FCC-proposed changes to set-top box rules could undermine industry efforts to reduce set-top energy use, said National Resource Defense Council senior scientist Noah Horowitz in a blog post Wednesday. The proposal could get in the way of pay-TV industry efforts to go “boxless” and could lead to a second box in homes, Horowitz said. “The potential energy use of these new boxes is unknown but given the tens of millions of households that might need such a new box, the national impacts will really add up,” said Horowitz. “We urge the FCC to carefully review their proposal from an energy and environmental point of view and for its final rule to allow low energy-consuming, consumer friendly solutions such as the 'boxless' approaches to continue to move forward.”

NBCUniversal got extra time to respond to Dish Network's breach-of-contract claims. In an order (in Pacer) Monday, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis in Rockford, Illinois, granted NBCU's motion that cited professional and personal obligations of its counsel and set a May 27 deadline for responsive pleading in the suit, instead of April 25, with a status hearing set for June 7. Dish's March lawsuit alleged screen crawls warning about possible dropping of NBC programming violates its contract with the network (see 1603150053).

Revenue from global commercial drone-enabled services such as filming and entertainment, mapping, data collection and analytics and package delivery will reach $8.7 billion annually by 2025, up from $170 million in 2015, market research firm Tractica said in a Monday news release. Managing Director Clint Wheelock said that "most commercial applications for drones are related to aerial imaging or data analysis, taking advantage of low-cost components and ever-increasing sensor capabilities.” Despite the presence of regulatory and business barriers, he said, business models and policy frameworks "continue to be refined" globally, making the path ahead for commercial drone usage "clearer." Privacy advocates and industry are expected to come to agreement on voluntary drone privacy recommendations (see 1604280066).

Nine companies with which Vizio may have shared data from its Inscape viewer-tracking feature were named as co-defendants in the latest complaint (in Pacer) against the smart TV maker. Two dozen class-action suits alleging violations of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act and other offenses have been filed against Vizio since November. The so-called “data partners” that were named for the first time in the latest suit are advertising and marketing analytics firms that have collaborated with Vizio to track, receive, exchange and/or repackage the personally identifiable information of Vizio customers, alleged the April 20 complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, the same court in which the other class-action complaints against Vizio were recently “centralized” (see 1604150001). Named as co-defendants with Vizio in the April 20 complaint were Alphonso, AudienceXpress, Interpublic Group, iSpot.tv, Lotame Solutions, Tapad, TubeMogul, WPP Group USA and Xaxis. Representatives of the various defendants didn’t comment, nor has Vizio.

The global tablet market “began 2016 just as 2015 left off,” with another quarter of declines, Strategy Analytics said in a Thursday report. Q1 tablet shipments fell 10 percent to 46.5 million units in a quarter in which Huawei “cracked the top five vendors globally” with its 66 percent jump in shipments from Q1 a year earlier, the research firm said. Apple shipped 10.3 million iPads in Q1, a 19 percent decline from Q1 a year earlier and a 36 percent sequential decrease from Q4 “on low seasonality” following 2015's holiday selling season, it said. Though Apple’s share slipped 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier to 22.1 percent, it still maintained the top-brand share over Samsung, which saw its share slip 3 percentage points to 14 percent, it said. Android-branded vendors shipped 30 million units collectively in Q1, down 16 percent from Q1 a year earlier and 33 percent lower sequentially from Q4, it said. IDC, in its own quarterly tablets report Thursday, pegged this year’s Q1 market at 39.6 million units, a 14.7 percent decline from Q1 a year earlier. Like Strategy Analytics, IDC blamed the Q1 decline on early-2016 “seasonality,” but also “an overall disinterested customer base.” Though slate tablets still accounted for 87.6 percent of all shipments, the segment “has become synonymous with the low end of the market,” IDC said. “While this may bode well for vendors like Amazon that rely on hardware sales to increase their ecosystem size, it has not helped vendors who rely solely on greater margins for hardware sales.” IDC pegged iPad's Q1 share at 25.9 percent, down from 27.2 percent a year earlier, but well ahead of Samsung, with a Q1 share that declined to 15.2 percent from 18 percent a year earlier.

