Roku extended its lead in the streaming media player market, to 37 percent of U.S. homes in Q1, up from a third in the year-ago quarter, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report. Cost is a top factor for Roku’s lead, with its devices found at Walmart for as low as $29.99, said analyst Glenn Hower. Amazon’s Fire TV had a market share increase for the period, too, jumping from 16 percent to 24 percent, pushing past Google’s Chromecast (18 percent) for second place in streaming media player adoption, said Hower. Apple’s share fell to 15 percent with Apple TV. One-third of U.S. broadband households own a streaming media device, said Parks.

Smart TV and streaming media player sales growth shows streaming video has become mainstream, but it's unlikely smart TVs will surpass SMPs as the preferred route for online streaming anytime soon, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Monday. Smart TVs trail other devices on viewing hours, with game consoles used 4.4 hours a day on average, though game play likely dominates that usage, while SMPs average 3.6 hours of use a day, and enabled smart TVs are used for 2.3 hours, Dixon said. SMPs enjoy a price advantage over a new smart TV, and the two product lines also have vastly different upgrade cycles, he said, saying a 2-year-old smart TV may have difficulty running newer apps.

CBS has become a leader in including Latinos behind and in front of the camera, said the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the National Latino Media Council in a news release Tuesday. NHMC President Alex Nogales and NLMC President Thomas Saenz met last week with CBS CEO Leslie Moonves about the network’s benchmarks for including Latinos, the release said. CBS has doubled Latino actors and writers since 2016 and agreed to order scripts from Latino content creators or with Latino themes, and to hear an additional 10 pitches from Latino writer/producers, the release said. “Now is the time for all networks and other media outlets to address this longstanding issue of significant Latino underrepresentation, for the outlets' own future prosperity as much as anything,” Saenz said in the release, noting Latinos now are one-fourth of public school students. “Others should follow the CBS example,” he said.

The growing numbers of 4K TVs will inevitably bring growing numbers of complaints about image quality as they upconvert content that isn't natively 4K, Digital Tech Consulting (DTC) consultant Stewart Wolpin blogged Sunday. Eighty-three percent of U.S. homes have DVD players, compared with 35 percent having "more 4K-friendly Blu-ray," and consumers aren't being warned or advised about upconverting, DTC said. TV makers need to devote more time and resources to improving and including more-efficient 1K- and 2K- to 4K-upscaling, and retailers need to better prepare customers, DTC said.

The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles should clarify its 2016 injunction order against VidAngel's video filtering technology to make clear it doesn't apply to new filtering tech that the company rolled out in June, VidAngel said in a motion (in Pacer) for clarification posted Friday. The company said it's not seeking a judicial determination the new technology is meaningfully different or non-infringing, and the implications for the content company plaintiffs suing it for copyright infringement "are nil," since they could amend their complaint to challenge the company's new technology or file a new lawsuit. Outside counsel for the plaintiffs didn't comment Monday. VidAngel is appealing the preliminary injunction order to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 1702100010).

The amended counterclaims brought by defendants in Dish Network's copyright infringement complaint against Tele-Center and Planet Telecom are as defective as the original counterclaims dismissed in July (see 1707240016), Dish said in a motion (in Pacer) to dismiss with prejudice filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Tampa. Dish said Florida law doesn't recognize a cause of action for accessing URLs, which is the basis of the Tele-Center/Planet conversion and trespass to chattel claims. It said the defendants -- collectively doing business as UlaiTV, PlanetiTV and AhlaiTV -- failed to show Dish interfered with or unjustifiably used the URLs. It said the defendants' breach of contract claim doesn't show which provision pertains to URL use and lacks factual support for its assertions of Dish hacking a set-top box. Counsel for the defendants didn't comment Monday.

Google's YouTube TV virtual MVPD service is now available in 29 markets, with the addition of Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Columbus, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Seattle, Tampa and West Palm Beach, it tweeted Thursday. The service launched it April (see 1704050049).

Electric Jukebox launched the Roxi music-streaming set-top box and service Thursday in the U.S. and U.K. targeted to families not subscribed to a premium music service. The set top, the size of an Apple TV, is Android-based, “but you wouldn’t know it was Android,” Electric Jukebox CEO Rob Lewis told us. Roxi is more “an appliance” with its closed ecosystem, said Lewis, saying the company wants to ensure only appropriate content is offered. An alternative to Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and Sonos, the device adds music-based activities such as games, karaoke and playlists from celebrities. Library titles number in the tens of millions, “essentially the same as any premium subscription service,” he said, saying the company has rights agreements with Universal, Sony and Warner, along with the major independent labels.

The FTC issued an early Hart-Scott-Rodino termination notice for Eventbrite's $200 million purchase of Ticketfly from Pandora, the agency said in a notice last week. The transaction was announced in June (see 1706090005).

The FCC would face "substantial legal hurdles" if it ended or lessened the top-four prong of the local ownership rule without getting input on the resulting impact on retransmission consent prices and addressing the harms that would arise, American TV Alliance (ATVA) told Office of General Counsel representatives, according to a docket 15-216 filing posted Thursday. Pointing to the 2014 order banning joint retrans negotiations among non-commonly owned top-four broadcasters that concluded harms from joint negotiations hurt consumers, ATVA said issues raised by joint ownership of top-four stations are the same. It said the agency wouldn't have any basis for concluding those earlier findings about the effect of top-four concentration on retrans prices aren't valid now. It said any "procedural efficiency" argument for case-by-case resolution of transfer or assignment applications couldn't be used under the quadrennial review statute, which requires periodic looking at media ownership rules to see whether they're in the public interest as the result of competition. ATVA also has lobbied the Media Bureau and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's office on top-four prong changes affecting retrans issues (see 1707140029).