Tannerite Sports still is considering its appeal options after a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against it (see 1707250013), the company said Friday. The 2nd Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling that the Today Show didn't defame Tannerite and its exploding shooting target product. Tannerite said it disagreed with the courts' "broad definition of 'bomb' as essentially any object or material designed or intended to explode." It said it supports education about the safe use of binary rifle targets and "believes these objectives can and should be achieved without unfounded disparagement of its products as done by NBC."

DTS’ automotive business had 19 percent gains in Q2 vs. the year-ago quarter, driven by HD Radio penetration in North America, said Jon Kirchner, CEO of parent company Xperi, on a Thursday earnings call. HD Radio launched in many car models, he noted, and its DTS Connected Radio automotive platform is due in cars for 2018 and 2019. The platform, which combines terrestrial radio with IP delivery, launched at NAB in April and was demonstrated at forums in Tokyo and Geneva, Kirchner said. DTS has been working with broadcasters in the U.S., Asia, South America and Europe on launch plans, he said. On alleged patent infringement issues at its Tessera semiconductor business, Kirchner said discussions with Broadcom and Samsung are “very dynamic.” The company is working to renew a license with Samsung but “litigation remains a strong possibility,” he said. Samsung “is continuing to use our patented technologies broadly across its products,” Kirchner said. On Broadcom, Kirchner cited the International Trade Commission administrative law judge ruling in June (see 1707050024) finding that Patent No. 6,849,946 was valid, infringed and had a domestic industry, and noted parties filed petitions for review of the decision before the full ITC (see 1707140036). Tessera expects a final decision by Oct. 30.

Media companies and organizations, public interest groups and others unveiled the Creative Thread Foundation, a nonprofit focused on fostering diverse content creators. Wednesday's launch event included Congressional Multicultural Media Caucus co-chairs Reps. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Judy Chu, D-Calif. The chairman will be Henry Gates, Fusion TV, one of the founders said in a news release. It said the foundation's aims will include mentorships and promoting and advocating better access for talent and projects. It said founding partners include Amazon, AT&T, CBS, Disney, El Rey, Entravision, Entertainment Software Association, Fox, MPAA, NAB, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, Nielsen and Viacom.

The FCC Media Bureau will provisionally grant WPRQ-LD Clarksdale, Mississippi’s carriage complaint, but will give Cable One 20 days to show WPRQ doesn’t provide a good quality signal to the cable operator's headend, said an order released Monday. Cable One hasn’t conclusively shown that WPRQ has signal quality problems, the order said.

BBC research into virtual reality found most are dazzled by their first “in-home” experiences, with other reasons likely keeping most from buying, the broadcaster said Friday. The VR industry risks “another trough of disillusionment” if it doesn’t find “consistency between the currently fragmented hardware and software experiences,” it said. For those who have experienced VR, “the hype is understandable,” Tim Fiennes, senior market analyst-audiences, blogged Friday. BBC teamed with Ipsos Connect in the study. Most U.K. teen and adult study participants saw their first VR experience as having “far outstripped" lowered expectations, he said. “Headsets will get cheaper and more content will be made.” To be successful, “it needs simple, intuitive and consistent interfaces, better curation and content discovery,” and a big supply of quality content, he said. After three months, participants mostly wouldn't buy headsets, often citing hardware problems, Fiennes wrote. Content was a bigger impediment, he said. It’s by no means “a given that all technology becomes mainstream,” he said. “Think 3DTV.”

Forensic watermarking paired with detection and enforcement services is the best way to battle online piracy, yet content owners and pay-media providers sometimes aren't aligned on that model, Irdeto Senior Vice President-Global Sales Bengt Jonsson blogged Thursday. While content owners want watermarking detection and enforcement services, pay-media providers often employ just watermarking for ease and cost, he said: The onus may be on vendors to come up with products that deliver both.

Broadcasters are willing to allow the transition to ATSC 3.0 to cause service losses, but in every other context treat broadcast service losses as unacceptable, the American Cable Association told the FCC in a letter posted Thursday in docket 16-142. “The Commission should prevent service loss caused by the ATSC 3.0 transition for the same reasons that broadcasters say the Commission should prevent service loss in other contexts,” ACA said, pointing to NAB arguments in proceedings on the post-incentive auction repacking and vacant channels that disruptions to service will hurt localism. Not simulcasting during the 3.0 transition will create similar disruptions, but broadcasters have asked the FCC not to require simulcasting, ACA said. Without a simulcast in 1.0, broadcast customers without 3.0 compatible equipment will be unable to receive a broadcast signal, and MVPDs that retransmit a broadcaster’s signal would also be affected, ACA said. “If ‘too bad’ is an unacceptable response to potential service losses caused by the repack or white spaces, it is surely an unacceptable response to potential service losses caused by a broadcaster’s voluntary transition to a new transmission standard.” Broadcasters "have asked the FCC for permission to voluntarily upgrade their facilities, at their own expense, to improve their service and offer viewers a better experience,” an NAB spokesman emailed. “ACA continues to try to sidetrack this innovative proposal to stifle competition.”

Sony 2017 Android TVs are still slated for a Google Assistant firmware update later this year, a Sony spokesman emailed us Monday. Sony announced last week (see 1707130036) that its 2017 Android TVs now support Alexa voice control with a recent firmware update.

Credentials sharing is a problem for over-the-top services but won't necessarily stymie growth, and focusing on credentials sharing can be a wasteful diversion from the bigger problem of service abuse, Irdeto Product Director Rodrigo Fernandes blogged Tuesday. He said Netflix and Amazon are growing despite credentials sharing, and that smart rules can help mitigate service abuse. He said OTT services, in crafting those rules, need to define in their business models what reasonable use is. He said OTT operators often employ rules that cap the number of concurrent streams -- useful for differentiating price tiers and for controlling content distribution network costs per subscriber -- and employ geo blocking and device management.

V 8.0 of the Energy Star TV spec takes effect April 16, EPA said Tuesday in releasing the third and final draft. Release was delayed after EPA became inundated with input, mostly relating to the “luminance requirements” and how Energy Star-qualifying TVs could best implement the energy-saving automatic brightness control (ABC) feature, agency officials had told us. CTA in May warned EPA to stay out of the business of designing TVs (see 1706020034). A “comment-response document” disclosed the agency consulted a Japanese study published in 2008 by the Society for Information Display finding most viewers preferred a screen brightness of between 150 and 200 nits. EPA is proposing in the final draft to keep the luminance floor at a fixed 125 nits “to allow for some flexibility in user preferences, without varying too much from ISF's findings,” it said. Comments are due Aug. 2.