LAS VEGAS -- With 2012 widely seen as a make or break year for mobile DTV, the Mobile 500 Alliance and Mobile Content Venture (MCV) are expected to continue discussions at CES this week on a potential merger, industry officials said.
Allowing pay-TV distributors to encrypt their basic service tier would damage the market for innovative set-top boxes such as Boxee’s, CEO Avner Ronen told FCC officials in teleconferences this week, an ex parte notice shows. Boxee will begin selling an add-on to its box that allows customers to watch live TV through an ATSC and QAM tuner. “We expect that many of our users will choose to connect the product to QAM, as reception via antennas may be inconsistent or unavailable in some areas,” the notice said. “The market for our product will therefore be significantly reduced if cable providers are permitted to encrypt basic tier cable programming,” it said. And the interim relief proposed in the rulemaking notice is inadequate “because it provides for relief only to a group of consumers that is far more narrowly defined than Boxee’s target market,” the notice said. Consumers will be less likely to buy Boxee’s product if they also need to pay for a converter box to access their cable operator’s encrypted basic service tier, it said. “Boxee’s competitiveness in the market will be hurt unless these consumers are guaranteed free access to a device that will decrypt basic tier cable and provide a QAM output,” it said.
Companies and industry groups continued to push for some changes to a draft order implementing a law restricting the noise levels of TV ads, ex parte notices show. The discussions came just before the FCC scheduled a vote on a report and order implementing the CALM Act at its Dec. 13 open meeting. Broadcast, cable, phone and TV programming executives met with FCC staff early this week to discuss possible changes to the order, which is reported to already give industry groups some of what they want (CD Dec 5 p9).
New FCC ex parte rules were violated at least 11 times since taking effect June 1, a Communications Daily review of all filings and the agency’s own checks found. Some filings were made late -- from a day in many instances to a few weeks -- and others didn’t contain enough information on what was discussed during lobbying meetings. The filings were made by companies and associations big and small. They covered proceedings ranging from changing the Universal Service Fund to pay for broadband deployment to retransmission consent, ISP speeds, disabilities access legislation passed in 2010 and getting low-power TV stations to fully vacate the 700 MHz band for wireless broadband in the small portion they occupy.
As some broadcasters gear up for a mobile emergency alert system pilot project, they said they expect the EAS project to complement the current system and lead to further use of mobile DTV. With three public TV operations as test markets for the project, it will reassert the role of broadcasters as initial informers during emergencies and disasters, some executives said.
Many broadcasters and all wireless companies are sitting out a plan (CD Oct 21 p2) by some stations to act as Internet backhaul providers for carriers, our survey of those industries found. No carrier has agreed to join the efforts of the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, though several have expressed an interest in the technology, members said. They said the coalition has been adding some broadcasters, including the owner of five stations in North Carolina, and the operator of another 36 outlets is likely to join. Other executives and engineers who consult for the TV industry said the technology changes needed for stations to become ISPs of a sort would be expensive. They're skeptical that what they called an initiative undertaken at a late date will pick up enough momentum to either delay the auction of TV stations’ channels the FCC wants to hold or gain carrier backing.
Multichannel video programming distributors and TV stations keep seeking narrow FCC rules on what they each must do to comply with the CALM Act, filings posted Friday in docket 11-93 show (http://xrl.us/bmgwqz). The Rural Independent Competitive Alliance said small MVPDs can’t adjust the “dialnorm” settings for TV ads, which the legislation seeks to keep at about the same sound level as regular programming, “in real time.” The commission should offer an “expedited waiver process” for such companies, said a slide from an alliance meeting with Chief Bill Lake and other front-office Media Bureau staffers (http://xrl.us/bmgwq5). Members of the group include the NTCA and Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecom Companies. TV stations need to rely on the act’s safe harbor provisions for all commercials they show, the NAB said executives told Lake and other top bureau officials (http://xrl.us/bmgwrd). The association sought “flexibility” for small TV stations and a “blanket waiver” of the effective date of the rules for those broadcasters that are small businesses. “Stations can and do rely on certifications from program providers that they control the loudness level of commercials and program content in conformance with practices in ATSC A/85 (and communicate that level to stations so that it can be properly set),” the NAB said. “We urged the FCC to recognize that reliance on such certifications was appropriate and consistent with commercially reasonable practices.” Stations don’t routinely measure the loudness level of all audio from “upstream providers” when it’s encoded into an AC-3 digital stream, and it’s “not practical to do so for all programs,” the association said in a follow-up meeting with some bureau officials: “Stations therefore do not know in real time if there is a deviation in terms of measured loudness."
Legislation to tamp down the volume of TV ads limits what multichannel video programming distributors must do, the American Cable Association said in an FCC filing posted Friday in docket 11-93 (http://xrl.us/bmgp68). It said the CALM Act, requiring the FCC to apply an ATSC noise standard to TV stations and MVPDs, only mandates pay-TV companies pass through “without alteration the dialnorm metadata in commercial advertisements inserted upstream by programmer.” Every cable system doesn’t need to “install and utilize equipment to monitor and correct the loudness of commercial advertisements inserted in several hundred programming channels upstream,” the association said. Because the act says the commission must impose new ATSC standards without giving that organization “explicit direction” for successor standards, nor giving the agency the chance “to review the actions of that body to ensure they are lawful,” the ACA said the FCC “faces serious legal concerns in implementing the statute.” ACA representatives met with front-office staff of the Enforcement and Media bureaus and with FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick. Other MVPDs have made similar arguments about the act’s limits on what they must do (CD Sept 22 p20).
A nascent proposal for TV stations to act as broadband content delivery mechanisms (CD Oct 14 p14) for Internet Protocol traffic drew skepticism on technical and policy grounds from some industries whose support may be necessary for the proposal to succeed. Wireless companies, who want the FCC to voluntarily auction some broadcaster spectrum to free up frequencies for mobile broadband, declined to back the parts of the plan unveiled Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmgm8e) by the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband. An engineer who has worked for carriers and TV stations and a lawyer for full-power TV broadcasters told us the plan may face economic and equipment hurdles. Proponents said the economic analysis they paid for to show their plan would raise more money for the U.S. than an auction will be complete in a week, and standards for carriers to send traffic broadcasters’ way don’t fully exist.
A report from the ATSC raised some concerns about the effects of long-term viewing of stereoscopic 3D TV images on adults and the effects of short-term and long-term viewing on young children. “Effects of long term viewing would be less of a concern if viewers find viewing stereoscopic material as comfortable as viewing 2D material,” the report said. “However, given that there are many factors and conditions that give rise to visual discomfort and that television viewing can become a daily routine, more studies and more scientific data on this issue would be beneficial,” the ATSC report said. More research should be done on how viewing stereoscopic images affects young children, “given that children have different ranges of IPDs [inter-pupillary distance] and the fact that their visual systems may still be under development,” the report said.