For the second year running, the U.K. industry’s Digital TV Group awarded four innovators the opportunity to showcase for free their new DTV technology ideas at the DTG stand at the IBC show Sept. 12-16 in Amsterdam. The four were selected by a panel of industry experts from a short list of eight after a Dragon’s Den grilling at the DTG’s London headquarters Wednesday evening. One winner, CrowdEmotion, uses facial recognition software to read TV viewers’ expressions as they watch a broadcast in real time. Another, StreamHub, combines conventional audience viewing figures with data collected from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. A third, Grabyo, is a simple cloud-based editing program that lets users quickly edit video clips from a live online broadcast, and add fade-ins and -outs and ads for feeds to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, all within 30 seconds. The fourth, Chirp, works as a sonic barcode, embedding audible trigger sounds in a TV broadcast, public address system, or sound from a doorbell, toy or greeting card. The tone, which is 1.8 seconds long and modeled on the natural sound of a wren bird, carries 50 bits of data at a very slow rate, but very robustly. The data is coded to tell any mobile device with an open microphone and enabling Chirp app to download interactive content such as links, video or images. Said Chirp’s inventor and CEO, Patrick Bergel, when we asked why he didn’t use Bluetooth: “Bluetooth? Are you serious? There are more loudspeakers on planet Earth than people. All mobile devices have microphones and most are always on, listening. The Chirp is a mixture of real musical tones -- in fact flautists could play them if they could play at 170 beats per minute -- and they are in the frequency range 7.5-11 kHz, which even the cheapest mobile speaker can reproduce.” Other finalists that didn’t make the cut: (1) Ad Venture TV, which replaces broadcast ads with personalized ones; (2) AutoGraph.me, an electronic program guide tailored from audience viewing preferences, with low-power Bluetooth used to identify individual viewers; (3) Freesat Freetime, a satellite-based EPG that gives connected TV sets forward and backward scheduling, and is already used by Panasonic in the U.K. for terrestrial and satellite viewing; (4) Live Box, a remote-controlled camera, microphone, speaker and lighting combination unit that uses a 4G SIM card for two-way audio and video capture and monitoring with low latency. “The quality and diversity of this year’s entries shows us how much television technology innovation is coming out of, or scaling up, in the U.K.,” said DTG CEO Richard Lindsay-Davies, who chaired the Dragon’s Den event. But he warned the four winners, from his personal experience of more IBC visits than he said he could remember, that they were in for an exhausting few days.

Streaming TV company FilmOn’s new Teleporter streaming TV service violates several injunctions that restrict the company from retransmitting copyrighted content, said broadcasters in several court filings in the U.S. District Court in New York. Through the service, FilmOn customers could stream local New York broadcast channels in Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco as well as New York, broadcasters said in court filings Friday. FilmOn has ongoing court proceedings in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., and is enjoined from streaming copyrighted content nationwide. FilmOn describes the Teleporter as new technology that “allows users to access remote desktops connected to FilmOn’s remote antenna and DVR system without any additional hardware or software” (http://bit.ly/1rHLVV0). The system is based on the same mini-antenna technology at the heart of the other legal challenges to FilmOn, the company said in its court filing. Though broadcasters said the U.S. Supreme Court decision in ABC v. Aereo makes it expressly clear that services like FilmOn’s Teleporter aren’t allowed to broadcast copyrighted works without permission, FilmOn maintains the high court ruling means its service is legal. “While the Court’s opinion in Aereo establishes that Aereo engages in public performances under the Copyright Act, it also suggests that Aereo (and, by extension, [FilmOn]) are entitled to compulsory licenses as cable systems under section 111,” said FilmOn in its response. Aereo has pursued a similar argument in its own court battle with broadcasters, and its application for a compulsory copyright license was recently rejected by the U.S. Copyright Office (CD July 18 p18). FilmOn has also applied for such a license, and said in its filings that it has put its Teleporter service on hold while it awaits a court decision on whether it violated its injunctions. The court should hold FilmOn and CEO Alki David in contempt, broadcasters said.

Spending on pay-TV operator software contracted by 5 percent in North America and Western Europe last year, compared with 2012, an ABI Research study said. The decrease was driven by classic end-to-end middleware functions, while newer experiential components did better, ABI said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1A2BPmw). The loss was offset by the growth of pay-TV in developing regions of Asia-Pacific, bringing the worldwide pay-TV operator spending on video software up about 5 percent to $4.48 billion, it said. The largest middleware integrators, like Cisco, “are being outpaced in terms of growth by smaller companies such as TiVo and Rovi,” ABI said. Some middleware providers attribute the decrease in part to the uncertainty of Comcast’s pending purchase of Time Warner Cable and the development of Comcast’s Reference Design Kit (RDK), it said, referring to an open software stack to support hybrid quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-IP and IP-only set-tops, gateways and video client devices. Larger middleware companies see RDK as a threat, while smaller providers “see it as an opportunity to decrease technology spending while offering robust solutions,” ABI said.

