The American Cable Association opposed Viacom’s cutting off access to its online content for Cable One subscribers after failed carriage negotiations. “Viacom’s actions are a flagrant attack on Internet openness and a textbook replay of the vengeful action CBS took against Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks broadband customers during their well-documented retransmission consent dispute,” ACA said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/SxrdLr). ACA referred to the CBS and TWC dispute last year (CD Aug 6 p2). Access to Viacom’s online content also was blocked for customers of Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico, ACA said. Viacom’s action is affecting access “to a subset of broadband customers, also known as ‘cord cutters,’ who are not video customers of these companies,” ACA said. Viacom is “violating Internet openness in a way that should be seen as a call to action to policymakers on Capitol Hill and at the Federal Communications Commission,” ACA said. “Cable One and Liberty Cablevision have chosen to no longer carry Viacom programming and, as a result, it is no longer available to their customers in any form,” Viacom said in a statement. Cable One and Liberty Cablevision had no comment.

Independent programmers dealing with the new companies created by Comcast’s deals with Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications will need to have easily accessible information on who should be contacted about carriage, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts told FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in a meeting at last week’s NCTA Cable Show, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1iVOrQa). Clyburn asked about carriage and opportunities for minority entrepreneurs to invest in cable, said the filing. The additional scale created by the deals will drive “substantial public service benefits,” Roberts said. During the meeting, Roberts also reviewed the corporate structure of SpinCo, the company created by Comcast with Charter that will have 2.5 million subscribers once the TWC deal is complete, the filing said. Roberts had a similar meeting and discussion with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel at the Cable Show, the filing said.

Transactions connected to Comcast’s effort to buy Time Warner Cable will drive substantial public interest benefits, Comcast said in an ex parte filing posted Monday in FCC docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1neV2gb). Comcast’s interest in TWC and the divestiture agreement with Charter Communications, announced last week (CD April 29 p4), will provide additional advanced services for consumers and much-needed competition in the business services market, it said. The number of video or broadband competitors in each market will remain unchanged after the transactions, it said. A Comcast attorney also cited the company’s “well-established track record of meeting its commitments and delivering on promised public interest benefits” in transactions like that firm buying NBCUniversal, said the filing on meetings with commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel.

Entropic’s “early volume ramps” of a combo set-top processor/Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) 2.0 chip will start in second half 2015 as plans for “very modest” revenue from it this year were apparently delayed, company officials said on an earnings call. The chips, which will be built for Entropic by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing using a 28-nanometer process, will initially target non-DVR set-tops with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and upscaling to 4K 24p and 4K 30p. Entropic is sampling the chip with potential customers and has landed a “number of design commitments,” Entropic CEO Patrick Henry said. MoCA 2.0 allows for channel bonding and increases transfer speeds to 400 Mbps from 175 Mbps, Entropic has said. “The initial product serves as a platform for additional highly competitive, cost-effective and power efficient derivative products that will address the growing market opportunity both in cable and satellite in North America and globally,” Henry said. In European markets, where cable operators like Unity Media have deployed MoCA, “the general trend that we are seeing is that HEVC, as a requirement, is gaining significant momentum and traction, whereas with 4K, there is a lot of buzz around it, but I think we're pretty far away from having volume,” Henry said. The first MoCA 2.0-equipped video gateways were originally expected in 2012. Netgear became the first supplier to ship a MoCA 2.0 certified product earlier this year. Entropic’s expected revenue from deployment in a Comcast video gateway of a MoCA 2.0 chip bundled with a set-top processor appears to have been delayed to Q4, analysts said. The X13 video gateway was expected to launch in its first major U.S. market in the first half and expand across the Comcast system during the remainder of the year. The arrival of revenue from the Comcast agreement will be followed by a “material and more significant ramp” up in 2015, Henry said. Entropic hasn’t identified the set-top supplier for Comcast, but the cable operator’s major vendors have been Motorola and Technicolor, the former having sold its set-top business to Arris. Time Warner Cable also will deploy its first IP set-top built around the Reference Design Kit (RDK) platform using a Humax device that includes Entropic’s MoCA chip bundled with its set-top processor, Henry said. The RDK-based IP set-top will be launched in select Time Warner Cable markets by year-end, generating “modest revenue” for Entropic in Q4, Henry said. RDK is a pre-integrated software bundle providing a common framework for customer-premises equipment (CPE) for cable operators including set-tops and gateways. The RDK has more than 140 licensees and is administered by RDK Management, a venture involving Comcast, Liberty Global and Time Warner Cable. In discrete MoCA chips, Entropic appears to have regained some business with DirecTV in Genie DVR-related products. Entropic has also seen a “sustained resurgence in demand” among North American cable operators for high-definition digital transport adapters (HD-DTA) using Entropic MoCA ICs, Henry said. Cable operators are expected to use HD-DTA’s for the “next several years for analog reclamation,” Henry said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s NCTA Cable Show speech was intended to spur cable providers to increase broadband speeds as well as defend his net neutrality stance, said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in an email to subscribers. The speech implied that if cable companies upgrade speeds for all customers, the FCC will approve future cable paid-prioritization deals, Gallant said. That new revenue stream “clearly would be a positive development for cable,” said Gallant. Wheeler’s speech also implied that not upgrading broadband or preserving Internet openness could lead to increased broadband regulation, Gallant said. “Wheeler’s hint of new broadband regulation is a potential new risk for cable operators,” Gallant said. “But we also believe Mr. Wheeler gave cable operators a roadmap for a continued favorable regulatory environment.”

