Specific details remained scant Friday on President Barack Obama’s executive order to reform immigration policies for high-skilled workers. But tech groups that have pushed hard for years for comprehensive immigration reform to alleviate the shortage of high-skilled labor appeared largely unmoved by the president’s actions, saying the few positive details they could glean from White House fact sheets confirmed that when it comes to reforming immigration policies for the high-skilled, executive orders are no substitute for congressional legislation.
LG is playing a big role in the kickoff event this Sunday in Washington of the "Broadcast TV Liberation Tour" to trumpet consumer awareness of over-the-air DTV reception through an antenna, the company said in a Tuesday announcement with co-sponsors TVFreedom.org and antenna and accessories merchandiser AntennasDirect.com. The kickoff event runs 1-5 p.m. at Washington’s Eastern Market, the promoters said. "All the way back to our Zenith days, LG has been a big believer in terrestrial broadcasting around the world," John Taylor, LG vice president-public affairs, told us Wednesday when we asked what’s in it for LG to take part in the event. "We view this as part of our efforts to support broadcasting and to help educate consumers that there’s lots of ways to get digital signals today, and one of the best is free, over the air." LG will contribute a 42-inch LCD TV as a contest giveaway at the event, but its "larger role" will be to provide the dozen large-screen Ultra HD and 1080p TVs "around the room," Taylor said. "Each of them will have an antenna attached to it. So that’s 12 different channels so attendees can really understand how much diverse programming and the excellent picture quality you can get over the air. It’s for consumer education more than anything else."
After months or more of saying it was "gearing up" for 4K content delivery (see 1312160069), DirecTV pulled the trigger Thursday when it said it will become the first multichannel video programming distributor to deliver 4K VOD to customer homes when it launches Ultra HD programming Friday. With additional satellite capacity, DirecTV also plans to launch "linear" 4K TV services in 2016, an executive said Thursday at the SatCon conference in New York (see 1411130033). Its initial offering will consist of "a variety of new releases, popular films and nature documentaries in 4K," the company said in its announcement. Samsung will be its exclusive CE 4K "launch partner," DirecTV said. In addition to owning a DirecTV-ready Samsung 4K TV, DirecTV subscribers will need an Internet-connected DirecTV Genie HD DVR (model HR34 and above), DirecTV said. For more than 20 years, DirecTV "has been changing the way people watch TV as the first to move the industry from analog to digital to HD and now the ultimate TV experience with 4K TV," said DirecTV Chief Technology Officer Romulo Pontual. "The picture quality and depth of detail that 4K provides is nothing short of remarkable and we will continue to expand our 4K lineup as consumer demand grows and evolves." DirecTV chose Samsung as its launch partner because it’s "the leading brand" in Ultra HD, DirecTV said. DirecTV spokeswoman Jade Ekstedt emailed us Thursday to say she was looking into our question whether the company will use any of the brands it has trademarked -- 4KN, 4KNET and 4K Network -- to trumpet the new VOD service with Samsung. As for how long the exclusivity with Samsung will last, she declined comment, saying: "We don't publicly disclose the terms of our agreements." Until Thursday, DirecTV had declined to discuss its specific ambitions in 4K, other than to promise it will be there in a big way as it was with HD. In May, in discussing his company’s proposed buy of DirecTV, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson hailed DirecTV as having "more HD channels than anybody, and a really clear and elegant path to Ultra HD" (see 1405200030). Some 20 movies in 4K from Paramount and K2 Communications will be available at launch, including Forrest Gump and Star Trek (2009), with more titles to be announced soon, DirecTV said Thursday.
CEA President Gary Shapiro used a news conference Tuesday at the CES Unveiled New York conference to announce that CBS President Les Moonves will keynote the Brand Matters workshop at CES on Jan. 7 at 3 p.m. at the theater in the Westgate Hotel in Las Vegas. Shapiro hailed Moonves as "an innovator" who "does things differently," and is "leading his company to the next digital era." Two years ago, Shapiro blasted CBS for "practicing effective censorship over CNET’s editorial staff" when it ordered CNET to pull Dish Network’s Hopper with Sling DVR from consideration for its Best of CES awards (see 1301140063). CNET is an affiliate of CBS, which like ABC, Fox and NBC, has sued Dish in federal court seeking injunctions that would bar the AutoHop feature in ongoing litigation. When we asked Shapiro at the Tuesday news conference about the irony of inviting Moonves to keynote CES two years after blasting CBS for "denying CNET readers full access to information about an exciting innovation" in the Hopper with Sling DVR, he responded with a long answer about how he and CEA have long defended CES as "a very big tent." In retrospect, the dust-up with CBS over CNET was a "tiny issue," though CBS’s actions were "not pleasing to us" at the time, Shapiro said: "I have a personal philosophy that I never make these issues personal. I know that today we may disagree with someone, but tomorrow they’ll be our ally. That’s how we succeed in the business world." At CES, "people disagree with CEA’s position on any issue -- net neutrality, any other issue -- and we invite them to come onstage and present it," he said. "We treat them fairly and respectfully, and that’s indeed why we have over 100 associations supporting CES as our ‘allied associations,’ and their names are posted." CBS representatives didn’t comment.
