Vudu customers can watch Warner titles remastered for Dolby Vision and mixed in Dolby Atmos, Dolby Labs and Warner said Tuesday. The content can be seen, for now, only on Dolby Vision-enabled Vizio Reference Series 4K Ultra HD TVs with additional compatible TVs due to be announced at CES. Numerous audio playback options are on the market that can decode Dolby Atmos, including AV receivers, speakers and soundbars. Scott Blanksteen, Vudu vice president-product management, said the streaming service is giving customers the chance to “be the first to enjoy a premium visual and audio experience.” Warner 4K titles available in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos include Mad Max: Fury Road, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Gallows, San Andreas, American Sniper, Man of Steel, Jupiter Ascending, Edge of Tomorrow and Into the Storm. Vudu also streams Dolby Vision titles, without Dolby Atmos sound, including Vacation, Focus, Get Hard, Run All Night, The Lego Movie, The Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Hangover trilogy and Magic Mike XXL, said Vudu.

Facebook's new system for recognizing copyright infringement in videos could require users to share private videos with third parties, potentially threatening users' online free expression and privacy, activist Elliot Harmon wrote Tuesday in an Electronic Frontier Foundation blog post. A user who shares a video only with friends or a private group, but has it flagged by Facebook's new system, won't be allowed to share it "unless you are willing to show it to the rights holder as well," he wrote. But he said EFF hasn't seen this happen yet. While he said the policy may be better than some alternatives, "Facebook has effectively created a new restriction for private communications." This could put a user's privacy at risk and it could also undermine fair use rights, said Harmon. "Rights holders can’t see your name, but there’s no way to scrub personally identifying information from the video itself." He said the company launched the video system with a small group of content creators, but plans to expand that base of users. Facebook had no immediate comment.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest agreed to journalists' request (see 1407140043) to meet with him on media groups' concerns about lack of government transparency for interviews and information from experts, the Society of Professional Journalists said. SPJ said he will discuss "press access with a small group of SPJ and Society of Environmental Journalists representatives" Dec. 15. "We view the meeting as one more step in a long battle," SPJ's website said in a post dated Thursday. "Policy change and a more open government are what we hope to achieve by sharing our concerns with Mr. Earnest and others in the White House." The White House didn't comment Friday.

Streaming TV service FilmOn X isn't eligible for a compulsory license and is liable for infringing on the copyright of CBS and other broadcasters, ruled U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge Rosemary Collyier in an order issued Thursday. FilmOn X could face damages of $750-$100,000 per instance of infringement, an industry attorney told us Friday. Collyier also denied a summary judgment motion filed by FilmOn X and denied one from the broadcasters without prejudice, meaning it could be filed again. The case stems from a lawsuit brought against FilmOn X in U.S. District Court in Washington before the Aereo ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. After the Aereo ruling (see 1406260071), FilmOn X argued in the D.C. Circuit and in similar cases in other venues that it was entitled to a compulsory copyright license, like a cable system. It also has been lobbying the FCC to designate it as an MVPD. U.S. District Judge George Wu ruled in Los Angeles (see 1507170024) that FilmOn X is eligible for a compulsory license, while the 2nd Circuit ruled that streaming video services aren’t eligible for such licenses. The L.A. decision was appealed to the 9th Circuit. Collyier’s opinion in the case was sealed because of sensitive information referenced in it, but the parties are to file a public version by Dec. 1, the order said. FilmOn X Attorney Ryan Baker of Baker Marquart said FilmOn is weighing its options for appealing the D.C. Circuit decision.

