Q2 global tablet shipments fell 8 percent year on year to 46.7 million units, Strategy Analytics said in a Friday report. That average selling prices climbed 9 percent during the same period was proof that consumers and enterprises are buying more pro slate models like the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 “than ever before,” said the research firm. Q2 was the 10th straight quarter of year-on-year shipment declines for the iPad, “but some light is now visible at the end of the tunnel” because Apple “is riding consumer and enterprise demand for 2-in-1s with multiple price tiers of buy-in to its vision of what a converged computing device can achieve,” it said. Apple shipped 10 million iPads in Q2, a 9 percent year-on-year decline and a 3 percent decrease from Q1, it said. But Q2 was the first full quarter of iPad Pro 9.7 sales, which helped drive ASPs to $490 and contributed to the best quarter Apple has had in two years, it said. Android-branded vendors shipped 30.1 million in Q2, a 15 percent decline from a year earlier and flat sequentially with Q1, it said.

Rovi volume slipped 2 percent in Q2 year-on-year to $125.2 million with an increase in service provider revenue offsetting declines in consumer electronics and analog content protection revenue, said the company’s Thursday earnings release. Rovi CEO Tom Carson attributed better than expected results to the renewal of an IP licensing agreement with Verizon that runs into next decade. The company swung to a $9.4 million loss compared with $3.3 million profit in Q2 2015, it said. It expects to close its buy of TiVo this quarter. Rovi has eight of the top 10 U.S. pay-TV providers under license, six of which came on board in the past six quarters, said Carson. The company projects 2016 revenue of $490 million to $520 million. Rovi guides are in use in 142 million pay-TV households, excluding prepaid licenses, said the company. During the quarter, Dish implemented voice remote capability powered by Rovi’s Conversation Services, Rovi said, and the Fan TV app launched voice search on iOS, Android mobile and Android TV platforms. Japan's KDDI adopted Rovi G-Guide HTML on its new Android TV based IPTV set-top box, and Evolution Digital announced its latest set-top box with an eGuide interactive guide based on Rovi’s Fan TV platform, it said. Shares closed up Friday 2.3 percent to $18.81.

Amazon plans to nearly double what it spends on original video content in the second half of the year over what it spent in the back half of 2015, and close to triple the number of new Amazon Original TV shows and movies, Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said Thursday during the company's Q2 earnings call. The company also is expanding its Amazon Prime video offering to India, he said. During the quarter, the company launched Amazon Video Direct, a distribution service letting content creators make their video content available to Amazon customers through Prime Video, one-time purchase, rentals or ad-supported viewing, it said in a news release. For the quarter, the company had net sales of $30.4 billion, up 31 percent, and net income of $857 million or $1.78 per share, compared with $92 million or 19 cents per share a year earlier.

Hemisphere Media Group (HMTV) wants the FCC to allow foreign investors to own up to 44.99 percent of the company, HMTV said in a petition for declaratory ruling posted online Thursday. HMTV is based in Miami and owns seven cable networks that target Spanish language viewers and “the leading” broadcast TV network in Puerto Rico, said the petition in docket 16-238. Allowing HMTV to exceed the 25 percent ownership threshold will enhance “HMTV’s ability to raise capital and encourag[e] reciprocity from other governments that would facilitate investment by U.S. companies in broadcast stations located in other countries,” the petition said. Comments on the petition are due Aug. 29, replies Sept. 13, the Media Bureau said in a public notice. Univision and Frontier Media filed similar petitions in recent weeks.

The FCC issued a Forfeiture Order for $11,000 to Full Channel TV in Bristol, Rhode Island, for violating equal employment opportunity rules, the order said. Full Channel didn't recruit widely to fill a vacancy at the multichannel video programming distributor, a violation of the FCC's rules, the order said. Two other similar violations were outside the statute of limitations, the order said.

The FCC ignored the Spectrum Act and congressionally mandated deadlines in its rejection of must-carry complaints filed by PMCM regarding its station WJLP Middletown Township, New Jersey, PMCM said in response to opposition filings against its application for review of the decision. The must carry complaints were part of PMCM's years-long effort to transmit its signal on virtual channel 3.10, though Channel 3 already is assigned to another station. The FCC violated the 120-day statutory timetable for carriage complaints when the Media Bureau allowed Time Warner Cable, Service Electric Cable and RCN not to carry WJLP while it considered the issue, PMCM said. PMCM filed the complaints in 2014, while the bureau didn't take them up until 2016, PMCM said. The Media Bureau also violated a Spectrum Act rule against changing channels during the incentive auction when it changed WJLP's channel to 33, PMCM said. The FCC should grant the application for review and order WJLP to be carried on the cable systems on channel 3, the filing said.

The FCC asked some follow-up questions of proponents of the pay-TV backed set-top-box proposal, pay-TV officials and an agency official told us. The questions are part of a recent spate of meetings and calls with stakeholders about the proposal, the officials said. Proponents of the pay-TV plan are expected to provide answers to the questions before the end of this week, officials said. The list of questions included queries about whether the licensing agreement for pay-TV apps would allow programmer apps to be included in the universal search function on an equal basis, and whether the pay-TV apps involved would be able to be used on different devices and operating systems. Microsoft visited the FCC and met with Chief Technologist Scott Jordan and Media Bureau staff July 18 on set-top matters connected with licensing agreements, said an ex parte filing. Some of the language in the FCC Unlock the Box set-top plan would interfere with Microsoft's Play Ready content licensing system, said the filing posted Thursday in docket 16-42. Earlier questions from the FCC on the pay-TV plan had led officials on both sides of the issue to say the alternative, the Ditch the Box plan, had momentum (see 1607110042).

DTS:X tools for digital media content professionals will be available worldwide the first week of August through the company’s website and via its authorized distribution partners, Jargon Technologies and Scenarist, DTS said in a news release Wednesday. It said the software-based tools enable professionals to create DTS:X immersive audio streams for Blu-ray Disc, Ultra HD Blu-ray and streaming media. Tuesday, the company said it and Paramount are releasing the first titles on Blu-ray with DTS:X object-based immersive audio.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit shouldn’t rule on FilmOn X’s appeal of a lower court decision denying it a compulsory license until after the 9th Circuit decides a similar FilmOn X case in California, the streaming video company argued in an appellant brief (in Pacer) filed Monday. Oral argument in the California case, which also concerns FilmOn X’s right to a compulsory copyright license, is scheduled for Aug. 4. Though it wants the D.C. Circuit to wait, FilmOn also asked the court to reverse the lower court ruling and to disregard the opinion of the Copyright Office. “Not only do the Office’s informal and inconsistent policy opinions fall short of formal rulemaking, they reflect open hostility to the compulsory copyright licensing regime Congress Established,” FilmOn X said.

Fifteen Meredith-owned local stations in 11 markets faced a blackout on Dish Network, to have started Saturday, with the companies yet to agree on a carriage agreement, said Meredith. Dish didn't comment Friday.