Paul Gluckman

XM won’t “chase a weak retail market with excessive discounting,” Chmn. Gary Parsons told a Wed. UBS conference in N.Y. That would raise subscriber acquisition costs (SACs) unnecessarily, he said: “We think we can keep control on that model while still growing at a positive, reasonable pace.” XM will rely more on automotive OEM for new subscribers, he said, calling OEM a far more efficient enrollment mechanism and far stronger in terms of customer satisfaction. “That does not mean by any means that we're going to abandon the retail marketplace,” he said. In Q&A, CFO Joe Eutenauer said XM has “plenty of flexibility” to raise rates, but has kept them intact to drive subscription growth. Responding to a questioner, Frear said he couldn’t think of reason that a Sirius merger with XM “wouldn’t be a good thing to do” from an investor outlook For listeners, a merger could bring “significant benefits in having a single brand and coordinated offering out to the marketplace, as opposed to overlapping product” and service offerings, he said: “There’s a far more diverse product offering you could put up there for consumers to serve them perhaps even better than they're served today.”

If ESPN “wanted to go 1080p, they could do it today,” Sony Electronics Pres. Stan Glasgow said in reply to our question Mon. about the sports network’s recent statements that lack of 1080p digital switchers and other broadcast gear is among the obstacles in migrating from 720p. “Is it a big investment” for ESPN to move to 1080p? Glasgow asked. “It’s absolutely a substantial investment. What I'm suggesting is they've made a substantial investment in 720p. Case closed. They're not ready to go out and redo that again. And they probably broadcast as much if not more than anybody else in HD.” Bottom line: 720p “looks awful good, and until you get up to a bigger screen size and an understanding of what to look for, it’s hard to see the difference” from 1080p, Glasgow said. Bryan Burns, ESPN vp-strategic business planning & development, declined comment.

“Oversights” mar a Nov. 7 CEA proposal at the FCC aimed at speeding deployment of 2-way plug & play products and making OCAP an option, Harmonic said Thurs. in comments filed at the FCC endorsing NCTA’s CableCARD waiver bid. Set-tops made under the CEA’s proposed terms could lack OCAP, which would “constrain them from supporting some of the newer capabilities” of OCAP being developed by CableLabs, such as enhanced TV (ETV), said Harmonic, a digital video compression systems supplier. A “subset” of ETV can be had without OCAP, but “the full set requires OCAP,” Harmonic said: “As a result, there is little economic incentive for MSOs to push these low-cost set-tops over their more expensive, full- featured cousins available with OCAP, digital outputs and HDTV outputs. These are the units which compete against the CEA’s CableCARD-equipped devices.” CEA claims “to want open standards in this area,” but has submitted no draft specifications to the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers (SCTE), cable’s standards development group, Harmonic said. Harmonic said it’s active in SCTE’s Digital Video Subcommittee, which met Fri. For that body to take up CEA’s proposal, CEA would have had to file a draft by Nov. 17; it didn’t, Harmonic said: “The lack of such proposals seems odd in the face of the various claims and requests from the consumer electronics companies.” CEA appreciates that Harmonic, a cable industry vendor, is “calling for an industry standard that promotes competitive cable equipment, and we share that goal,” a spokesman told us Fri. “But the cable lobby’s recent advocacy at the FCC demonstrates an unwillingness to comply with the law ending the cable equipment monopoly,” the spokesman said. CEA is an active participant in standards venues, including SCTE, he said. But when the Nov. 17 deadline came for the Dec. 1 meeting, “it was premature for us to make a formal submission,” he said. “We will certainly propose changes to existing standards that will promote competitive cable equipment, hopefully with cable’s future cooperation and guidance from the FCC,” he said. In comments opposing BendBroadband’s CableCARD waiver request, CEA said it’s “sympathetic” to the “plight” facing the small cable operator now that Motorola has decided “unilaterally” that it won’t make a CableCARD version of the DCT-700 set-top Bend wants to buy. But a waiver won’t mean relief for Bend and other small cable operators from the set-top “duopoly” of Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta, CEA said: “Rather the answer lies in, finally, empowering competitive entry into this device marketplace, via the cable industry’s finally providing specifications and licensing for a range of competitive navigation devices, including those that would address the needs of customers for all digital services, as Bend plans.” CEA’s “detailed proposal” at the FCC would provide for that kind of set-up, it said. The group “stands ready” to discuss the proposal “expeditiously” with the Commission “and any and all interested parties, including Bend,” CEA said.