Q3 U.S. consumer spending on home entertainment content inched upward by 0.2 percent to $3.97 billion on vibrant spending on subscription streaming, which jumped 23.3 percent to $1.27 billion, the Digital Entertainment Group said Friday in its quarterly trends report. Total Q3 spending on digital delivery, including subscription streaming, electronic sell-through and VOD, jumped 15.8 percent to $1.44 billion, DEG said. But it was another tough quarter for packaged media, as sell-through of physical discs fell 14 percent to $1.15 billion and subscription-based rentals of physical media, such as through the Netflix legacy DVD business, fell 15.6 percent to $173.1 million, it said. For the nine months through Sept. 30, total spending was up 0.4 percent to $12.73 billion on a 15.8 percent rise on digital delivery spending to $6.44 billion and despite a 14.2 percent decline in physical media sell-through to $3.94 billion. For Q3, consumers “continued to embrace the convenience and accessibility of purchasing and collecting digital content, with studios reaping the higher margins that come from digital sales,” DEG said.

The FCC Media Bureau rejected a complaint by seven related broadcasters claiming that DirecTV failed to negotiate the retransmission consent agreements in good faith. While a party in a retrans negotiation must give an explanation for rejecting the other party's offer, it's not required to justify that explanation with documents or evidence, the bureau said in its order issued Friday. Blackhawk Broadcasting, Bristlecone Broadcasting, Broadcasting Licenses Limited Partnership, Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo, Mountain Licenses, Northwest Broadcasting and Stainless Broadcasting filed a complaint in June in which they asked the FCC to step into the retrans negotiations. They alleged that DirecTV wasn't negotiating in good faith and asked the agency to force it to show numbers to back up its estimations of the market value of the group's signals (see 1506120021).

The FCC should launch a rulemaking based on the efforts of the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee, TiVo said in a meeting Tuesday with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, FCC Chief Technology Officer Scott Jordan, aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and Media Bureau staff, said an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 15-64. The FCC should also issue a clarification that Charter Communications must continue to provide and support CableCARDs until “post-CableCARD successor solutions that enable retail competition are widely deployed and consumers no longer need or desire to use CableCARDs,” TiVo said. “The very predicate for a functioning retail market is that consumers and manufacturers have certainty that navigation devices purchased at retail will continue to be able to receive the cable signals that consumers have bought.”

Rovi released its Music Discovery Platform that combines three of the company's products to enhance the listening experience, it said in a news release Wednesday. The platform is comprised of Rovi's Search, Recommendations and Conversation Services tools and "enables Rovi customers to give listeners instant access to songs, albums, suggested tracks, playlists and artist information," said Rovi. The platform also allows for a "fluent, error-tolerant voice solution" for music search and discovery, it said.

The FCC Media Bureau denied NCTA’s request for an extension of the Nov. 9 deadline for reply comments on the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee’s report, in an order released Wednesday. NCTA had asked for more time so it to respond to what it said are changes of the position of Public Knowledge and the Consumer Video Choice Coalition from what is represented in the report (see 1510280070). Those changes are shown by an Oct. 20 ex parte filing by Public Knowledge, NCTA said. The ex parte filing doesn’t justify changing the comment date, the bureau said. “Even after the filing of the October 20 Ex Parte interested parties have twenty days before the reply comment deadline to prepare their filing." The denial is “consistent with the Commission’s policy that ‘extensions of time shall not be routinely granted,’" the bureau said.

The CPB said it believes its Office of Inspector General’s limited audit of CPB Radio Community Service Grants expenditures in FY 2014 at 10 CPB stations showed that “while there were no across-the-board findings that would indicate a systemic problem, there is room for improvement at every station.” The CPB OIG’s audit report on the 10 stations, issued in late September, said the stations generally complied with Communications Act requirements on financial reporting and other activities, but eight didn’t meet all requirements. The OIG also found limited cases in which the stations didn’t meet CPB accounting rules. The audited stations included five university-run stations and five community stations. Seven of the stations were solely radio entities, while three were joint TV-radio stations -- KCND(FM) Bismarck, North Dakota, KEDT(FM) Corpus Christi and WOUB(FM) Athens, Ohio. Nine of the 10 stations have already corrected or “initiated actions to bring their stations into compliance” with the Communications Act and CPB requirements, CPB said in a Friday news release.