Paul Gluckman

Now that the Microprose MPI-500PT analog-passthrough converter box has won NTIA certification, the maker needs a retailer other than the Microprose online store to sell it. NTIA has booted Legacy Engineering from the program, the agency confirmed Monday. Legacy ran the Microprose Systems online store under license from maker Microprose. The MPI- 500PT gained notoriety after low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association steered visitors to its KeepUsOn.com site toward buying the uncertified box at the Microprose store. On Monday, the CBA hailed word of the MPI-500PT getting NTIA certification in a reply to a query we posted at KeepUsOn.com. “What great news to know that yet another quality DTV converter with analog passthrough is going to be made available to the public,” the CBA said. We asked the CBA if it plans to revive the Microprose cross promotion that the NTIA’s action against Legacy killed. “We have continued our discussions with Microprose and hope they will achieve success with their product when it ultimately becomes available,” the CBA said.

Open-device concessions that XM and Sirius have proposed to the FCC in seeking approval of their merger “will not prevent a merged satellite company from acting in an anti-competitive manner,” iBiquity Digital CEO Bob Struble told us in an e-mail Friday. IBiquity wants the FCC to mandate HD Radio reception in all satellite radio receivers with AM/FM tuners to level the playing field between satellite and terrestrial digital radio. The XM-Sirius proposal “does not eliminate existing exclusivity arrangements that XM and Sirius currently have with virtually every auto manufacturer today,” Struble said. Nor does it “address many of the technical issues that would bar the inclusion of HD Radio technology in devices and would create numerous financial relationships the merged company could use to block competition,” he said. “In short, unless the FCC addresses these issues, competition and the public interest will suffer.” As for Pioneer’s opposing iBiquity’s call for HD Radio mandates in XM-Sirius receivers, Struble said: “Pioneer is a long-time and valued partner. We understand their position.”

Rent-A-Center must offer free converter boxes to customers who bought or rented an analog-only TV, VCR or DVD recorder May 29 through Aug. 7, 2007, to settle allegations with the FCC it violated the commission’s analog-only labeling order, according to a consent decree released Friday. Conn’s, in a second consent decree released Friday, agreed to participate in the DTV coupon program and to stop selling analog-only TV receivers this year or risk running up monthly fines. Rent-A-Center also has agreed to pay a $60,000 fine to settle the charges, it said. For Conn’s, $70,000 is the upfront fine it has agreed to pay, but the financial penalties mount if it stays in the analog TV business. Conn’s must stop selling analog-only TVs this year and by Sept. 1 will start paying the FCC $1,500 a month for every month it fails to do so. An NTIA spokesman erred Thursday when he told us BJ'S Wholesale Club, which under its consent decree also agreed to join the coupon program, was not a participating retailer. In fact, NTIA’s own data shows BJ’s has over 300 stores actively redeeming coupons. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau didn’t respond to our requests for comment whether the commission has jurisdiction to require a retailer to participate in the coupon program when the DTV statute gave only NTIA the authority to run the program. Forcing a retailer to participate in the program also seems to run counter to NTIA rules that make retail participation voluntary. NTIA has declined comment on our queries.

The FCC is lowering the hammer on three general- merchandise chains -- the first retailers to sign consent decrees for violating the commission’s year-old analog labeling order, said texts of the orders released Thursday. The devil isn’t in the modest fines that the chains have agreed to pay, as expected (CD May 27 p5), but in the terms they must abide by to have the investigations dropped.

NTIA plans “as expeditiously as possible” to issue a rule change qualifying nursing home residents as DTV coupon- eligible, an agency spokesman said Monday. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wrote Friday to NTIA Acting Administrator Meredith Baker urging that NTIA seek expedited Office of Management and Budget approval of the move. In an “emergency review” request, OMB can approve a rule change within days or weeks, compared with 120 days for a standard request. “The sooner this rule change is approved, the sooner senior citizens can begin to make necessary preparations” for the February analog cutoff, Nelson told Baker. Comments on the proposed rule change were due Monday.

Low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association wants consumers immediately to redeem any coupons that will expire in 10 days, even if it means buying “the wrong box” -- one lacking analog passthrough -- the group said Friday. Those who buy such a box should leave it in its carton and then exchange it for an analog-passthrough model when one becomes available, CBA said in an announcement it billed as its “last attempt to help!”.

Blame “poor planning” at NTIA for dooming an effort by low-power TV, begun and ended last week, to promote Microprose analog-passthrough converter boxes to consumers whose coupons are about to expire, the Community Broadcasters Association said in response to a reader query on its KeepUsOn.com Web site. But according to our reality check of developments in the Microprose-CBA story, CBA misjudgments figured as much as any other factor in the Microprose “debacle,” as a CBA vice president called it Thursday when his group cut all ties to Microprose and its Web store.

Getting analog-passthrough DTV converters to consumers whose coupons are about to expire is the goal of a tie-in low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association debuted Tuesday with box supplier Microprose. But Microprose was delisted as a certified supplier, apparently because it’s against NTIA rules to redeem coupons for pre-orders, as Microprose was doing, an agency spokesman said.

The FCC’s discovery in the past year that many DTV makers “have been selling units that ignore FCC rules requiring V-chip 2.0 compatibility” shows why the agency should consider requiring automatic software update capability in DTV sets and set-top boxes, six consumer, civil rights and disability groups told FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in a letter last week. Consumers “are at risk because the manufacturers are knowingly selling products that are likely to become obsolete long before they should,” the letter said. “If the manufacturers would include an inexpensive automatic software upgrade capability, new DTVs and converter boxes will be more durable and useful for consumers than is the case without that capability,” said the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Consumer Federation of America, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the New America Foundation, the Telecom Research and Action Center and the World Institute on Disability. Martin should launch an immediate inquiry “to shed light on these issues and see “if the industry will behave responsibly or if some stronger action is required to protect consumers,” they said. As yet they aren’t proposing rules like mandatory automatic update capability as part of product certification or “clear labeling” that tells consumers if gear has that capability, they said. House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D- Mass., put the issue “on the table” in November 2006 when they urged NTIA to require automatic update capability in coupon-eligible converter boxes, the letter said. But NTIA decided to make it a permitted rather than required CECB feature in its March 2007 final rules. Automatic software upgrades “could benefit both manufacturers in updating software and the users in upgrading a CECB’s authorized features,” the agency said then. “It is NTIA’s understanding that this automatic software update feature was only recently field-tested and is not currently commercially available, even in expensive television receivers,” NTIA said. “NTIA is reluctant to require that manufacturers include in a CECB this new technology which is just emerging from field tests.” In their letter to Martin, the six groups said NTIA “would have been wise to listen to the Congressmen,” given Microtune claims that tuner chips in most certified CECBs don’t meet ATSC A/74 performance standards. CEA has many concerns “about this effort to impose technology mandates on this robustly competitive marketplace,” a spokesman said. “These proposals come a year after the government gave all parties a full and fair opportunity to participate in the formation of the DTV coupon program,” he said. Imposing them would “undermine” program implementation and imperil the DTV transition, he said.

The “good news” for Sirius Q1 was its “very strong” subscriber and revenue growth, CEO Mel Karmazin said Monday in a quarterly earnings call. But another quarter of FCC inaction on its proposed merger with XM was the “bad news,” Karmazin said.