It’s not about the dollars that consumers will spend on Ultra HD TVs, “it’s about the eyeballs” that will mark the needed “critical mass” before a broadcaster jumps in with an ad-supported TV network dedicated to 4K programming, Vince Roberts, Disney-ABC TV Networks chief technology officer, said Monday in a “super session” conference on consumers, 4K and next-generation home entertainment at the NAB Show. “To hit that critical mass if one were to launch a 4K network that could be relatively well-supported by the ad industry, it’s probably around 40 million homes that would make it practical for you to be able to sell ads,” Roberts said. “So there needs to be a tremendous amount of penetration in that space for any of us on the programming side to begin considering launching a full-time, 24-by-7 network doing specifically UHD. That doesn’t scale very well unless you hit that level of critical mass.” Roberts agrees with those who see “more of the niche” players leading the way with 4K TV programming, he said. “It’s going to be what Netflix is doing. It’s going to be VOD, that kind of unique user experience that can deliver that high-quality content.” He said he has heard that some multichannel video programming distributors “are talking about launching full-time UHD channels, and DirecTV has made some movements in that direction, so we'll wait and see.” If it turns out “that the right business opportunity is there, then content will be created or provisioned for those platforms,” Roberts said. But Disney-ABC TV has no “immediate plans right now to put a full-time network together” on 4K, he said. “That’s pretty far off in the future for us."

Corrections: What Computer and Communications Industry Association Vice President-Government Relations Cathy Sloan said she hopes happens this month on the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) is a committee markup (CD April 8 p13) … “SG32” is the ATSC specialist group that’s working to complete ATSC 3.0’s physical layer (CD April 8 p11).

The Supreme Court shot down Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman’s attempt to get the high court to review the Klayman v. Obama phone surveillance case he has been involved in over the past several months (http://1.usa.gov/1srZ71s). The case began in June in the U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., and Klayman received a favorable verdict in December from Judge Richard Leon, which the federal government appealed. Klayman sought to expand and certify the case in a March 25 filing before Leon, asking for immediate Supreme Court review.

FCC targeted outreach to broadcasters in advance of the TV incentive auction would go too far and risk making participation seem less than voluntary, the Television Licensee Coalition (TLC) said in a letter to the FCC. “The FCC has quite properly embarked on a process of generally educating TV stations about this opportunity by means of FCC webinars, workshops, conferences, etc., open to all interested parties, as well as the FCC LEARN program on the FCC website,” the TLC said. “But with its recent announcement of plans to conduct Targeted Outreach, the Commission risks tipping the delicate balance it is required to effectuate between a truly ‘voluntary’ auction and one in which the government, by overreaching, undermines that statutory dictate.” The auction is supposed to be voluntary, TLC said: “TLC respectfully suggests that the FCC resist taking any action that might be interpreted as instead introducing an element of compulsion into the process.” The group, represented by law firm Lerman Senter, speaks for “fifteen companies, licensed to operate approximately 300 full power television stations,” though the companies remain anonymous, the filing said (http://bit.ly/1jonSqo).

Correction: The meeting when the FCC 3.5 GHz rulemaking is expected to get a vote is on April 23(CD April 3 p1).

Build-out requirements for spectrum licenses have been only somewhat successful, said David Redl, chief counsel for the House Communications Subcommittee, at a Silicon Flatirons conference Thursday on “Property Rights in Spectrum, Water, and Minerals.” Build-out requirements have long been a fact of life for broadcasters, Redl said. “In Washington when we're looking at the policy, we don’t want to blindly adhere to use it or lose it policy,” he said. “When applied rationally, a use it or lose policy can work really well, but unlike minerals, for example, where there’s a finite amount of ore in a given place, spectrum … if you don’t use it in this time parameter, it’s gone and you have to move on.” Redl cited the 2.3 GHz band, where major interference issues surfaced between Wireless Communications Service licensees and satellite-TV operations. “Building that out … to use it so you don’t lose it wouldn’t make much sense if once the interference parameters got cleaned up, you would have had to go back and reinvest again,” he said. Phil Weiser, dean of the University of Colorado Law School, said use it or lose requirements have worked well for mineral rights, are viewed with skepticism in water and are usually “an afterthought” for spectrum licenses. “You hear the word build-out requirements in spectrum … if you don’t build out to serve an entire area, then you lose some spectrum,” he said. He agreed with Redl that the requirements have been a “mixed bag” in wireless. Spectrum is just different than water and minerals, Redl said. “Spectrum is infinitely renewable across the time domain,” he said. “Every second, the entire spectrum is made re-available.” Another difference is that the same spectrum can be shared, Weiser said. “You can actually have compatible use in the same time and the same place if people are not using power levels that create interference,” he said. “You could have a system operating that is of high power and then a very lower power system that could come in even potentially without a licenses and use what you might call an underlay portion of the spectrum.”

