Raycom is again temporarily extending its DirecTV carriage agreement (see 1708310058), now through Sept. 12, to ensure 4 million local subscribers have access to Raycom stations through Hurricane Irma and as Harvey recovery efforts continue, it said Tuesday.

Cox Communications and Hearst are criticizing one another for a carriage impasse affecting stations in five markets -- two of them in hurricane country. An impasse in talks meant Hearst's WDSU New Orleans; Florida's WESH Daytona Beach and WKCF Clermont; KOCO-TV Oklahoma City; KETV Omaha; and Arkansas' KHBS Fort Smith and KHOG-TV Fayetteville weren't carried by Cox as of Tuesday. The American TV Alliance Wednesday criticized Hearst "for threatening public safety" in the Orlando and New Orleans areas given the approach of Hurricane Irma. “Hearst is putting profits before public safety," it said in a statement. Cox in a statement said Hearst pulled its signal, unsuccessfully demanding "double the price we currently pay," and said it was the third time this year Hearst pulled its programming from an MVPD. Cox said Hearst was demanding higher prices than Cox pays any other station, and when it asked for a two-week extension to finish negotiations, the broadcaster declined. Hearst said it gave Cox a five-day extension in hopes of concluding retrans talks by the Sept. 5 deadline, and offered an additional three-day extension, but Cox refused. “We are disappointed that Cox has refused our customary offer to extend our agreement, especially during this period of severe weather,” said Hearst TV President Jordan Wertlieb. Hearst said Cox is offering "below-market rates, which is neither fair nor reasonable."

Roku player sales, 59 percent of company revenue, dipped 2 percent in the six months ended June 30 vs. the six months ended July 2 last year, said the company in an SEC filing Friday for an initial public offering. Roku generated $199.7 million in revenue, a 23 percent bump from the first six months in 2016. The company believes “all TV content will be available through streaming.” The company cited research showing over-the-top viewing has become “mainstream” in the U.S.: an April comScore report said 51 million U.S. homes have used streaming, for a 54 percent reach in homes with Wi-Fi. It said live TV still has the majority of viewing hours, but referenced Nielsen numbers saying viewing hours declined in 2015-16 by 1.5 percent among adult viewers, while streaming hours rose. Among the risk factors Roku identified were the highly competitive market, the company’s past operating losses and the possibility it “may never achieve or maintain profitability” plus intellectual property issues if copyright holders assert claims or bring litigation against developers of channels distributed on its platform.

The chief global spokesman for LG Electronics walked back pre-IFA remarks that the company stands a “big chance” of backing HDR10+ if the Fox, Panasonic and Samsung consortium that licenses HDR10+ next year as an open, royalty-free high dynamic range format shows the technology’s as good as Dolby Vision (see 1708310042). "It's too early to tell whether the HDR10+ format will become an industry standard or if it will be widely adopted by manufacturers or content providers,” LG spokesman Ken Hong emailed us Saturday. Hong told us he misunderstood our questions to be about the open HDR10 format, which LG already supports, not HDR10+, which rival Samsung developed and positioned as a competitive alternative to proprietary, royalty-bearing Dolby Vision technology. To create an HDR10+ “ecosystem,” Samsung “has been out there talking to everyone” about adopting the format, Bill Mandel, vice president-industry relations, at Samsung Research America, told Insight Media’s HDR10+ workshop Friday, also in Berlin. Samsung and its Fox and Panasonic partners “are really going to be doubling down,” he said. “We want to just invite everybody in to be adopters.”

The FCC should limit the scope of waivers of user interface requirements requested by automobile manufacturers for rear entertainment systems, the Institute for Public Representation said on behalf of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and other consumer groups in an ex parte letter filed in docket 12-108. The item concerned an Aug. 23 meeting but was filed Friday. “Due to unforeseen circumstances, it was not possible to file until now,” the filing said. Both Honda and Fiat requested such waivers, the filing said.

EPA missed a self-imposed August deadline for releasing the finalized Energy Star V8.0 TV spec, and representatives didn’t comment. V8.0 takes effect April 16, said a July 18 cover memo accompanying release of the spec’s third and final draft. EPA’s overriding emphasis in V8.0 is on imposing requirements that assure the energy-saving automatic brightness control feature, which adjusts a set's screen brightness to suit ambient light conditions, won’t be deactivated even when a consumer switches the TV to different picture modes.

A growing challenge for online video services -- particularly smaller providers -- is being found by potential customers, and while cross-service search is a big aid, it comes with challenges like different metadata formats for different connected TV devices, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon said in a white paper Thursday. Another problem is that some platforms prioritize their own content over other providers' in the search result, it said. The authentication step, where viewers have to use their pay-TV operator credentials to see content on a connected device, also needs to be easier, the analyst said. A solution to the "binge-and-bolt" subscriber who signs up, binges on particular content and then cancels the subscription is how content is deployed, such as frequent additions of new content, he said.

There’s a “big chance” Dolby Vision supporter LG Electronics will support Dolby's proprietary high dynamic range technology and HDR10+, the dynamic-metadata tone-mapping platform Fox, Panasonic and Samsung plan to start licensing as an open, royalty-free HDR format (see 1708300040), Ken Hong, LG’s chief global spokesman, told us Thursday at IFA in Berlin. “We do a lot of things that we really don’t communicate that much,” and Active HDR is one, he said. The “consensus” within LG on Active HDR is that “we have something, but is it significantly better than what's already out there, that is more likely to become an accepted standard?” Hong said when we asked if LG considered promoting Active HDR as an open industry standard for enhancing the static metadata of HDR10. “I don’t think the people who are responsible for Active HDR think it is.” That the HDR10+ platform will be licensed as royalty-free “is great, but it’s got to be good,” said Hong.

MStar adopted a Dolby multistream decoder integrated circuit, giving TV makers a single-package, onboard solution for decoding Dolby Atmos, Dolby announced Wednesday. The IC works with broadcast, file-based, over-the-top, VOD and pay-TV content, said Dolby. Atmos is supported by Netflix and others.

Despite the blockchain hype, the technology is young and the question of whether it's exacerbating online content piracy is tough to judge, Irdeto Senior Director-Cyber Services and Investigations Mark Mulready blogged Tuesday. The blockchain attraction for pirates is both the pseudonymity and the distributed ledger that alleviates some possibilities of pirate peer-to-peer sites being shut down or blocked, Irdeto said. Play on Zeronet is probably the best-known distributed torrent site using blockchain, and PureVidz -- which used decentralized streaming -- is seemingly offline now but undoubtedly the concept will reappear, Irdeto said.