The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau extended the comment deadline on the accessibility of communication technologies for the 2014 biennial report to Congress, the bureau said Thursday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/URcnAA). The report is required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Comments are now due July 15 instead of July 3, it said. The FCC has learned “that several potential commenters may be unable to provide comments by the original deadline as a result of competing proceedings, summer conferences and other scheduling conflicts,” it said.

The FCC Media Bureau extended deadlines for an Further NPRM on closed captioning to July 9 for comments and Aug. 8 for replies, the bureau said in a public notice Tuesday (http://bit.ly/SUrJm1). The FNPRM was issued in response to a petition for reconsideration on IP captions (CD April 19 p11) from Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and several other consumer groups representing the hearing impaired. The deadline was extended from June 25 for comments and July 25 for replies at the request of NCTA, the bureau said.

PlayOn added channels Bravo, Oxygen and WWE to its lineup. The Bravo and Oxygen channels allow users to stream shows on TV, PlayOn said Wednesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/UN30Sv). WWE subscribers can stream bouts from their PCs to their TVs, it said.

The Open IPTV Forum and the HbbTV Association will merge their activities into a single organization under the “legal structure” of the HbbTV Association, effective immediately, the groups said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/U6pkWp). The groups recognized that the over-the-top, hybrid broadcast-broadband TV and IPTV markets “are coming closer together, and barriers between the models are becoming smaller,” they said in a news release. It said merging into one group will enable them “to react proactively and in a timely manner to these market trends."

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau is preparing the agency’s second biennial report to Congress on the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) and seeking comment on the commission’s CVAA policies, said a public notice released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1idv3om). The report will assess the commission’s compliance with the congressional directives in the CVAA and what barriers to access still exist in telecom technology, the PN said. Comments are due July 3. Also under CVAA, an order soon may circulate that would require traditional TV content clips be captioned when put online. (See separate report above in this issue.)

TV stations wouldn’t be able to comply with a rule requiring video clips online to have closed captions until “an automated captioning video clip solution comes to market,” said NAB in an FCC ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1juzwxX). It said such a rule would also have to exclude advance promotional clips. A captioning requirement for advance clips would be “an extraordinary resource burden” and would deter such clips from being put online, NAB said in a filing posted Friday in docket 11-154. Meeting with officials from the Media and Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureaus, NAB staffers reiterated arguments that the FCC doesn’t have the authority to require captioning for IP clips, and that any deadline for implementing such a rule should be at least two years.

Mediacom rebuffed TVFreedom’s concerns (http://bit.ly/1scwQyl) about pay-TV billing and business practices. The cable company sent a letter to House Commerce Committee leadership Thursday arguing that TVFreedom, a coalition of broadcaster interests including NAB, got its facts wrong. “Cable companies’ prices and policies are easily discoverable,” Mediacom said. “Content owners, on the other hand, hide their ‘wholesale’ prices and practices that have been the biggest single cause of the increases in pay TV subscription rates during the past decade.” Mediacom advocated getting such pricing information from programmers instead. “Only in Washington can pay-TV’s army of lobbyists and lawyers ignore two decades of FCC data showing geometric rate increases that far outpace the rate of inflation,” a TVFreedom spokesman said Friday of the letter, lamenting the “double-speak” of the “pay-TV cabal” that’s “aimed at diverting consumers away from real pocketbook issues of rising cable rates and ghost charges.”

Tablet owners are significantly more likely to use over-the-top (OTT) service apps than those offered by both TV networks and operators, a study by The Diffusion Group (TDG) found. Nearly 50 percent of adult tablet owners report using OTT video apps on occasion, compared with 37 percent who use broadcast network apps, 31 percent using cable network apps and 23 percent that use TV operator apps, said the report, released Thursday (http://bit.ly/UwTO4B). The use of tablet apps for both free and fee-based online services isn’t only more widespread, “but occurs more frequently than the use of TV-specific apps,” it said. More than 40 percent of tablet users use OTT service apps at least once a month, compared with 26 percent who use apps from the big four broadcasters, it said. More than 20 percent of tablet users use cable channel apps, and 16 percent “turn to TV operator apps at least once a month,” it said. Although most of the larger U.S. TV providers now offer a robust collection of TV programs for viewing through “service-specific apps,” only 23 percent of tablet owners have used them during the past 12 months, it said. The research was culled from 1,500 online interviews, TDG said.

More than 22 million British consumers bought a video on DVD or Blu-ray in 2013, compared with just 3.3 million who subscribe to a streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Instant, “proving the overwhelming popularity of Blu-ray Discs and DVDs for watching video entertainment,” the British Video Association said in its annual “yearbook” report Wednesday. The BVA values the 2013 British video market at just under $3.8 billion and estimates 73 percent of that was spent on physical media rather than digital delivery.

NTT Advanced Technology will introduce a High Efficiency Video Coding “decoding appliance” in August for broadcasters and video content service providers that need “monitoring decoders for confirming the reception of 4K broadcasting and redistribution,” it said Tuesday. The product also will be geared to event operators that need decoders for confirming the transmission of 4K live videos, NTT said. It will support the “range extensions profile” released in April as an HEVC amendment for 4:2:2 color sampling and 10-bit video, it said. The product “will meet rising demand” from broadcasters and service providers “in the wake of the start of experimental 4K broadcasting,” it said. In the U.S., cable operators and video service providers “have openly stated their intention to further expand their 4K video offerings, cashing in on the recent increase” in sales of Ultra HD TVs, it said. “In Japan, where experimental 4K broadcasting has started, there are expectations of surging demand for decoder appliances for broadcast video monitoring."