Small- and mid-sized telecom operators provide broadband in rural areas, competition and choice in urban areas, and services to community institutions and businesses in underserved areas, the American Cable Association said in a white paper (http://bit.ly/1mL3L9s). The study, released Wednesday, was done by Cartesian. ACA members’ broadband footprint covers nearly 8 million homes in small cities and rural areas, “covering nearly 20 percent of the population in these areas,” it said. But ACA members face specific challenges due to their size, it said. Local and regional cable operators “must compete against large telephone companies receiving government subsidies to provide broadband to unserved areas.” They also are disadvantaged in negotiations over interconnection with the networks of Tier 1 Internet service providers, it said. ACA estimates that 1.6 million homes in its members’ territories are considered “high cost,” it said. Of these homes, about 842,000 would be eligible to receive government broadband funding “if not for the presence of ACA members,” it said.

End all bulk collection of data about individuals, said 44 organizations in a letter to the White House and congressional leaders (http://bit.ly/1s3nUbM). “We strongly urge swift markup and passage of the USA FREEDOM Act (HR-3361), which would enact appropriate surveillance reforms without sacrificing national security.” Monday’s letter was to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. Attorney General Eric Holder also received a copy. Organizations ranging from privacy advocates (including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Cyber Privacy Project, Electronic Frontier Foundation) to civil liberties advocates (such as American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice, Human Rights Watch) and technology companies (like Reddit) signed the letter. The groups urged the recipients to not focus legislation simply on Patriot Act Section, which applies to the “bulk collection of any records that reveal relationships between individuals.” Bulk collection should also be prohibited under Section 214, which the NSA has used to authorize bulk collection of Internet metadata through pen/trap authority, said the groups. “The USA FREEDOM Act addresses each of these reforms, as well as others, by aiming to prohibit bulk collection of all data under Section 215 and 214.” The White House has backed a proposal shifting bulk storage of metadata away from the government, instead looking to the phone companies to hold on to any necessary metadata (CD March 28 p10).

The FCC plans to form a task force to deal with Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday at a news conference after the FCC’s monthly meeting. Even though nothing has been filed by the companies, “we've begun to think about how we want to organize,” he said. “If we're presented with something, then we'll announce how we'll handle it.” The commission will assign someone within the agency “who has experience in previous similar activity” to run the task force, Wheeler said. More details will be forthcoming, he said.

Channel sharing on both a physical and virtual level can be done, said a technical report on a Los Angeles TV channel sharing project. The report, released Friday by CTIA and Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA, shared technical achievements and limitations of channel sharing. The report is a result of a pilot project to determine whether channel sharing can help free up spectrum in the TV incentive auction (CD Jan 29 p4). The stations have provided real world evidence that channel sharing presents a significant opportunity “for broadcasters to continue their existing business on shared spectrum and take home a check for spectrum they voluntarily relinquish in the incentive auction,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1gz5GdL). He said he hopes broadcasters will closely study the report. The report also found that all the TVs and tuners tested were able to receive and correctly parse all the required information, and that it’s technically feasible “for two 720p high definition streams to be combined into a single Advanced Television System Committee [ATSC] channel,” it said (http://bit.ly/1h0VciA). The report cautioned that careful thought must be put into the radio frequency transition, “whether for repacking or sharing, by the FCC and broadcasters to find a solution that will minimize viewer complaints,” it said. Because broadcasters have no control over the final display format at home, “it makes sense to use the most efficient encoding structure for final distribution over the air,” it said. The stations compared PBS Newshour episodes in the 720p and 1080i HD formats. In 720p, “we found a surprisingly better DMOS [Differential Mean Opinion Score] at approximately 50 percent of the bitrate of 1080i,” it said. With ATSC 3.0, the use of High Efficiency Video Coding codec is envisioned, it said. What isn’t known today is the bitrates that 4K and 8K will require in the future, it said. It also isn’t known whether 4K and 8K will be a viable business opportunity for a broadcaster “or will be delivered through alternate paths,” it said. Many technical issues identified in the report are very familiar to broadcasters “as part of the industry’s extensive experience with multicasting,” NAB said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1o8Gujr). NAB noted in a blog post that while Wheeler “is making a big channel sharing push,” he also is working to eliminate sharing arrangements through joint sales agreements (http://bit.ly/1h3JwLX). Wheeler is essentially saying he wants to see broadcasters share facilities “because that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that broadcasters must unwind agreements they voluntarily entered, with commission approval, regarding sharing other resources, because that’s bad,” it said. The FCC is scheduled to vote Monday on an order that is expected to make JSAs attributable for ownership cap purposes (CD March 28 p1).