Tuesday night's presidential election coverage was the largest single news event Akamai ever streamed, the company said in a news release Wednesday. “Live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on the Akamai Platform shortly before midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 8th, eclipsing previous news events, and placing it among the highest video traffic peaks for any individual event delivered by Akamai.” Traffic on its network during the 2004 presidential election coverage peaked at 21 Gbps, while the 2009 Obama inauguration reached 1.1 Tbps and the 2011 British royal wedding hit 1.3 Tbps, it said. The first 2016 presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps, Akamai said. “Not only are more people watching online in general, they’re watching at higher quality, which contributes to the increasingly higher peaks in traffic that we’re observing,” said General Manager of Media Bill Wheaton.

Virtual reality motion sickness, a topic at the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers conference (see 1610270023), came up in 60-plus patents granted over 20 years, our search at the Patent and Trademark Office found. New applications on cures and prevention are being filed. Disney, Hughes, Intel, Kodak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Olympus, Philips, Panasonic and Raytheon are among those getting patents. A Kodak patent from 2010 (US 8594381) described motion sickness as “a significant obstacle for users of immersive and virtual reality systems and head-mounted displays, limiting their widespread adoption despite their advantages in a range of applications in gaming and entertainment ... and augmented reality.” A wide range of VR technologies can cause motion sickness, said two 1994 Disney patents (US 6007338 and 5551920). Causes of VR motion sickness are “various,” said a Sony application published by PTO in August (2016/0246057).

Dish Network is predicting Hillary Clinton will win the presidency and the House will remain in GOP hands. In a news release Monday, Dish pointed to its predictive model, based on customer viewership data from Internet-connected set-top boxes. Dish said the model used the relationship between programs Dish customers watched in 2014 with the state-by-state outcomes of the 2014 House elections as well as the relationship between House party control and presidential party affiliation historically, and that, when tested against 2014 House elections, called results at a 98 percent reliability point. The company said its modeling showed Republicans taking 245 of the 435 House seats, giving Democrats a two-seat gain.

DirecTV's claims that Campus Television is just its sales agent and third-party biller don't clear up what precisely is CTV's role in delivering video programming -- including two Erie, Pennsylvania, broadcasters' signals -- to nearby Edinboro University, Lilly Broadcasting of Pennsylvania License Subsidiary and SJL of Pennsylvania License Subsidiary said in a filing Friday in docket 16-246. The two are the licensees, respectively, of WSEE-TV Erie and WICU-TV Erie and are pursuing a complaint with the FCC alleging CTV is reselling DirecTV signals without consent (see 1610040027). CTV "has asserted a wide range of roles" regarding video content delivery to Edinboro end users, Lilly/SJL said. The licensees also said the retransmission agreement with DirecTV doesn't give the direct broadcast satellite company right to retransmit the TV stations' signals to Edinboro on a bulk-billed basis, though DirecTV in a filing last month indicated it provides bulk programming services to the college. Lilly/SJL also asked the Media Bureau to continue an investigation and take action to ensure they receive compensation for the stations' retransmission to the college. DirectTV parent AT&T and CTV didn't comment Monday.

The FCC should impose conditions on Nexstar's buy of Media General, including third-party oversight of retransmission consent agreements, said representatives of Dish Network, ITTA and the American Cable Association in a meeting Friday with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman and bureau staff, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-57. The deal will “increase Nexstar’s ability to harm consumers by raising retransmission consent fees and causing blackouts in the conduct of retransmission consent negotiations,” and will trigger clauses in existing retrans agreements with Media General stations that will raise their rates to Nexstar's levels, ITTA, Dish and ACA said. “The triggering of after-acquired station clauses is, by definition, a merger-specific harm as, but for the merger, the clauses would not be operative.” To keep Nexstar from abusing the new scale granted by the transaction, the FCC should impose conditions similar to AT&T/DirecTV, the entities said. The agency should use an independent third party to oversee retrans agreements and merger conditions, and include a periodic reporting requirement, the filing said. “The goal of this compliance program is to relieve [multichannel video programming distributors] of some of the burden of policing Nexstar’s behavior postmerger.”

