The relatively few subscribers to nascent virtual MVPD services overwhelmingly give the service value high marks, The Diffusion Group said in a news release Tuesday. TDG said a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adult broadband users showed fewer than 5 percent were using a livestreaming pay-TV service, but 86 percent of that group rated the value of their service as "good" or "very good." Users "seem okay without the 'full Monty' of legacy pay-TV channels, and to be fairly tolerant of the shortcomings that haunt live streaming video, such as buffering, pixilation, and screen freezing," said President Michael Greeson.
Nielsen -- which will start crediting videos distributed via Facebook, Hulu and YouTube in its digital content ratings -- is helping validate those companies in advertisers' eyes as the companies seek to tap into the TV advertising market with new products and services aimed at connected TVs, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. "The digital assault on television ad revenue is in full swing," he said, pointing to Hulu's and YouTube's virtual MVPD services and to Facebook's new video tab, Watch, and its paying providers to create Watch content. The analyst said advertisers haven't trusted the data they get from digital video companies, but the Nielsen move should help alleviate those concerns. Nielsen, which announced the move Wednesday, said enabled digital publisher clients will get credit for video distributed on Facebook and YouTube in Nielsen’s Digital Content Ratings, and Hulu will give select media partners credit for current series content distributed on the platform, with data evaluation to begin this month.
Legacy MVPDs lost a record number of subscribers in Q2, short of the symbolic 1 million threshold, but this year's trajectory is pointing to "an unprecedented annual decline," Kagan announced Tuesday evening. Traditional MVPD subscriptions dipped below 96.1 million in Q2, down 1.8 million since the end of 2016, though the addition of virtual MVPDs DirecTV Now and Sling TV affiliated with legacy MVPDs lifts the combined total subscriptions to live linear channel/on-demand content packages to 85 million, Kagan said. The 246,000 Q2 subs losses reported by cable operators, plus Q1 losses, mean total losses at mid-year are up 56 percent year over year, it said, saying DBS losses of 443,000 in Q2 put them below 33 million subs for the first time since 2010. The researcher said telco video subs dropped 10.9 million, with most of it attributable to AT&T's U-verse. The firm said, based on Census Bureau data, 76 percent of the potential subscriber universe had a legacy MVPD product.
Though mainstreaming of 4K is barely underway, papers scheduled to be presented at the next SMPTE technical conference will delve into viability of 8K for displays and broadcasts, said the just-released conference program. The technical conference opens Oct. 24 in Hollywood for three days. With demos showcasing the future of 8K already prevalent at “major industry conferences and shows,” the “value of 8K as a storytelling tool deserves further consideration,” said an abstract of a paper by advanced-imaging specialist Pierre Routhier, former Technicolor vice president-global 3D strategy. Routhier thinks progress in bandwidth and compression could be “more effectively leveraged” in delivery of "better" pixels. With NHK poised to launch 8K broadcasting services next year as a prelude to 8K Super Hi-Vision coverage of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a paper from NHK research engineer Tomohiro Nakamura will describe “multi-format” 8K camera system NHK developed for portability and to address the motion-blur problem, his abstract said.
Lionsgate content will now be available at Redbox kiosks the same day as retail sell-through dates, under a new agreement announced in a news release Monday. They said Redbox plans to add 1,500 kiosks nationwide by year-end, giving it more 41,500 total.
Higher resolution will be “critical” to future success of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for virtual reality, ABI Research reported Monday. Nearly two-thirds of HMDs for VR will support 4K resolution in 2022, ABI estimates. HMDs with higher resolutions “starting to enter the market” include “tethered” VR devices, usually targeted at gaming, it said.
Personalization of linear TV channels in pay-TV services has been difficult to achieve, but artificial intelligence is allowing some personalization of linear pay-TV channels delivered over IP, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. ZoneTV -- which plans to launch "dynamic channels” on pay-TV systems later this year (see 1707250035) -- will use AI to track viewer actions to gradually make content more customized to specific viewers, nScreenMedia said. It said a combination of AI and traditional channel programming modes should make people view longer -- an approach that also could be applied to advertising, lowering the risk people will change channels during a break.
Translators carrying distant signal stations are complicating United Communications' petition for waiver of the significantly viewed exception to network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules for KEYC-TV Mankato, Minnesota, the company said in an supplemental filing posted in docket 16-54 Monday. Though Nielsen ratings show viewership of several stations located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, this is because the stations are carried by translators rather than because of their own signal strength, United said. The translators make it “impossible” to determine the viewability of those stations for the purposes of the waiver, the filing said: “Executing the Waiver Procedure requires working around this obstacle.” The FCC shouldn’t worry about creating an unwanted precedent by granting a waiver under these circumstances, because “the confluence of conditions giving rise to this case is virtually unique industrywide,” the filing said.
A federal court rejected VidAngel's counterclaims against Disney, Lucasfilm, Fox and Warner Bros. and its affirmative defense of copyright misuse. In an order (in Pacer) Thursday, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte of Los Angeles rejected the video filtering company's arguments that the studios' 2014 agreement with the Directors Guild of America prohibiting alternation of a motion picture was an unreasonable restraint on trade and that the studios license only film content under anticompetitive terms and conditions that restrict editing and filtering. VidAngel's allegations that it was advised by business partners no agreement would be possible without director or DGA approval were "implausible" or contradicted by evidence, said the judge, who said plaintiffs have arguably rational, legal business reasons for not selling VidAngel DVDs. Birotte rejected VidAngel allegations plaintiffs colluded with digital video distributors like Google Play and Amazon to not support VidAngel's filtering service, saying there was insufficient evidence. Plaintiff studios are suing for alleged Copyright Act and Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations for streaming their content to subscribers without permission. Outside counsel for VidAngel didn't comment Friday.
MVPDs that haven’t filed initial reimbursement cost estimates must do so by Aug. 25, said an FCC public notice Friday. Technical issues with the Media Bureau’s Licensing and Management System “briefly interrupted” the filing of some MVPD Form 399 estimates during the initial window, and the agency temporarily suspended the deadline for MVPDs, the PN said. If MVPDs that couldn’t file earlier file by midnight of the new deadline day, their forms will be considered in the initial allocation of reimbursement funds. The addition of the filings is likely to add slightly to the more than $300 million shortfall between the repacking reimbursement fund and the estimated cost of the repacking (see 1707140070).