YouTube Vice President-Content Partnerships Kelly Merryman thinks consumers are in a “testing phase” for their TV watching preferences, she said Monday during the Technology Policy Institute’s meeting in Aspen, Colorado. Google owns YouTube. “There is a shift from linear to on-demand,” growing over years, she said. “That shift is being asked for by the user. Now, I don’t actually think that by definition that on-demand shift means unbundling and I don’t know that shift means new players.” She praised the “great job” of traditional channels in developing programming. One key question she considers is people’s willingness to pay and she doesn’t know the answer. “I expect bundles are attractive, bundles are good, the question is how big is that bundle,” Merryman said, pointing to so-called “skinny” bundles and other consumer testing underway. “If you have a strong brand, strong creative eye and great programming, there’s a world of happiness and probably strengthened growth for you over time in this new environment because on-demand drives more watching,” she said. She also lauded YouTube’s current balance in handling copyrighted material. “We launched Content ID as a tool seven years ago and over that course of time we paid out a billion dollars to rights holder and we’ve given the power to rights holder, 'Do I want to block, do I want to track, do I want to monetize?'” she said, calling that “the right spot.” Fifty percent of YouTube consumption is on mobile devices, she said.

A newly expanded Digital Living Network Alliance certification program -- DLNA 3.0 -- will give CE makers “more options for certifying their products based on how they plan to differentiate them in the market,” DLNA said in a Tuesday announcement. DLNA also released updated “interoperability guidelines,” including H.265 support, “that enable new product features for consumers who increasingly want to view content on mobile devices, improve energy efficiency, and enjoy video in higher-definition media formats,” it said. With the DLNA 3.0 “option” now in place, plans are afoot to add a DLNA 4.0 program “that will enable CE manufacturers to give their customers the best possible connected home experience," it said. With more than 4 billion devices now DLNA 2.0-certified, DLNA 3.0 builds on the certification program “by adding advanced features and capabilities for playback and response time,” it said. The planned DLNA 4.0 option “will ensure products support the broadest possible set of media formats and advanced features for optimum performance across the most extensive range of use cases,” it said.

Large cable companies added 511,757 broadband subscribers and telcos lost 151,478 in Q2, continuing cable gains that have accounted for 95 percent of the roughly 3 million net (wireline) high-speed Internet additions over the last year, Leichtman Research Group said Tuesday in a news release. LRG said the cable net gain was 38 percent higher than in Q2 2014 while the telco net loss was higher than in any previous quarter, four of the past six of which have been losses. The 10 cable companies and seven telcos reviewed have about 94 percent of the market; at the end of Q2 2015, cable had 53.5 million subscribers and telcos had 35.4 million (a 60-40 cable-telco wireline market split), said LRG. Leading cable last quarter was Time Warner Cable, which added 189,000 subscribers, followed by Comcast's 179,000 adds, Charter Communications' 86,000, Cablevision's 14,000, Mediacom's 10,000 and Cable One's 457, while Bright House Networks and Cox Communications were estimated by LRG to have added 45,000 between them. WideOpenWest lost 8,900 subscribers and Suddenlink lost 2,800, Leichtman said. Comcast had 22.5 million broadband subscribers at quarter's end followed by TWC's 12.8 million, Charter's 5.3 million, Cablevision's 2.8 million, Suddenlink's 1.2 million and Mediacom's 1.1 million, with BHN and Cox estimated to have 6.6 million between them. AT&T and Verizon added 313,000 U-verse and FiOS high-speed Internet subscribers, respectively, in Q2 2015, while losing 474,000 net DSL subscribers combined, said LRG. It said U-verse and FiOS customers now are 56 percent of telco broadband subscribers, up from 42 percent two years ago. Overall, AT&T lost 136,000 net broadband subscribers, followed by Verizon's 25,000 in losses, Windstream's 11,600, CenturyLink's 9,000 and FairPoint's 1,278, while Frontier Communications added 29,000, and Cincinnati Bell added 2,400, said the industry research firm. AT&T had almost 16 million landline broadband subscribers at quarter's end, followed by Verizon's 9.2 million, CenturyLink's 6.1 million, Frontier's 2.4 million, Windstream's 1.1 million, FairPoint's 317,100 and Cincinnati Bell's 275,100.