MGM content will be added to Comcast’s VOD “digital store” May 20, where the cable operator’s subscribers can see movies, sometimes before they're released on Blu-ray and DVD, said the companies in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1iJnhRo). It said the content is stored in the cloud and accessible on various devices.

Consumer spending on electronic sellthrough of home entertainment content jumped 43 percent in Q1 compared with same quarter a year earlier, the Digital Entertainment Group said. Consumers bought digital home entertainment content “at such a rapid pace” in Q1 that electronic sellthrough revenue is on track to overtake that of VOD for the first time later this year, DEG said. That the 43 percent rise in electronic sellthrough came despite a decline in the box office for titles released for home entertainment is evidence of “the broader availability of titles and increased access to digital content,” DEG said. Blu-ray hardware penetration also is on the rise, it said. The 4.2 million Blu-ray players sold in Q1, which includes standalone set-tops, PlayStation and Xbox One consoles and Blu-ray transports sold as part of boxed home theater systems, is a 38 percent increase from a year earlier, pushing hardware penetration to nearly 75 million U.S. homes, DEG said. Not all was rosy in the Q1 report. Total consumer spending on home entertainment content fell 3.8 percent, including a 13 percent decline in all packaged media, DEG said.

A new Colorado technology and engineering research and development lab Charter Communications is building to add space and staff (CD April 30 p24) will consolidate two labs in that state, while a lab in St. Louis will continue to be used for R&D and another lab there will be repurposed, a company spokeswoman emailed us Tuesday.

Comcast said there is only one method that is technically feasible for over-the-top (OTT) message providers to use to route the texts and some 911 location information to public safety answering points that could be installed by a Dec. 31 deadline. “Implementation on certain operating systems could result in customer confusion and make it more difficult for consumers to send a text to 911 successfully,” the company reported executives told officials in the FCC Office of Strategic Planning and Public Safety Bureau. Possible ways to improve that one model that works for Comcast, what it called a “CMRS-network based” one, could include cooperative work among OTT providers, operating system vendors and CMRS providers to “develop a dedicated application programming interface solely for emergency services,” said a filing Monday in docket 11-153 (http://1.usa.gov/1kqclYa). Comcast provides OTT texting services to some of its subscribers linked to their home phones.

Hallmark Channel launched its TV Everywhere App. The app “will provide fans authenticated access to a rich array of the network’s original content,” Hallmark said in a news release. Developed by Bottle Rocket, the app will feature social- and email-sharing capabilities “and a customizable watch list,” the network said. The app is now available as a free download on the App Store and Google Play Store, it said. Content includes Cedar Grove and Signed, Sealed, Delivered and other scripted series, it said.