Enhancements to the AntennaWeb.org site allow consumers to “connect” with CEA-member antenna vendors, said CEA Monday. Broadcast Interactive Media (BIM), a data services supplier, runs the site under a co-sponsorship between CEA and NAB, though the announcement didn’t mention NAB by name. Consumers who plug in an address at AntennaWeb.org are taken to a chart that shows which over-the-air channels are available at that address and the color-coded antenna types needed to receive those channels without a pay TV connection. “When shoppers choose a color-coded antenna type matching their viewing preferences, AntennaWeb.org takes the consumers to the product pages on vendors’ websites,” CEA said. “There, shoppers can purchase the selected antenna and peripheral products through vendors’ existing online storefronts.” “Ready to Buy an Antenna?” read the instructions at AntennaWeb.org. “Click on a manufacturer’s logo to shop from these participating CEA members for the color-coded antenna type that matches your viewing needs.” In our case, it was Channel Master, and clicking on its logo brought us directly to its online store. CEA spokeswoman Samantha Nevels said BIM drafted the Monday announcement, and so bore responsibility for omitting mention of NAB. BIM deliberately excluded mentioning NAB because the announcement was about “connecting consumers to participating CEA certified vendors,” Heidi Steffen, BIM senior vice president-licensed applications sales, told us in an email. “There were no items within our changes of the site that required any input from the NAB,” she said. “The NAB remains a solid partner and advocate/sponsor of the site.” NAB is still a co-sponsor of AntennaWeb.org and is identified as such on the website along with CEA, confirmed NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton in an email. Last month, a CEA survey found that the percentage in the U.S. of Internet-only TV homes soon will top that of homes that get their TV exclusively through an antenna, evidence that fewer American homes are now using only antennas to watch their favorite TV programs. It drew a sharp rebuke from outspoken antenna supplier Antennas Direct (CED June 9 p7), which, upon prompting from NAB, said consumers are embracing over-the-air DTV reception “at a pace that is shocking for even the jaded consumer electronics industry.” In an emailed statement, Antennas Direct President Richard Schneider said: “It is great to see that the CEA is investing in the growing market of over the air television.”

The FCC denied an application for review by DirecTV Sports Net Pittsburgh (DSNP) of an arbitrator’s finding in favor of a cable operator and against the regional sports network. The Media Bureau properly found that the rates and rate renewal increase in the Armstrong Utilities final offer most closely approximate fair market value, the commission said in an order in Thursday’s Daily Digest (http://fcc.us/1n1L9B7). The bureau reached the decision on the final offer for carriage on DSNP in 2011. DSNP failed to explain in its application for review why the challenged provisions “would tip the scales in favor of the DSNP final offer in light of the unchallenged finding that many of the other provisions favor the Armstrong final offer,” said the full commission. It included a dissent from Commissioner Ajit Pai and a partial dissent from Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. The FCC, the Media Bureau and the arbitrator haven’t made a reasonable effort to figure out which offer was closer to the fair market value, Pai said (http://bit.ly/1qOUQ5C). Pai said he’s troubled by the “flawed methodology” used to resolve the case, “particularly because it will set a precedent for resolving future disputes between RSNs” and pay-TV companies. Pai would have preferred the FCC to remand the case to the bureau and request an estimate of the fair market value of Armstrong’s carriage of Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh, he said. O'Rielly backed Pai’s concerns over the methodology, but said he’s willing to let the bureau’s decision stand for a few reasons. O'Rielly said those reasons included because DirecTV “failed to challenge the other portions of the arbitrator’s decision” and didn’t provide an explanation as to why the two provisions it challenged would ultimately tip the scales in the company’s favor (http://bit.ly/1nk5vaD).

AT&T’s buying DirecTV would put “significant downward pressure” on the prices of their new integrated bundle of products, and could also lead to lower prices on other companies’ products, said Yale University professors Steven Berry and Philip Haile in a presentation submitted to the FCC and posted Friday in docket 14-90 by the companies (http://bit.ly/1oRWFfy). If the deal does cause upward pressure on the prices of other products, it will be “modest and more than offset by the downward pricing pressures,” the filing said. “The net effect on consumer surplus will be demonstrably positive.” The deal will also lead to favorable effects for consumers, because it will allow the merged company to provide a bundle of video and broadband in areas where AT&T currently provides video, they said.