When it comes to deployment of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, "I think there’s going to be a good business proposition and a good financial proposition for 4K," Dave Siegler, vice president-technical operations at Cox, told us at NAB's Content and Communications World conference in New York Wednesday. Emphasizing that he was speaking in the context of Cox’s broadcast as well as its cable interests, Siegler said: "So much of it comes into implementation."
There has been "progress" and "a lot of discussion" on high dynamic range and wide color gamut within the ATSC’s S34-1 ad hoc group assigned to write specs for the video component of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, said ATSC President Mark Richer in an interview. "I don’t believe there are any final decisions" on HDR and wide color gamut, Richer said. "But these are areas that the whole industry has been looking at." The "production community" has been looking at HDR and wide color gamut, as have standards groups like the ITU and the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers as well as CE manufacturers, he said. "There’s also other work around the world," such as at the European Broadcasting Union, "where they’re taking a look at the ramifications," he said. "The one thing I can say -- and this is not specific to ATSC -- but the industry is coming to the realization that it isn’t just about more pixels, it’s about the quality of those pixels and how we can make them better. So there’s real interest in those things, and exactly where we’re going to end up in ATSC 3.0, I really can’t say yet. But we certainly will address the issue, and we’re communicating with the other standards organizations to make sure what we’re doing complements what they’re doing."
Lionsgate plans by the end of 2014 to launch its Lionsgate Entertainment World streaming service in China with Alibaba, CEO Jon Feltheimer said Friday on an earnings call. Lionsgate also is in talks with "several other prospective partners for additional online branded platforms," Feltheimer said. "These initiatives all capitalize on our ability to innovate in the digital space as well as to reach niche audiences with branded quality content and targeted marketing." Lionsgate has "a lot of content available in China," including "premium series" like Mad Men and movies like Divergent, Feltheimer said in Q&A. "But I want to be clear that it's not only going to be our content" that will reside on the streaming service being launched with Alibaba, he said. "We're going to be curating other content for that platform." Lionsgate also has started shooting movie content with 360-degree cameras to "take advantage" of Oculus Rift and other virtual-reality 3D headset technologies, he said. "We're actually pretty excited about it." Lionsgate views it as "the kind of enhancement that will make our home entertainment product significantly more valuable," he said.
Compared with last year, IBM’s annual holiday sales forecast report (see 1411050036) predicts significantly higher mobile browsing activity as a share of total online traffic. IBM believes that’s because of "a combination of an increased number of people using tablet devices, companies offering ubiquitous and affordable smartphones (a move away from feature phones) and consumer comfort and familiarity with mobile shopping," spokeswoman Amanda Carl emailed us Thursday. As for IBM projections that iOS devices will dominate Android smartphones and tablets in mobile browsing and shopping, we asked if IBM has any read on the possible impact of Apple Pay on holiday sales in this, its first holiday selling season. "Retailers are looking to bring the latest in online shopping to the store," Carl replied. "This includes in-store targeting via mobile applications, personalization in terms of mobile coupons, and mobile push notifications. This in-store digital push is now including mobile payments, especially with the recent launch of Apple Pay, which may in fact be the catalyst for broad adoption of mobile payments, both through Apple and other devices."
Qualcomm shares closed down 8.6 percent Thursday at $70.58 on the company’s disclosure in its 10-K SEC filing the previous evening that it’s the subject of two new regulatory investigations into its competitive practices. The FTC notified the company Sept. 17 that it has launched a probe into Qualcomm's licensing business, including a possible "breach" of its commitment to license its technology on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, the 10-K said. Then on Oct. 15, the European Commission notified Qualcomm it was investigating the company’s sales and marketing of its baseband chipsets and possible irregularities in its use of rebates and other "financial incentives," the filing said. "We are fully cooperating with these agencies and believe our practices comply with the laws of our countries, but given that these matters are in their early stages, it is difficult to predict what, if anything, will come of them," CEO Steve Mollenkopf said on an earnings call Wednesday. The two new probes are in addition to a year-old investigation by China’s National Development and Reform Commission that Qualcomm may have violated Chinese anti-monopoly laws, the 10-K said. As key mobile technologies are increasingly becoming adopted into new categories, Qualcomm is "well-positioned" to exploit "these evolving opportunities," Mollenkopf said. Citing Gartner estimates that more than 8 billion smartphones will be sold globally through 2018, Qualcomm sees the smartphone as "representing the largest technology platform on which to innovate and drive upgrade opportunities," he said. "We believe the smartphone will be central to the growing number of connected things around us, and our focus is on aligning our resources to continue to capture these opportunities." Qualcomm is "very pleased with our design activity in the premium tier" of smartphone components, including "flagship devices" like the Snapdragon 805, Qualcomm’s first processor to offer "system-level Ultra HD support and 4K video capture and playback," he said.
As framers of the ATSC 3.0 next-gen broadcast system march toward their self-imposed deadline of completing work on a "candidate standard" by the end of 2015, the group's board formed an "ad hoc group" to begin studying the various "scenarios" under which ATSC 3.0 might be introduced commercially to the viewing public later in the decade, possibly as soon as 2017. The ad hoc group, under the chairmanship of Sam Matheny, NAB chief technology officer, is "exploratory in nature, trying to take a look at what the possibilities are, and what some of the ramifications of the different possibilities are," said ATSC President Mark Richer in an interview.