature of A/331 will enable broadcasters “to leapfrog to IP-based, mobile, customizable, and media-rich emergency notifications to their audiences, with the potential for a range of first responder and public safety services,” said Czarnecki in a statement. It “will enable a vastly improved user experience for TV viewers when it comes to emergency alerts, whether they're watching through receivers on fixed screens, mobile phones, or portable devices such as tablets or vehicle-mounted displays,” said Monroe. Following FCC Nov. 16 authorization of 3.0 voluntary deployment, the goal of the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance is to have a "beta solution” on emergency alerting by early 2019 available for stations launching 3.0 broadcasts beginning in 2019 (see 1711200023).