The first Ultra HD broadcasts of a Commonwealth Games will highlight a series of new trials and public demonstrations announced Friday by the BBC as part of its Games “showcase” opening Thursday and running through Aug. 3 in Glasgow. All of the trials and demonstrations are open to the public in the Glasgow Science Centre’s Clyde Suite, the BBC said. It’s also trumpeting coverage of the Commonwealth Games as the first major live event to be produced and delivered entirely over the Internet and the U.K.’s first live broadcast trials over 4G mobile networks. Visitors to the showcase will be able to see how the BBC tackles “some of the technical challenges” of Ultra HD production, such as using higher frame rates and higher dynamic range, it said. It will also demonstrate how viewers “could benefit from an Ultra HD production using standard definition devices,” it said. For example, a fixed wide-angle Ultra HD camera will provide a live feed of all the track and field action, allowing users to use a standard tablet to pan around and zoom into the events they're interested in, it said. “The audio will automatically adjust to match the view and, as it’s powered by an Ultra HD feed, the resolution never drops below standard HD,” it said. “Interactive graphics overlaid on the video will provide additional information relevant to the scene.” The 4G mobile broadcasting of the Games is a U.K. first, the BBC said. The BBC will collaborate with wireless carrier EE, Huawei and Qualcomm on a trial to broadcast live footage from the Games over EE’s 4G mobile network, it said. “Handheld devices are an increasingly popular way of consuming BBC programmes but conventional streaming over mobile networks can buffer or freeze at times of heavy congestion, as content needs to be sent individually to every user.” However, 4G broadcasting “offers an alternative to this, allowing live streams to be transmitted once over the mobile network to a large number of users simultaneously,” it said. It said the service offers “increased quality and reliability,” and also is “a more efficient way to deliver popular shows and live events to audiences.” At the showcase, the BBC also will demonstrate the use of TV white spaces to “provide live and on-demand IP streaming of multimedia content to user devices in a home environment,” it said.

The U.S. Copyright Office doesn’t believe Aereo and other services based on Internet retransmission of broadcast TV are eligible to receive compulsory copyright licenses, the office told the company in a letter Wednesday. Aereo has argued in U.S. District Court in New York that the majority opinion in its recent Supreme Court loss means it should be treated as a cable system, and be eligible for the same copyright license such systems use (CD July 11 p10). The office said Aereo recently filed with it to receive such a license. The portion of the Copyright Act that authorizes such licenses- -- Section 111 -- encompasses only retransmission services “regulated as cable systems by the FCC,” the Copyright Office said. “We do not see anything in the Supreme Court’s recent decision … that would alter this conclusion.” The office accepted Aereo’s filings on a provisional basis, because the matter is still open in court, but they could be subsequently rejected “depending on further regulatory or judicial developments,” the letter said. Aereo wouldn’t comment.

The global set-top box market had its highest-ever annual revenue in 2013, said IHS Technology in a news release Wednesday. Worldwide digital box revenue totaled $20.3 billion in 2013, up 3 percent from 2012, IHS said. “Set-top boxes proved to be critical to the strategies of pay TV operators in 2013,” said IHS Director-Connected Home Research Daniel Simmons. Set-tops “increasingly are being transformed into multimedia home gateways (MHG), which combine support for pay-TV services with Internet access, residential gateway services, Wi-Fi and other advanced features,” said IHS. MHGs are being used “to transition from a legacy broadcast-based pay-TV experience to one that is Internet-centric and better positioned to compete with over-the-top (OTT)-rivals,” it said (http://bit.ly/1t4tiut). Revenue from set-tos will continue to grow until 2015 “as Comcast, DirecTV and Dish Network expedite their MHG deployments, driving the higher end of the market,” said firm. It said the market is expected to contract to $20.7 billion by 2018. “Pay TV is nearing saturation across the world, and under such conditions, operators will be increasingly reliant on the technology-based differentiation enabled by STBs to compete for subscribers,” said Simmons.

The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles committed no “abuse of discretion” when it denied Fox the preliminary injunction it sought against features of Dish Network’s Hopper DVR service, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday, upholding the district court’s September denial (CD July 15 p17) . The district court denied Fox’s injunction request because it said Fox “had not shown a likelihood” that the “Dish Anywhere” and “Hopper Transfers” features “would irreparably harm Fox before final adjudication,” said 9th Circuit (http://1.usa.gov/1qDwAUb). “Contrary to Fox’s arguments in this appeal, the district court committed no legal error and made no clearly erroneous factual findings in so ruling.” The lower court also “did not commit legal error by characterizing the irreparable harm forecasts of Fox’s executive as speculative,” said the 9th Circuit. Instead, the lower court said Fox’s “lack of evidence that the complained-of technology, available for several years, had yet caused Fox’s business any harm weighed against Fox’s argument that it would be irreparably harmed absent a preliminary injunction,” said the 9th Circuit. “In so finding, the district court did not hold Fox’s evidence to a more rigorous standard than our law requires and so did not abuse its discretion.” Moreover, “in light of the evidence that advertisers are adapting to the changing landscape of television consumption,” the lower court committed no “clear error” when it found lack of evidence to support Fox’s assertion it would lose ad revenue from the Dish technologies “absent an injunction,” the appeals court said.