U.S. households with live multichannel pay-TV service likely will drop from 85 percent today to 79 percent by 2030, The Diffusion Group said Wednesday. By then, roughly 30 million U.S. households will be without any such service, TDG said. It expects legacy MVPDs to be hard by subscriber losses due to industry trends and to increased competition from virtual pay-TV providers, with legacy subscription-video penetration dropping from 81 percent of U.S. households today to 60 percent. Virtual pay-TV penetration will grow from 4 percent to 14 percent, TDG said.

NFL opens a New York venue Friday with eight interactive experiences, we found on a tour Wednesday. D-Box in-seat motion technology is synchronized with on-screen content, with seats and chair backs rumbling according to on-screen action. An NFL film was projected onto a wraparound “4D” screen comprising the front and side walls and half the ceiling. During clips of wintry games, a blower mounted to the ceiling spewed artificial snow, described as a vegetal foam produced from tree sap that’s kosher and gluten-free. We were speckled with snow that melted, leaving no trace by the time credits rolled. The center lacks virtual reality setups because of logistics and hygiene, content developer Thinkwell Chief Operating Officer Francois Bergeron told us. “They can do that at home.” In augmented reality, visitors can see themselves projected into a postgame interview and respond to announcer questions.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. TV households own at least one internet-enabled device capable of streaming content to a TV, said a Nielsen report. Penetration of connected devices has grown 12 percent since June 2016 and includes a range of product types: streaming media devices such as Apple TV, Google’s Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV; game consoles; and smart TVs. Of the 69.5 million TV homes with at least one connected streaming media device, 6.5 million have access to all three categories. Smart TVs are “approaching ubiquity and becoming more accessible to the average consumer,” said Nielsen, with a third of TV homes having an internet-enabled TV. Connected game consoles are in a third of U.S. TV homes, and some 31 million homes have at least two devices that can stream video content to a TV, it said. Households with internet-enabled devices skew young, employed and affluent, and half are under 45 years of age, Nielsen said. Connected households are more likely to have children and have a median income of $70,500, it said.

The HDMI Forum announced release of the HDMI Version 2.1 specification, nearly 11 months after it used a January CES news conference to say it expected the spec’s “upcoming” release would take place in Q2 (see 1701040065). HDMI 2.1 supports doubling the frame rates of 4K video to 120 Hz and 8K to 60 Hz, and supports high-dynamic-range platforms that use dynamic metadata, such as Dolby Vision and HDR10+, said Tuesday's announcement.

Meredith agreed to buy Time Inc. in a $2.8 billion deal expected to close in Q1, with $650 million in funding from Koch Equity Development, Meredith announced Sunday. The takeover "accelerates Meredith's digital position," Meredith noted, saying its TV stations see a "strong political advertising year in fiscal 2019."

DirecTV's trying to blame licensee HITV for not negotiating in good faith makes "a mockery of the entire concept of good faith negotiations," HITV said in a docket 17-292 filing posted Friday. It lodged a good faith negotiations complaint against DirecTV in October (see 1710230046). HITV said it never asked DirecTV for alternative terms to its initial offer, only to indicate whether it would consider alternative terms -- something it refused to do. And it said DirecTV's claims the proceeding is moot because of an alternative proposal made to HITV ignores that the proposal wasn't meaningfully different from the first. HITV's filing was in response to a DirecTV answer to the initial complaint. In that answer, DirecTV said it never said it would refuse to consider alternative terms or counterproposals and HITV -- dissatisfied with DirecTV's initial offer -- demanded a better second offer, making DirecTV negotiate against itself.

YouTube is addressing video content that tries to pass as family friendly "but clearly is not," including tougher application of its community guidelines and using machine learning technology and automated tools to more quickly find video needing human review, Vice President-Product Management Johanna Wright blogged Wednesday. She said in the past week it terminated more than 50 channels and removed thousands of videos that were deemed endangering to children. She said since the company in June announced it would remove ads from content depicting family entertainment characters engaged in violent, offensive or otherwise inappropriate behavior, it has removed 3 million videos and ads from another 500,000 videos. She said starting last week it will turn off all comments on videos of minors where it sees inappropriate sexual or predatory comments. And she said YouTube created a platform for family-friendly content -- YouTube Kids -- and plans to put out a guide on how creators can make family content for the app.

Smartwatches will be among the most “coveted” devices this holiday season, Annette Zimmermann, Gartner vice president-research, blogged Wednesday. “Some users have held back on purchasing an Apple Watch until now as the use case has not seemed compelling enough,” said Zimmermann. But the cellular connectivity on the Apple Watch Series 3 gives the smartwatch “new use cases, such as music streaming during a workout at the gym, or leaving your iPhone at home, that will inevitably spur demand and boost sales,” she said. Gartner expects 41.5 million smartwatches will be sold globally in 2017, she said. “Other consumer electronics brands such as Huawei, LG, Samsung and Lenovo will also contribute to this, but to date the Apple Watch remains the most successful smartwatch in the market.”

Instead of classic channel-based inertia -- watching a channel unless something causes a switch -- video viewers today increasingly have platform, app and binging-based inertia, The Diffusion Group (TDG) Senior Adviser Joel Espelien blogged Tuesday. Those together constitute screen-based viewer inertia, separate from traditional time-based inertia, TDG said. Despite a proliferation of video platforms, viewers switch among platforms and services less frequently than might be expected, still gravitating toward a favorite for much of their viewing.

Smart speaker makers may benefit as Apple said it’s delaying shipment of the Siri-enabled HomePod speaker, originally slated for December. The website tells consumers it now will be available in early 2018, leaving a wider opening for lower cost audio company competitors including JBL, Microsoft with Harman Kardon and Sonos. Apple didn’t comment Friday.