Built-in heart rate monitors are driving growth in the activity tracker category, said a Thursday NPD report. The overall tracker market was up by 11 million devices in Q2 vs. the year-ago quarter, and the number of owned activity trackers with heart rate monitors grew to 44 percent of the category compared with 12 percent in Q2 2015, it said. Heart rate monitors are now the “must-have feature” in high-end and mid-tier activity trackers, and on-device GPS is also beginning to grow. But activity tracker owners can access GPS by tethering their devices to their smartphone, NPD said, lessening the need for the technology on the tracker itself. That could change as a result of the recently launched Apple Watch Series 2, which will likely spur activity among tracker and smartwatch vendors to include the feature in more models over the next year, NPD said.

Intel joined those hailing the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for releasing their long-awaited guidelines on autonomous vehicles (see 1609200039). Intel “commends DOT/NHTSA’s interest in encouraging U.S. innovation, as well as seeking a consistent national framework across all 50 states for the testing, deployment and operation of highly automated vehicles,” said Marjorie Dickman, global director and managing counsel-IoT policy, in a Tuesday blog post. The company also wants the agencies to “invest a larger portion of its ‘innovation’ grant funding in autonomous vehicles,” Dickman said. “Increased investment -- along with removing unnecessary barriers and promoting autonomous vehicle research and deployment -- are critical to U.S. global competitiveness in the 21st century and, most importantly, to saving more lives.” Autonomous cars just five years ago “seemed like a far off ‘Jetsons’ fantasy,” but they’re now “just around the corner,” she said. Intel, BMW and Mobileye announced plans in July to bring autonomous vehicles to streets by 2021 (see 1607010052).

Recording-industry shipment results for first-half 2016 “illustrate the emergence of paid subscriptions as a primary revenue driver” in the U.S., RIAA said Tuesday in its midyear report: For the first time, paid streaming subscriptions ($1.01 billion) were “virtually on par” with paid downloads ($1.02 billion) as the biggest single format revenue source. That’s because paid album downloads revenue fell 11.4 percent from a year earlier and paid singles downloads decreased 21.9 percent, but paid-subscription revenue soared by 111.7 percent, RIAA said. The total value of shipments in physical formats was $672 million, down 14 percent from first-half 2015, it said. CDs were two-thirds of total physical shipments by value, but were down 16.4 percent in revenue, 11.2 percent in units, from a year earlier, RIAA said.

Consumer viewing of 4K content via over-the-top services will “finally see mass-market appeal” in the next five years, Juniper Research said in a Monday report. Juniper sees 4K OTT services attracting more than 189 million “unique users” globally by 2021, up from just 2.3 million this year, “driven by greater content availability and compatible devices,” the company said. In the U.S., this means one in 10 Americans will be watching 4K content online compared with just one in 500 this year, it said. Device compatibility has been a “significant barrier” for online 4K video adoption, the company said. “The popularity of online video has seen the use of set-top boxes from vendors such as Roku and Amazon soar. However, delivery mechanisms for content have seen slower adoption, as the availability of 4K capable streaming devices is limited. New device launches, such as the 4K capable Xbox One S this month, among others, are likely to spur a boost in 4K usage." With Japan seeking to broadcast the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 8K, “the industry is likely to use this as an opportunity to drive sales of 8K smart TVs,” Juniper said. It sees TV makers selling 400,000 8K TVs in 2021, it said.

The FCC set-top plan has numerous legal and policy flaws, said AT&T and NCTA in a legal analysis filed in docket 16-42 Monday. The draft plan would “mandate that each [multichannel video programming distributor] also build and maintain apps for an indefinite period of time and for an indeterminate number of retail platforms that have shipped a minimum number of units, regardless of the nature of the device or platform,” the filing said. “That would impose a substantial and apparently perpetual burden on MVPDs with no mechanism to reimburse MVPDs even for cost, and thus inevitably leading to increased prices for all subscribers.” The item would “create new barriers to innovation” by “demanding that all MVPD networks conform their highly varied systems to new, to-be-invented open standards” and by “requiring government pre-approval for any and every desired variation or amendment in licensing,” the filing said. The requirement that all MVPDs can't favor their own programming in the universal search function would “prohibit MVPDs from presenting their many clickable options for MVPD content offerings,” the filing said. The item also has numerous legal flaws and “cannot be sustained as a matter of law or sound public policy,” the filing said. “At no time has the Commission provided sufficient notice for parties to learn many significant aspects of the Chairman's new proposal or to address it adequately.” The license proposed in the FCC set-top box draft item is similar to the Dynamic Feedback Arrangement Scrambling Technique (DFAST) license used under existing CableCARD rules, TiVo said in a filing posted Monday to docket 16-42. The company Wednesday lobbied Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, aides to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Office of Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa, Chief Technologist Scott Jordan, aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and staff from the Office of General Counsel and the Media Bureau. A DFAST license “is not a copyright license at all,” TiVo said. “The standard license between the MVPDs and the competitive device maker that uses the MVPD-controlled app is merely subject to FCC oversight in the event programmers and MVPDs engage in anticompetitive or anti-consumer conduct.” Third-party devices would require certain information to provide the universal search function the FCC draft item is aiming for, TiVo said. The information required would include data such as “channel information (if any), program title, rating/parental control information, program start and stop times (or program length, for on-demand programming)” TiVo said. The search function also would need “entitlement and price information” and “information regarding search requests and past viewership” to “provide personalized and predictive search and recommendations,” TiVo said. The White House is backing the draft (see 1609190050).

