A maker of high-quality audio encoders sees applications for the technology in broadcasting and cellular, he told a Futuresource Audio Collaborative conference last week in London. Bob Stuart, founder of Meridian Audio and creator of Master Quality Authenticated, said that “we can get music out of a cellphone with the sound quality of a studio.” Sony, Universal and Warner finished encoding all their 22,000 album 24-bit masters for MQA, he said. The technology is "important for radio and live music event streaming,” said Stuart. “We have had radio for around 100 years and it went from AM to FM and then to rubbish,” he said. The live encoder could mean “the reboot of audio,” he said.

Broadcasters reporting in their most-recent quarters that retransmission consent fees went up from 20 to 162 percent year over year is yet more evidence of outsized broadcaster power in retrans talks, said the American Cable Association Tuesday. ACA said retrans revenue reported by E.W. Scripps in the most-recent quarter was up 20 percent year over year, and CBS had a 27 percent gain, 37 percent for Gray, 70 percent for NBCUniversal and 162 percent for Nexstar. ACA has pushed for retrans consent rules changes (see 1710030066). NAB in a statement pointed to the vast majority of retrans negotiations being settled successfully and said ACA "should stop begging for government to fix its business model and work harder fixing its notorious customer service challenges."

Philips smart TVs with the Roku operating system will debut in the U.S. by year-end under a license agreement Roku signed with Funai, which markets Philips-brand product in North America, announced the streaming company Monday. Roku is working to expand the OS licensing program to include the launch of “lots of new TV models,” and is well-positioned for the holiday selling season, said CEO Anthony Wood last week on the company’s first earnings call since going public (see 1711090001 or 1711090055).

Ownership of smart TVs “stabilized” between 2016 and 2017, Parks Associates reported Monday. Ownership of smart TVs more than doubled since 2010, while use of smart TVs' internet capability nearly doubled, the researcher said. A looming HD format war could lead to higher near-term costs for device makers that will need to license chips and hardware for multiple format standards, it said. Studios could select a single standard for home video and TV mastering to save on postproduction and distribution costs, and if history repeats scenarios with VHS vs. Betamax and Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD, one studio throwing its full support behind one format is likely to create a domino effect, the company said.

EPA is "carefully considering all comments received from different stakeholders" on the revised final draft of the Energy Star V8.0 TV specification released Oct. 24 (see 1710240066), "including those related to effective date and are determining the next steps," Verena Radulovic, the agency’s Energy Star product manager for consumer electronics, told us Thursday. CTA wants EPA to withhold release until the agency resolves TV set makers’ concerns about automatic brightness control requirements and the July 1 effective date (see 1711090030 or 1711090063).

Broadcast duopolies don’t result in higher-quality programming based on viewership numbers, said Dish Network in a partially redacted FCC ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 14-50. “The claim by some broadcasters that duopoly ownership results in higher quality programming, reflected by higher viewership, should be borne out by comparably higher levels of viewership across both stations included in their duopoly ownership.” Economists hired by Dish found duopolies don’t lead to higher viewership, the company said. “Viewership per household per month has been less in the duopoly markets than in the comparable non-duopoly markets over the period.”

CTA wants EPA to withhold release of Energy Star's Version 8.0 TV specification until the agency resolves TV set maker concerns on the requirements and its July 1 effective date, “given the industry’s normal model year changeover,” said Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards, in comments filed Tuesday on the “revised final draft” released Oct. 24 (see 1710250021). EPA should keep V7.0 TV in force “while we work together to revise Version 8.0,” said Markwalter. The revised final draft “ignored the industry’s most fundamental concern that the Version 8.0 specification both limits consumer choice in picture presets and mandates numerous warnings related to picture presets and Special Functions,” he said. EPA representatives, who previously said they expected to release V8.0 in final form as soon as possible after Tuesday’s deadline for comments on the revised final draft, didn’t comment Thursday. Nor did the Natural Resources Defense Council that backed the revised 8.0. Work on finishing the spec is significantly behind schedule on the timeline EPA published in an April 21 cover memo aiming to complete it in summer.

The Federal Election Commission should study the internet’s influence in federal political campaigns, groups urged, responding to a request for comments that were due Thursday. That deadline was extended to Monday after a technical issue with the FEC website. “The public needs a better understanding of how contemporary digital practices in the ‘Big Data’ era affect our electoral system,” said Center for Digital Democracy comments. It said the FEC should revise its rules on ad disclaimers to give the public more specific information about the source and support of online ads. The Campaign Legal Center supports a rulemaking, citing Borrell Associates saying digital ads grew from 1.7 percent share in 2012 to 14.4 percent in 2016. Common Cause said it joined with a coalition of groups delivering “more than 150,000 signatures” supporting a rulemaking so online political have to include “paid for by” information. “Bring online disclosure regulations into line with those that apply to television, radio and print" and Congress should "go further to strengthen disclosure requirements for paid online political activity,” said President Karen Hobert Flynn.

With content companies often selling worldwide rights to TV shows to Netflix, local broadcasters and video services end up less able to compete with the streaming service, so those content companies "could end up with little alternative to Netflix" for international distribution, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. He said U.S. studios "are making a big noise" about not licensing content to Netflix in the U.S., but that policy isn't extending to international markets. It's easier to make one deal with Netflix than multiple smaller deals market by market, but local broadcasters will end up less able to compete with Netflix for licenses for U.S. content, the analyst said.

The draft media ownership reconsideration order’s “hybrid” approach to allowing combinations of two top-four network stations in the same market (see 1710260049) could lead to joint retransmission consent negotiation on behalf of the two stations, NCTA said in a meeting Thursday with aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, recounted a filing in docket 14-50. The FCC “has found such joint negotiations to be anticompetitive and harmful to consumers,” NCTA said. Harms of joint negotiation are well supported in the record, and the FCC has to justify changing that finding to change the duopoly rule, NCTA said. If the agency moves ahead with the top-four rule change, it should bar such joint negotiations, or consider the impact on retrans negotiations as one of the criteria for determining whether such a combination will be allowed, the group said. The association argued there shouldn’t be an “arbitrary expiration date” on ATSC 3.0 simulcasting requirements, and expressed concern about the 3.0-related patents held by Sinclair: “The FCC cannot create a government-mandated monopoly for the intellectual property rights to build next-generation broadcast television products and then allow the patent rights holders to collect supra-competitive rents.” ATSC 3.0 could allow improved distance learning “on a customized local level,” blogged NAB Vice President-Spectrum Policy Alison Neplokh Tuesday. “Children could get lessons and materials customized to their curriculum at home without needing a broadband connection,” she said. “Low-income families in particular stand to benefit.”