Redbox can no longer individually sell download codes from Disney DVD and Blu-ray combo packs since it didn't get ownership rights to the digital content when it bought the combo packs, said U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson of Los Angeles in a docket 17-cv-08655-DDP-AGR order (in Pacer) entered Thursday, granting Disney's motion for preliminary injunction (see 1804100002). Pregerson dismissed as wrong Redbox's argument it can be liable for contributory copyright infringement only if it had the subjective intent to be an infringer. Redbox outside counsel didn't comment.

Hulu's advertising and subscriber growth likely won't be enough to make the streaming service profitable by 2020, but it's still valuable to Disney, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. He said paid subscribers likely are 17 percent of Hulu's customer base, with the rest watching the ad-supported version, meaning last year it likely had $1.6 billion in subscriber revenue and just shy of $1 billion from ad sales. Even if its projections for results of 30 million subscribers, 40 percent watching ad-free and generating $5.6 billion in sub revenue in 2020 doesn't have Hulu in the black, the service provides value for Disney by being a bridge for viewers to the direct-to-consumer future. Hulu didn't comment Wednesday.

Sonos landed a U.S. patent Tuesday for techniques of embedding ads as “structured metadata” in a “digital media playback system” for distribution to “multimedia players” installed in a home's “zones” and giving users the interactive capability to respond through a dedicated “input interface” on a controller. “Traditional” ad channels “can only provide static content and cannot engage potential customers interactively,” said the patent (10,061,742) based on a January 2010 application and naming Jonathan Lang and Ron Kuper as inventors. Lang is Sonos director-innovation and Kuper director of the company's Advanced Concepts Lab. The internet’s rapid growth offers advertisers “a unique opportunity to make interactive advertisement campaigns possible by allowing end users to close the loop, namely inducing users to click on an advertisement being served or linking the users to the actual product or service,” said the patent. Music publishers “supplement their revenue with advertising and connecting the audience with other products or services,” it said. Placing ads “between two musical pieces may not get a close attention from a listener as the listener may switch to another piece of music when a previous one is over,” it said. “There is a need for solutions that allow advertising to happen anytime an advertiser may deem appropriate.” Sonos didn’t comment.

Sixteen tool, SoC and content vendors -- no TV brands or film studios -- independent of the core founding companies of Fox, Panasonic and Samsung are first “adopters” of the HDR10+ Technologies licensing program, said the consortium Tuesday in a pre-IFA announcement. The update came a year to the day after Fox, Panasonic and Samsung first announced on the eve of 2017's IFA that they will form an “open,” licensable certification and logo program. HDR10+ Technologies “is actively partnering with companies throughout the media ecosystem,” and more than 80 “have already applied or completed the license program,” said the consortium. Fox is “encouraged by the interest of early adopters and an expanded HDR10+ ecosystem that will improve the viewing experiences for all,” said Danny Kaye, Fox Innovation Lab executive vice president-managing director. Fox is “committed to incorporating HDR10+ in its upcoming new release slate,” and is “currently exploring several titles for release in the marketplace,” said the studio.

The FCC began a podcast, "More Than Seven Dirty Words," promising "countless untold stories and unsung heroes" of the agency. The podcast debuted Monday with a four-minute introduction episode featuring Chairman Ajit Pai, and a 22-minute episode about the agency's response in 2017 to Hurricanes Irma and Maria after they hit Puerto Rico, with Roberto Mussenden, an attorney in the Public Safety Bureau. Evan Swarztrauber, media aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr, hosts both episodes. "Maybe we'll even do the impossible: make telecom interesting," Pai tweeted Monday announcing the podcast.

Hiking the regulatory fees paid by DBS operators while cutting those paid by cable operators is baseless, DBS operator representatives told aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Mike O'Rielly, according to a docket 18-175 posting Thursday. The DBS interests said the FCC hasn't said how the set-top box and independent programming proceedings, both dormant for more than a year and yet cited by the agency as justifying the increased fees, increased Media Bureau FTE workloads enough to justify higher DBS fees, while also decreasing the bureau's workload for cable operators enough to justify rate cuts. They also argued a push for regulatory fee parity between cable and DBS would run against Congress' statutory command that regulatory fees correlate to the costs of regulating payers, since the regulatory burdens from cable and DBS are sizably different. The American Cable Association is pushing for regulatory parity (see 1808230016).

Days before BMG's contributory copyright infringement lawsuit against Cox was set for retrial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia (see 1808210007), the sides moved to have the complaint voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, according to a docket 14-cv-01611-LO-JFA stipulation (in Pacer) filed Friday in the court. It didn't give settlement term details. Cox is the defendant in a similar suit in the same District Court brought by a variety of music labels (see 1808020009).

If satellite radio is required to pay pre-1972 royalties to music artists, terrestrial radio should have to do the same, SiriusXM CEO Jim Beyer wrote in a Billboard commentary Thursday. Sirius opposes the Compensating Legacy Artists for Their Songs, Service and Important Contributions to Society (Classics) Act (S-2393) portion of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), House-passed legislation being considered by the Senate (see 1808170046). That part of the bill would require Sirius to pay for use of pre-1972 sound recordings. “While we do not believe CLASSICS is good public policy, SiriusXM has nonetheless been working with Congress to address our specific concerns with certain MMA language,” Beyer wrote. Sirius has paid $250 million to pre-1972 artists based on existing agreements, he said. An NAB spokesman emailed: “It's unfortunate that SiriusXM is trying to torpedo the Music Modernization Act at the 11th hour. NAB strongly supports this legislation and hopes that SiriusXM is unsuccessful in its effort to derail this important bill."

Sharp with Japan’s Memory-Tech sought Patent and Trademark Office OK earlier this month for a patent on “super-resolution” version of a 5-inch disc format that can store the “huge amounts of information” for feature-length 8K video, said a patent application (20180226097) published earlier this month. Memory-Tech was a key developer of HD DVD, a now-defunct format supplanted by Blu-ray. Sharp, an avowed 8K champion, plans to use next week’s IFA to unveil its global 8K TV ambitions. It doesn't plan to exhibit a “super-resolution optical disc,” emailed Sascha Lange, vice president-marketing and sales, Europe.

Roku TV functionality to send photos from smartphones to TVs violates three U.S. patents assigned to Ortiz & Associates Consulting, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. The three patents, granted March 2015-January 2017, describe methods for wirelessly “rendering” content on a TV from a handheld smart device, said the complaint. Before the patents, inventor Luis Ortiz “recognized that wireless device users were generally restricted in all data use by small device-based viewers,” through their limited graphic-user-interface functionality or “inconveniently located rendering resources,” it said. Thursday, Roku didn’t comment. Ortiz filed similar complaints Feb. 1 against Google and HP in U.S. District Court in Chicago, records show. Google and Ortiz settled June 7, while HP successfully moved July 2 to transfer the case to U.S. District Court in San Francisco.