Streaming video-on-demand competition for exclusives and originals has become “fierce,” and streaming VOD content costs are rising, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter emailed investors Monday. Video content spending dented earnings reported last week by Amazon (see 1610280053) and Netflix (see 1610170061), Pachter said, saying Amazon’s lower-than-expected gross margins were affected by an estimated $300 million in video content spending that hadn’t been included in forecasts. Netflix, meanwhile, posted higher-than-expected subscriber additions, but reported negative free cash flow of $506 million, Pachter said. Wedbush expects the trend of escalating content costs to continue for the foreseeable future, but sees the spending gap narrowing between the two, “approximately reflecting the quality of content as well,” he said. Comparing subscriber costs, Pachter said an Amazon Prime membership bundling Prime Video is $99 annually vs. $119 for Netflix, which could play out in Amazon’s favor this quarter. “Long time Netflix customers could be persuaded to switch this Holiday season as Amazon markets their video service more aggressively, and as Netflix completes its price increases on its remaining grandfathered subscribers, potentially bringing greater consumer attention to the price comparison and alternative content available,” he said.

Over the top and Ultra HD Blu-ray are “the largest amount of HDR content that’s available to the consumer,” said Walt Husak, Dolby Labs director-image technologies, at the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers conference in Hollywood. Amazon, Netflix and Vudu collectively have “several hundred hours worth of” Dolby Vision high-dynamic-range content available, he said. Adaptive bit-rate streaming, designed to improve the performance of OTT services by eliminating buffering and other unwelcome phenomena, to “a certain extent, it’s a lie,” said Giraffic CEO Yoel Zanger, also at the conference last week. “Consumers are paying and subscribing to services in 4K or in HD,” when “in fact, maybe 50 or 70 percent of the time,” they’re not getting it because of limitations from the “complexities of the ecosystem,” he said. Giraffic markets apps-embedded “adaptive video acceleration” technology for improving OTT delivery. A challenge "is that 20 percent of the users suffer bit-rate switching every 30 seconds” in streaming OTT content, said Zanger.

Comments on an Entertainment Software Association petition asking for an extension of the waiver of accessibility requirements for videogame software until January 2018 (see 1610190031) are due Nov. 30, replies Dec. 15, the FCC said in a public notice Monday. ESA's petition said such relief would let the industry continue work on developing accessibility technology. The current waiver of 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act requirements is to expire Jan. 1.

The Univision/Charter Communications contract that expired June 30 didn't contain any requirement that Charter renew it, so there's no cause of action under New York state law for failing to renew, the cable operator said in a filing Friday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan in support of its motion to dismiss the broadcaster's breach of contract and good faith and fair dealing claims (see 1609060069). Charter said Univision's breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claim also fails because it's duplicative of the broadcaster's breach of contract claim and it tries to argue the media company had a right to renegotiate for market rates and new terms but can't point to any such right in the contract. The two sides disagree about the effect Charter's purchase of Time Warner Cable had on the contracts governing Univision programming, but that separate argument will be addressed in Univision's declaratory judgment claim and Charter's counterclaim, to be filed later, the operator said. It also said it plans to file a counterclaim against Univision for breach of the most-favored-nation clause in the TWC contract, "which has resulted in millions of dollars of contractual damages." Univision didn't comment Monday. It's suing Charter, claiming license fees in its TWC agreement apply to only the legacy systems and only through this year (see 1607080022); Fox News network is pursuing a similar complaint (see 1607200065).

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) sent FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel a letter thanking her for her “expressed concern for the rights of creators in the set top box proceeding,” said an ex parte filing in docket 16-42. The current FCC set-top proposal “does not protect DGA members' creative works and will impact their livelihoods and future ability to create the best programming in the world,” the filing said.