Lifting NDA curbs on downloadable security would ensure that “an open and transparent discussion may ensue among all parties,” CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro said Thurs. in a reply letter to top House and Senate Commerce Committee Republicans. If cable won’t remove the restrictions on its own, the FCC should do it, Shapiro said. Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska), House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) and House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.) wrote FCC Chmn. Martin Tues. to decry forcing costly deployment of “outdated” CableCARDs, with superior downloadable security technology impending. They urged “timely” deployment of downloadable security. Shapiro said cable’s downloadable security spec “is fatally lacking in transparency and interoperability, ensuring no progress toward actual deployment of this technology can be made. The secret environment under which downloadable security exists makes future support for it even more speculative and uncertain than for the CableCARD.” But NCTA thinks NDA restrictions “protect the valuable content that cable operators provide consumers,” a spokesman said. Removing them “would violate the specific direction that Congress provided to the FCC to not ‘jeopardize security of multichannel video programming,'” he said. “Almost every consumer electronics product is developed using a non- disclosure environment, including devices that format security for the same high-end content.” Waiving such protections for downloadable conditional access would “compromise the security elements” used by other commercially successful pay-TV security systems that have been deployed, he said.

CEA put a positive spin on a Nov. 27 letter sent to FCC Chmn. Martin by House and Senate Commerce Committee Republican leaders that said forcing costly deployment of “outdated technology” in CableCARDs is “not good public policy” (CD Nov 29 p11). The letter -- signed by Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska), House Commerce Committee Chmn. Barton (R-Tex.) and House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.) -- backs “a solution that we proposed to the FCC and cable several weeks ago” to hasten 2-way plug & play to market with OCAP as an option, not a requirement, CEA said. CEA again urged cable to remove NDA curbs from downloadable security “so that we all can have a thorough and open discussion about this in plain public view… We are pleased to see that Chairmen Stevens, Barton, and Upton agree with us.”

There’s an audience measurement function built into Sirius’s new Wi-Fi-enabled Stiletto handheld, Paul Blalock, Sirius senior vp-investor relations, told the ISCe Satellite Investment Symposium in N.Y. Tues. Whenever the Stiletto is within range of a wireless network, Sirius “can check to see what kind of channel listening habits you've had,” Blalock said in reply to a question whether Sirius uses Nielsen-like listener tracking services. Sirius does not, Blalock said.

Unlike the video broadcast flag, which concerns only indiscriminate redistribution of DTV content, and doesn’t thwart home recording or playback, RIAA’s audio flag proposals “would interfere with private consumer behavior.” That’s how CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro responded Wed. in a letter to RIAA Chmn. Bainwol in the latest war of words in the audio flag debate.

Democrats on the House Commerce Committee Wed. joined a chorus of critics urging NTIA to drop its rulemaking proposal restricting eligibility for DTV converter box coupons to households relying exclusively on over-the-air signals. The demand, in a letter not seeking legislative changes in the coupon program, strongly urged NTIA to make sure the program periodically informs Congress and the public on how many coupons are being requested and redeemed to prepare for any changes that may be needed later.

SAN JOSE -- Trying to get more people to watch and getting them to watch longer are the metrics “that rock our world,” and HD has delivered both, making it the biggest “reinvention” in TV history, Bryan Burns, ESPN HD vp- strategic business planning & development, told Samsung Semiconductor’s Future Unlimited conference here Wed. Still, infrastructure issues mean ESPN is no closer to moving to 1080p from 720p than it has been, Burns said.

ATSC A/74 for adjacent-channel interference and FCC 05- 199 for co-channel interference are “adequate and reasonable” standards for certifying coupon-eligible boxes without hurting the potential for using TV white spaces, New American Foundation (NAF) told NTIA in a Tues. ex parte presentation. NAF based its conclusion on preliminary findings in receiver interference tests at the U. of Kan. The findings matter because NTIA’s DTV coupon program could “impact” use of TV white spaces for unlicensed wireless devices, depending on the specs it adopts for certifying converter boxes as coupon- eligible, NAF said. NTIA scheduled 18 ex parte meetings Tues. and Wed. (Wed.) in its DTV coupon rulemaking (CD Nov 7 p8), a spokesman told us. All slots were filled, he said. Another ex parte presenter, Garden City Group, of Weston, Fla., said it would be “useful” for NTIA “as soon as possible” to publish final rules on such issues as eligibility of households to “facilitate the DTV transition” in the tight schedule that was handed the agency. Garden City Group was the vendor in NTIA’s separate procurement proceeding that proposed a test rollout of DTV converter boxes and coupons before the program launches Jan. 2008 (CD Nov 1 p5). NTIA’s goal is to finish the coupon rulemaking and publish final rules by Q1, a spokesman told us.