The radio industry needs to be “front and center” in connected cars, regardless of how consumers “get their information from the dashboard,” Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan said on a Thursday earnings call, speaking of NextRadio’s FM smartphone app. “If they turn on their car and they see an embedded AM and FM radio with HD, that’s great,” he said. “If they turn on their car and they see what looks like an Android screen or an Apple screen, we’ve gotta be there.” Many Americans “are choosing to connect to their cars through their smartphones,” said Smulyan. “If you’ve got an Apple phone or you’ve got an Android phone and you plug them into your car, [NextRadio] seamlessly works in the dashboard and gives you a full interactive experience.” The radio broadcasting company in the next few weeks will launch “streaming-compatible versions” for Android and iOS devices, said Smulyan. NextRadio requires activation of the FM-reception chip embedded in virtually all smartphones. Activation is prevalent on many models of Android smartphones, not iPhones (see 1701060004). With international developments including FM chips in smartphones, the CEO said “we’re certainly still in the early stages of a very long process to make this a key component of the radio-listening experience." NextRadio FM-chip-activation agreements are in place with all major U.S. carriers, Smulyan said. “We’re now starting on manufacturer agreements.” Alcatel and BLU (Bold Like Us) “have been the first two,” he said.
“Lots of parties,” not just LG Electronics, contributed intellectual property to the A/322 document on ATSC 3.0 physical-layer protocol, John Taylor, LG senior vice president-public affairs, emailed us Wednesday, denying that IP royalties are what’s motivating his company to lobby the FCC to include A/322 in 3.0 rules. He responded to Pearl TV comments recently at the FCC that arguments by the few parties that support mandating A/322 in the final rules “are not persuasive, in particular because some parties may stand to benefit from their intellectual property interests in A/322” (see 1706300003). “Multiple parties have IP in A/321, too,” said Taylor. “We expect to collect royalties for essential patents whether the FCC includes A/322 or not.” LG “of course” has pledged to adhere to the ATSC’s RAND policy,” he said of licensing LG patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. LG and its Zenith “have a great relationship with Pearl and other broadcasters,” Taylor said. “This isn’t a big dispute, just a difference of opinion.” LG regards as “unfounded” Pearl’s argument that manufacturers would bypass A/321 if both that and the A/322 documents were mandated in the final rules, leaving devices orphaned, he said. The company disagrees with critics like Sinclair that argue that mandating A/322 in the final rules would thwart innovation (see 1707040001).
Modern LCD TVs consume less energy, even as sets increase in size and resolution, CTA reported Wednesday. CTA commissioned Fraunhofer to study 9,000 models of TVs marketed between 2003 and 2015, it said. It said 2015 TVs consumed 76 percent less energy (per screen area) than in 2003, and it costs consumers on average 6 cents a day to power a TV. It’s “fundamental” that industry and government devise “a standardized way to measure energy use,” CTA said. “The consumer technology industry has initiated efforts at the domestic and international levels, with participation by governments and energy efficiency advocates, to update the current consensus measurement standard for TV energy use to reflect technology and market changes.” Lack of an updated test clip has been a sticking point of proceedings to draft Version 8.0 of EPA's Energy Star TV specification (see 1706280026). The Natural Resources Defense Fund agrees with the CTA study’s "core finding" that national TV energy use has gone down, Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz emailed us Wednesday. But TVs in some cases "use a lot more energy in a person’s home than the value reported by the industry," Horowitz said. "There are flaws in the test method specified by the government for measuring the energy use of new TVs and some manufacturers are exploiting them big time," he said, referencing NRDC's 2016 report accusing major TV makers of duping the public on TV energy use.
Voxx International’s $166 million sale of the Hirschmann car antenna and tuner business to TE Connectivity (see 1706260033) proves “there is value in our assets, despite our stock price,” Voxx CEO Pat Lavelle said on a Tuesday earnings call. Despite Lavelle's assurances on the call that Voxx has a “clear strategy to improve profitability and unlock value,” Voxx shares plummeted 20.6 percent midday Tuesday to $7.02 before closing 17 percent lower for the day at $7.35. If the Hirschmann deal closes by Aug. 31 as Voxx forecasts, “we expect to have a clean balance sheet, cash on hand and access to capital,” said Lavelle.
Sinclair and its One Media subsidiary want the FCC to keep the A/322 document on ATSC 3.0's physical layer protocol out of the final rules for the next-generation broadcast system, they told the commission in Thursday meetings, according to an ex parte notice posted Monday in docket 16-142. The FCC “should avoid over-regulation to permit innovation,” Sinclair and One Media said. FCC rules “support maximum innovation by specifying interference requirements rather than technical standards,” and the companies believe the commission “should follow a similar approach here,” they said. The FCC need not “specify A/322 to ensure universal compatibility,” they said, calling on the commission to “specify” only the A/321 “bootstrap” document in the final ATSC 3.0 rules: “Equipment manufacturers build to industry standards -- and service providers use those standards -- in the ordinary course without any government mandates. Mandating A/322 would hamper innovation without any corresponding benefit.” LG Electronics has been the strongest proponent at the FCC for including the A/322 document in the final ATSC 3.0 rules (see 1706080054).