Cisco is helping to lead the charge for a “high quality, next-generation codec that can be used everywhere” and will be royalty-free, Jonathan Rosenberg, chief technology officer in Cisco’s Collaboration business, said in a blog post. Cisco hatched the effort because “the patent licensing situation for H.265 has recently taken a turn for the worse” with the formation of “two distinct patent licensing pools” that are missing many H.265 license holders among their licensor members, Rosenberg said, referring to MPEG LA and HEVC Advance (see 1507220001). “The total costs to license H.265 from these two pools is up to sixteen times more expensive than H.264, per unit,” he said. The licensing terms of MPEG LA and HEVC Advance “preclude usage of H.265 in any kind of open source or freely distributed software application, such as web browsers” or in “freemium” software products, he said. Though H.265 “is still a good fit for hardware products,” it can’t serve as “a universal video codec across hardware and software,” he said. Code-named “Thor,” Cisco created a new codec development process that “would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents,” he said. “Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world.” So Cisco “open-sourced” the code, and contributed Thor to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which has begun a standards activity to develop a next-gen royalty free video codec in its NetVC workgroup, he said. “As more technology gets contributed to this cause, the greater its chance of success.” MPEG LA and HEVC Advance representatives didn’t comment.

In the past year, Apple hired more than 11,000 women globally, and more than 2,200 African-American and 2,700 Hispanic employees in the U.S., the company said in a diversity and inclusion report released Thursday. It said that women were 35 percent of Apple's global new hires in the past 12 months, while Asians were 19 percent of U.S. new hires, Hispanics 13 percent, and African-Americans 11 percent. Female employees now are 31 percent of the company's total global workforce, and hold 22 percent of global tech-related jobs, Apple said. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and other diversity advocacy groups have urged tech companies to release their Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEO-1 reports and provide transparent diversity data (see 1508110036). "That's a positive step and we hope that other tech companies do the same," Rainbow PUSH President Jesse Jackson said in a statement. Apple joins Hewlett-Packard and Intel (see 1508120043) as the most recent companies to release EEO-1 data.

The Telecommunications Industry Association and the Information Technology Industry Council jointly asked the FCC to extend the comment deadline on a July NPRM proposing changes to rules for the agency’s evaluation and approval of radio frequency devices (see 1507210072). Comments are currently due Sept. 8, replies Sept. 17. “A 30-day extension to the comment deadline and a 15-day extension to the reply comment deadline are in the public interest to allow key industry stakeholders to develop meaningful, substantive responses to the extensive and technical questions raised by the Commission in this proceeding,” the associations said Wednesday. CEA separately sought a two-week extension of the deadline for filing initial comments and a three-week extension of the reply comment deadline. “This is a complex and technical area,” CEA said. “As a trade association, CEA requires sufficient time to coordinate with its member companies, which, in turn, must coordinate internally to review and develop responses to the Commission’s proposals.” The filings were in docket 15-170.

Custom installation buying group Azione Unlimited expanded product offerings from Core Brands’ to dealer members, it said Wednesday. In addition to Core Brands’ Elan and Sunfire products, Azione dealer members now have access to special programs and discounts from power and protection labels BlueBOLT, Furman, Panamax and Xantech, said Azione President Richard Glikes.

Eleetus Simulators, a maker of full-motion flight and racing simulators, will exhibit at CEDIA Expo, Oct. 14-17, in Dallas. The event will mark the company’s entrance into the residential AV market, it said. Eleetus simulators operate on a patented proprietary motion platform with 40 degrees of pitch and roll providing “a realistic relative gravitational force simulation,” the company said. Its aviation systems are compatible with XPlane, Microsoft Flight and Lockheed Martin Prepar3D as well as numerous arcade flight combat titles. Motorsport systems are compatible with rFactor, rFactor 2, Project Cars, iRacing and 20 other arcade racing titles, Eleetus said.

The FCC NPRM proposing to end a requirement that importers of radio frequency devices file certifications with Customs and Border Protection that their imports meet FCC import requirements (see 1412310022) appeared in Thursday's Federal Register. Comments are due Sept. 8, replies Sept. 21 in docket 15-170. The proposal would junk a requirement that importers file information associated with FCC Form 740 with CBP for RF devices imported into the U.S. The item was approved last month, a step toward implementing the E-Label Act (see 1507210072) and described as a way to ease the way for more IoT devices.

The FCC should clarify operators' obligation to provide CableCARDs to customers using retail set-top boxes, TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn and Chief Technology Officer Joseph Weber told FCC CTO Scott Jordan and Media Bureau staff Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 97-80 Friday. Consumers and set-top manufacturers need “certainty” that retail navigation devices will still be able to receive cable signals “after the integration ban sunsets,” the company said. The TiVo officials also spoke “favorably” about Comcast's support for CableCARD-using customers, which includes “a dedicated CableCARD support help-line, and an easy-to-access website with information on CableCARDs.” TiVo said its discussions with Charter about using Charter's downloadable security system in TiVo's products also came up in the meeting.