The broadcast and cable industries continue to assail each other in the battle over possible changes to the totality of circumstances test. In an FCC filing Thursday in docket 15-216, NAB took aim at CenturyLink's advocacy for a ban on screen crawls about possible programming blackouts (see 1604270038), saying such a rule would violate the First Amendment and also "keep subscribers in the dark." NAB also said early termination fees that pay-TV companies typically charge "make it financially painful to drop ... service," so the likelihood consumers will switch providers is low anyway. And it said CenturyLink demands "are ... nothing more than a manifest attempt to use the Commission to shield it from the rigors of the marketplace" and repeated the call it has made throughout the proceeding that the FCC stay away from retransmission consent reforms. In a statement, CenturyLink said the NAB response "reflects the same degree of arrogance and anti-competitive tone new entrants face when attempting to negotiate fair rates and terms with broadcasters to further video competition and avoid unnecessary program blackouts. We stand with others like us who have similar challenges attempting to bring greater competition to the video market." In a separate filing Thursday, the American Cable Association submitted a 21-page response of its own -- as well as a 19-page response by Columbia University Professor Michael Riordan -- to a previous NAB filing arguing against an ACA argument that bundling of top-rated stations with regional sports networks should be considered a violation of good faith negotiating. NAB hasn't undermined the cable association's case, ACA said, adding that such a violation should carry the requirement that a broadcaster give a multichannel video programming distributor a 45-day extension of the retrans consent agreement. NAB didn't comment.

Sections 325(b) of the Communications Act and 106 of the Copyright Act are clear in prohibiting the FCC from forcing broadcasters to allow retransmission of content during a retrans consent dispute with a multichannel video programming distributor, NAB said in an FCC filing Tuesday in docket 15-216. NAB said MVPDs have been pushing such a goal as part of the FCC review of the totality of circumstances test, but the argument that any public performance of a copyrighted work opens it up to third parties also publicly performing it doesn't hold water, likening such an argument to saying any broadcast of an ABC show means NBC can then put it online. The association said that Section 106 gives the copyright owner the exclusive authorization for those public performances, and MVPD arguments for that forced retrans are trying to create such compulsory licenses. Congress was clear in the Communications Act that it didn't want to alter existing program licensing agreements between broadcasters and programmers, and any FCC requirement a broadcaster offer content online in a way that would alter or limit existing licensing agreements would violate both that intent and section 325(b), NAB said. It said AT&T's argument that broadcasters’ copyright interests are minimal because they have made their programming publicly available wrongly cites 1984's Supreme Court decision in Sony v. Universal City Studios when that case "is not analogous, relevant or instructive."

TiVo and PBS Distribution are among seven new members of the Digital Entertainment Group, the DEG said Monday. Other new DEG members are Giant Interactive, Giraffic, Midnight Oil, MusicWatch and My Eye Media, the DEG said. The seven new member companies “represent the evolving nature of the home entertainment industry,” DEG said.

Some 65 percent of U.S. TV homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet via a videogame system, Wi-Fi, Blu-ray player or streaming media player, said a Leichtman Research Group report. That’s up from 44 percent in 2013 and 24 percent in 2010, LRG said. Connected TV devices in U.S. households now outnumber pay-TV set-tops, LRG said. Among connected TV households, 74 percent have more than one device, averaging 3.3 per household, it said. Ease of use perception ranks high among connected TV households, with 74 percent of respondents giving an 8-10 ranking on a scale of 1-10, compared with 12 percent who disagreed that connected TV devices are easy to use, it said. Pay-TV households average 2.2 pay-TV boxes, the report said, and 77 percent of the TVs in pay-TV households are connected to the provider’s set-top box, it said. Across all households, the mean number of connected TV devices per household is 2.1, compared with 1.8 pay-TV set-top boxes per household, LRG said. On cable provider-supplied set-top boxes, 42 percent of subscribers agreed (8-10 ranking) the boxes' features add value to the TV service, while 16 percent disagreed, LRG said. Twenty percent of cable subscribers with pay-TV set-tops (8-10) think the boxes are a “waste of money,” while 44 percent disagreed. Other findings: 38 percent of adults with a pay-TV service watch video via a connected TV device at least weekly, compared with 48 percent of viewers who aren’t pay-TV subscribers; a third of non-4K Ultra HDTV owners have seen one in use, up from 10 percent in 2014; and 25 percent of consumers who have viewed a 4K HDTV are interested in getting one vs. 9 percent who have not watched a 4K HDTV, it said. The survey of 1,206 adults ages 18 and older in continental U.S. TV households was done in February and March.

AOL agreed to acquire virtual reality studio Ryot, to enhance content on AOL's news properties, the buyer said in a news release Wednesday. Initially, Ryot will contribute films, linear video, 360-degree content and virtual reality experiences to The Huffington Post, AOL said. The news website previously worked with Ryot on a report covering the refugee crisis in Greece. Later, other AOL properties will gain access to Ryot’s virtual-reality capabilities, AOL said. AOL didn’t disclose terms of the deal.