Paul Gluckman

Philips is pleased that the FCC has approved the use of TV white spaces for unlicensed devices (CD Nov 5 p1) and that the agency “will move forward with rules to facilitate development of new innovative devices that will provide the gateway,” a spokeswoman said Wednesday. Philips isn’t discussing product plans or timing, she said, but is “confident that our sensing technology will play an important role” for consumers in the future. Nor can CEA speculate “how soon white spaces devices will arrive in stores,” a spokeswoman said. “There are currently too many unknowns about the order,” she said. “None of the critical technical rules governing where and at what power these devices can operate were released.”

Three CE makers agreed to pay the FCC $78,350 in fines, total for shipping TV sets without DTV tuners, the agency said in orders released Friday. It said ViewSonic agreed to pay $23,350, Sling Media $42,500 and TTE $12,500. Consent decrees require the companies to compliance measures, such as certifying that TV shipments obey the commission’s DTV tuner mandate, the orders said. TTE agreed to a requirement not imposed on the others. “Specifically, only digital television broadcast receivers for United States customers will have pricing data associated with them, ensuring that no United States customer will be able to purchase a noncompliant new television broadcast receiver,” the order on TTE said. TTE, which sells RCA-brand TVs, also agreed to replace with digital sets analog-only sets still under warranty, the order said. The company is doing that to smooth the DTV transition and minimize “consumer confusion or disruption,” the order said.

Dish Network won’t restrict sales of its $40 coupon- eligible converter box to its online store, as its announcement this week on the product’s availability had implied, a spokeswoman told Consumer Electronics Daily. Dish’s TR-40CRA box, available at no charge except for tax and shipping when bought using an NTIA coupon will be sold through Dish retailers that have been “approved to accept coupons,” the spokeswoman said.

The first a la carte satellite radios will arrive at retail this fall, CEO Mel Karmazin said Thursday in Sirius XM’s first conference call as a merged company. Sirius XM also will debut its first interoperable radio “a number of months” before the FCC-stipulated nine months, Karmazin said, without giving a date.

The market’s lack of any interoperable satellite radio receiver puts Sirius and XM in violation of a condition of their 1997 licenses, the FCC said in its merger approval order released late Tuesday. Still, the agency believes the merged Sirius XM will deliver on a “voluntary commitment” to market interoperable radios within nine months, the order said.

The MPAA wants the FCC to rebuff demands for conditions on a selectable output control waiver it seeks. The conditions would require new content services be streamed through all digital outputs approved by CableLabs and non- cable service providers, the group said Thursday in reply comments. The Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator and TiVo want the conditions, but “there is no demonstrated public interest need” for the FCC to “mandate which outputs must be used to provide the proposed new services,” the MPAA said. A “one-size-fits-all approach would not take into account potential variances between different services and providers,” it said. For on-demand streaming of HD movies to homes before DVD or Blu-ray release, the SOC waiver being sought, studios and service providers “should have the flexibility to use the technologies that are best suited to serve the needs of their mutual customers, while balancing the need to protect their content,” the MPAA said. It’s “not in the interest” of the MPAA or service providers “to unnecessarily limit access to the services or to cause consumer confusion,” the group said. DTLA said decisions on use of particular outputs can’t be left to content owners’ and service providers’ “unfettered discretion.” But that “belies the complex realities involved with the development and inclusion of various inputs, outputs, and content protection technologies on video reception equipment,” the MPAA said. Device makers’ decisions on which inputs and outputs to place on their products have “a profound impact on how consumers can use those devices and the services they will be able to receive,” the MPAA said. “However, given the dynamic nature and rapid evolution of technology today, these decisions are appropriately left to the marketplace and private sector solutions.”

At least two broadcasters, CBS and National Public Radio, want the FCC to start an expedited rulemaking on whether to require HD Radio in satellite radio receivers, ex partes at the agency show. As part of approving the proposed merger, the commission should guarantee a fast rulemaking, the broadcasters said. Apparently both have given up hope of the commission writing an HD Radio mandate into a merger approval order. The NAB also wants the commission “to condition any approval of the merger so that consumers would have access to radio equipment that would allow them to switch between digital satellite offerings and terrestrial digital offerings,” its ex parte said. The CBS proposal, both more sweeping and more specific, urges that the commission begin a rulemaking within 30 days after approving the merger and finish it within 180 days. CBS wants the FCC to require HD Radio in terrestrial as well as in satellite receivers “at some future date,” it said. NPR wants HD Radio required only in satellite receivers, it said. NPR sees “this proposal as an essential means of assuring the broad availability of local HD services to the public,” its filing said. The FCC considered but didn’t impose a digital radio hard cutoff date in a May 2007 order. “Several reasons support this decision,” the commission said then. They included the fact that, unlike TV licensees, radio stations “are under no statutory mandate to convert to a digital format” and because the “spectrum reclamation needs that exist for DTV do not exist here.” It was not clear at our deadline Friday whether the commission would agree to propose a rulemaking or a less binding notice of inquiry on an HD Radio requirement.

The NTIA has ordered six million extra DTV converter-box coupons to be ready to send out when money is recycled into the program from expired coupons, Acting Administrator Meredith Baker told us Friday at a House Procurement Subcommittee field hearing in Brooklyn, N.Y.

IBM won’t comment on its negotiations with the NTIA to set contract terms for mailing more coupons than the program’s original 33.5 million, spokesman Fred McNeese told us Thursday. The IBM contract allows NTIA to increase the number of coupons distributed at the price stated in the contract, unless IBM or the NTIA disagrees (CD July 14 p2). The NTIA also won’t comment on the substance of the negotiations, spokesman Todd Sedmak said. IBM had mailed 19.1 million coupons through Tuesday, the NTIA reported. After 20 million, IBM will be paid nothing for mailing the last 2.5 million coupons in the program’s “initial” phase, the contract said. After those run out, a “contingent” phase will release 11.25 million coupons for households that get TV by antenna alone. The contract pays IBM $3.60 for each of the first 5 million contingent coupons it mails, and $2.84 for each of the remaining 6.25 million.

Panasonic met last month with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology officials on plans to introduce low-power 60- GHz WirelessHD devices, an ex parte shows. But Panasonic gave the FCC no more specific product plans than when it showed WirelessHD at the last CES, a spokesman told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. The Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator is “in the final steps” of approving Digital Transmission Content Protection for WirelessHD, the ex parte said. Panasonic told the agency it thinks WirelessHD will gain wide consumer and CE industry acceptance because it transmits uncompressed HD video throughout the house “without quality deterioration,” the ex parte said. Since WirelessHD avoids cable clutter, “users can enjoy greater freedom in design and positioning of their home theater” equipment, Panasonic said.