SiriusXM remains “very focused” on launching an exclusive Howard Stern video service, but “we’re not quite ready to say when we’ll launch it,” CEO Jim Meyer told a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch investment conference Thursday. Of SiriusXM's decision signing Whalerock Industries to the project, Whalerock founder Lloyd Braun, is “a very, very strong and confident producer with a big successful track record of producing video,” Meyer said. Asked if the public should think of the Stern video-service initiative as an initial step for a broader SiriusXM video offering in the future, or just a one-time project, Meyer said that was “a great question and it is one I am not sure of the answer yet.” One thing for sure, however, “we’re not going to be Netflix," he said. "We’re not going to produce 60 channels of video and try to compete with that kind of business,” he said. “The question that we’re focused on today is, do our customers want video -- short form of video or some other form of video -- as part of that audio experience?” Meyer sees SiriusXM “getting in this to keep our churn stable or improve our churn,” he said. “I don’t see it as this burgeoning new big business that we’re going to generate tons more revenue from. We don’t know the answer yet. We’re testing a lot of stuff. We’re out asking customers.” But the company is “going to walk into this, not run into it,” he said.

Pandora replaced Pandora One with Pandora Plus, raising the price of its premium music subscription service to $5 per month from $4, as expected (see 1609120050). The company is keeping its free advertising-supported service and will launch an on-demand service that will compete with Spotify and Apple Music by year-end, it repeated Thursday in an announcement. Existing Pandora One customers' subscriptions will “seamlessly transition” to the higher-priced Pandora Plus service in coming months, said the company in an announcement. For their price hike, Pandora Plus users will get additional song skips and replays per month and a solution for offline listening, which Pandora says “elegantly handles issues with lost connectivity and cellular data usage.” When users lose a signal, Pandora switches to one of users’ top stations “that Pandora knows you love,” said Chris Phillips, chief product officer. Basic service listeners will have more control over their advertising and listening experience, being able to skip more songs and replay songs by opting into a video ad, Pandora said. The new features will kick in next year for Pandora customers in Australia and New Zealand, it said.

Amazon took its Echo Dot voice control device to the next level Wednesday with announcement of a new $49 price and beefed-up features. Amazon described Dot as an Echo sidekick that “gives you access to all of Alexa’s capabilities,” including answering questions, playing music, turning on lights and setting timers, giving information and accessing over 3,000 Alexa skills. Version two has the seven-mic array that's in Echo and can “hear you from across the room, even when it’s noisy or music is playing,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said.

Amazon and Pandora are closer to music services (see 1602040052) that will compete against Spotify and Apple Music, said a Monday New York Times article. As early as this week, Pandora is expected to launch an expanded version of its $5 Pandora One subscription platform, the Times said. Pandora One is the company’s commercial-free music streaming service that allows customers to build customized stations around a favorite artist and uses its software algorithm to select tracks with similar characteristics. Users are limited to six song skips per hour and 24 in a 24-hour period, said the Help section. In coming weeks, said the Times​, Amazon is expected to introduce its own competing service to Apple and Spotify, a separate music offering from what Amazon offers as a perk to Prime customers. Amazon and Pandora had no comment Monday. Spotify said last week it's adding to its streaming service, launching with the NFL Player Association’s Ace Media an original sports and music series.

Eliminating the UHF discount is "justified by the facts, the record, and sound public policy," the American Cable Association said in a news release Thursday, a day after the FCC order (see 1609070046). "The FCC deserves praise for rejecting any number of red herrings introduced into the record by TV station owners profiting from the perpetuation of a technological relic."