Pearl TV supports the FCC’s initial proposal to incorporate only the A/321 “bootstrap” physical-layer document into the final rules on ATSC 3.0, it told representatives of the commission's Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology in meetings Tuesday. ATSC 3.0 “was designed to be flexible and to adjust to changing technology,” Pearl said in an ex parte notice posted Thursday in docket 16-142. With only A/321 in the rules, the FCC “will ensure that ATSC can develop different features and capabilities for Next Generation TV depending on how the standard is received and develops,” it said. “This ongoing flexibility is a virtue of the standard and should be maintained. The arguments made by the few parties who support incorporating A/322 are not persuasive, in particular because some parties may stand to benefit from their intellectual property interests in A/322.” It didn’t mention names, but LG Electronics has been a particularly outspoken proponent of putting A/322, the document on physical-layer protocol, in the final rules, saying failure to do so risks “disenfranchising” the public in the form of faulty receivers that don't properly demodulate the ATSC 3.0 signal (see 1706080054). LG and Zenith R&D Lab representatives met with the commission Thursday to emphasize "the importance of incorporating A/322" into the ATSC 3.0 rules, LG said in an ex parte notice posted Friday. LG and Zenith have made no secret of their stake in ATSC 3.0's physical layer. At Cleveland field trials two years ago, they said that of the 16 “blocks” that will comprise ATSC 3.0's physical layer, LG has at least some involvement in at least 10 of those blocks (see 1507130007). Pearl worries “low-end manufacturers, motivated by avoiding IP expenses, will simply bypass A/321 and only build their devices to the specifications of A/322,” it said. “As technology evolves and improves, these devices would be left orphaned without the core A/321 capability to be updated to more advanced standards.” Sinclair's One Media also has come out against putting A/322 into the final ATSC 3.0 rules (see 1706080054). Pearl and Sinclair partnered with LG rival Samsung in an ATSC 3.0 memorandum of understanding two years ago (see 1506170046). Samsung publicly has been silent on the A/322 issue.
LG, without permission, is using the “sublime and beautiful artwork” of the late Brazilian artist Lygia Pape to “flog” a new line of “cheap smartphones,” Pape’s daughter, Paula, alleged Thursday in a complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. LG’s actions are “an egregious violation of federal law and an affront" to the artist and "her legacy, and to artists everywhere,” it said. Pape repeatedly rejected LG’s requests to use her mother’s original artwork to promote the launch of the K20 V smartphone, said the complaint. But LG went ahead anyway and ran “a derivative image” created from the artwork in its consumer packaging, advertising and promotions for the K20 V, plus on the wallpaper of the actual device, it said. LG did so without the daughter's knowledge, and in “direct defiance” of her “explicit and repeated denials of consent,” it said. LG’s “exploitation” is “particularly troubling” because her mother, who died in 2004, “viewed her work as having a social purpose” in her native Brazil, it said: “She did not even offer her artworks for sale for much of her career, although that ultimately changed when she found galleries willing to advance the goals of her art.” Among other remedies, the complaint seeks a court order requiring LG to turn over the names and addresses “of any and all persons” to whom it distributed, licensed or sold the K20 V and for how much. “As a matter of policy, LG doesn't generally comment on pending litigation,” spokesman John Taylor emailed us Friday.
Though the Department of Homeland Security announced no new ban on laptops and tablets on flights headed to the U.S., CTA stands by the statement it released Wednesday in which it said it was reacting to the DHS “ban of large electronics” on those flights, spokeswoman Bronwyn Flores said.
When EPA releases the final draft of its V8.0 Energy Star TV spec, it will forego imposing the tighter restrictions it floated last month of requiring that the energy-saving automatic brightness control feature be enabled in all preset picture modes for a TV to qualify (see 1705160048), representatives said on a Friday conference call, the slides for which were posted Wednesday. EPA expects to release the final draft by the end of the week, Verena Radulovic, Energy Star product manager for consumer electronics, emailed us.
Greenpeace teamed with iFixit, an advocate of “right to repair” legislation for consumer tech products (see 1704100047), to grade repairability of smartphones and other products, they reported Tuesday. They found that only three of 17 brands -- Fairphone, HP and Dell -- “make the provision of spare parts and repair manuals easy to access.” Apple, Microsoft and Samsung fall “at the other end of the scale,” meaning they make no spare parts or repair manuals “easily available to users,” the report said. It said Samsung's Galaxy S8 is prohibitively difficult to repair. Apple, Microsoft and Samsung representatives didn’t comment. For all devices, the display is “the most problematic component” from the standpoint of repairability because it’s a part that “commonly fails” and is “very costly” to replace even if the component can be procured, the report said: Batteries are another common problem. There's “enormous potential” for improving the repairability of mobile electronics, it said. They “take a massive amount of energy, human effort, and natural resources to make,” said iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens Tuesday in a statement. “Manufacturers produce billions more of them every year -- while consumers keep them for just a few years. ... E-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams.”