Last quarter was the worst Q1 for pay-TV customer additions in the more than a decade that Leichtman Research Group has tracked this statistic, it reported Thursday. It said the 13 top U.S. pay-TV companies, with 95 percent of the market, together added fewer than 10,000 net video subscribers last quarter, versus adding more than 250,000 in the year-ago period. LRG said top cable operators lost 60,000 video customers last quarter and satellite TV lost 74,000, while top telco-TV service providers added 140,000, which was a 44 percent decrease from Q1 2014. Pay TV lost 370,000 subscribers in the past year, up about 700 percent from losses in the prior 52-week period, said the researcher. “In addition to changes in consumer demand for video services spurred by competition from alternatives, the decline of about 0.4 percent of subscribers over the past year was also driven by several providers becoming more discerning in customer acquisition and retention," said LRG President Bruce Leichtman in a news release.

Saying CES is “reaching space capacity” and no longer can “accommodate every qualified individual,” CEA is taking steps to cap attendance at 176,000 for January's show by instituting registration fees and doubling down on its qualification procedures, it said in a Wednesday announcement. CEA announced the new policies as it said “verified” attendance for the 2015 show reached a record 176,676, following an independent audit by its longtime contractor Veris Consulting. CEA will seek to cap attendance “close to a level comparable to the 2015 CES, in an effort to ensure that attendees continue to have a quality experience,” it said. In a procedure it called “enhanced credentialing,” new CES registrants or returnees who did not attend CES at least once in the past two years will need to provide proof of their “industry affiliation,” such as a link to a company website listing them on an employee roster, CEA said. All registrants will be assessed a $100 fee beginning July 8 when registration launches, it said. “Loyal alumni” who attended the 2014 or 2015 CES will be offered a free 30-day window before the $100 fee takes effect July 8, it said. Registration fees will triple to $300 beginning Dec. 21 “to encourage more registrants to sign up” before that deadline and to “allow CEA ample time to verify credentials for those who register after that date,” it said. Registration for “qualified media” will remain free, it said. Though the new fees structure is wider-scale than ever before, it's not the first time CES has charged for registration, Karen Chupka, CEA senior vice president-International CES and corporate business strategy, emailed us Wednesday. CES has charged $100 at least the past four shows for an “exhibits plus pass” for those who applied Sept. 1 or after, Chupka said. The onsite fee for that pass doubled to $200 “beginning a couple of days before the show,” she said. CEA has no estimate on how much revenue the new registration fee procedure may raise “as the new policy encourages people to register earlier (allowing us more time to review credentials),” she said.

Among the Comcast service enhancements revealed this week was a coming modem that allows 1 Gbps speeds for an "overwhelming majority of our customers," it said in a news release. The modem goes into production this year and will be available to subscribers in early 2016, said the cable operator. "Because it works with our Hybrid Fiber Coaxial network already in place, the Gigabit Home Gateway will be able to deliver gigabit speeds to virtually all Xfinity customers once the DOCSIS 3.1 networking standard is deployed nationally," said a post by Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner. "The Gigabit router is also fully backward compatible with the DOCSIS 3.0 networking standard that is in place today." Comcast CEO Brian Roberts used the INTX show that's wrapping up in Chicago to demo various enhancements. CableLabs, the cable industry's research and development arm that developed the DOCSIS 3.1 specification, has said products meeting that spec can deliver up to 10 Gbps on hybrid fiber-coax networks (see 1412160036).

The tech industry, including her own company, "needs to do a lot more when it comes to diversity,” Google Vice President-People Operations Nancy Lee said in a blog post Tuesday. Google embedded engineers at historically black colleges and universities, partnered with Hollywood to inspire girls to work in the computer science industry, built local initiatives to introduce coding to high school students from diverse communities, and expanded its employee unconscious bias training, Lee said. “But these programs represent only a sampling of all the work that is going on behind the scenes,” Lee said. “If we’re really going to make an impact, we need a holistic plan.” Google’s four-part plan includes hiring diverse workers by doubling the number of schools where Google recruits; fostering a fair and inclusive culture by raising awareness around unconscious biases; expanding the pool of technologists by teaching kids the basics of coding and inspiring girls to work in computer science; and bridging the digital divide by ensuring more underrepresented communities have access to the benefits of the Web, Lee said. “Meaningful change will take time,” she said. “We’re gradually making progress across these four areas, and we’re in it for the long term.”

The FCC Media Bureau granted EchoStar and Funai their separate waiver requests to market new models of DVRs without analog tuners, it said in an order adopted Friday and released Monday in dockets 15-47 and 15-42. The waiver requests were unopposed, the bureau said. CEA submitted the only comments in either docket and did so to urge the bureau to quickly eliminate the analog tuner requirement for all manufacturers (see 1503130017). Though the bureau stopped well short of granting CEA's request to eliminate all analog tuner rules, it agreed with EchoStar and Funai that a digital-only device has “several advantages over equipment using both analog and digital tuners,” including lower costs that can be “passed down to consumers,” it said. It also agreed that granting the waivers “would have a minimal impact on consumers” because “the vast majority” of their target markets “would be entirely unaffected by the elimination of an analog tuner,” since they buy pay-TV subscriptions or will have the devices hooked up to TVs that already have built-in analog tuners, it said. The bureau will hold EchoStar and Funai to their “voluntary commitments to educate consumers and retailers about the capabilities and limitations” of their devices, it said. Each company commits to “provide retailers with an in-store product information data sheet and consumer education materials describing their respective devices’ functionality,” it said. They also must “clearly disclose in product guides that their devices lack the ability to receive over-the-air analog signals,” it said. EchoStar and Funai must offer free 30-day return or exchange privileges if the customer purchased a device with the “mistaken belief that it receives analog services,” the bureau said. “We believe that these commitments will adequately protect any consumers that this waiver will affect.”

The value of the global digital content market will reach $154 billion annually by 2019, an almost 60 percent increase over the market’s value in 2014, Juniper Research said Tuesday. The biggest driver of market revenue in 2019 will be mobile and online games, which should garner about 38 percent of annual revenue that year, Juniper said in a news release about a research report. The researcher forecasts strong growth from online dating services and related apps, including Match.com and Zoosk. The bulk of digital content revenue is now collected post-download, with pay-per-download now accounting for 10 percent of revenue, Juniper said. The firm said consumers are now more interested in having access to digital content across a variety of platforms than in downloading content to one device. Over-the-top providers like Amazon and Google are in a prime position to capitalize on consumer demand for multidevice access to content via new cloud-based storage and access services, Juniper said.

Four of the five largest cable providers deployed more than 532,000 CableCARDs through March 31 for use in CableCARD-enabled retail devices, NCTA told the FCC in a filing posted Friday in docket 97-80. It didn’t include data from Charter Communications “because of issues related to a transition of Charter’s IT system,” NCTA said. Charter’s data will be submitted “as soon as possible,” NCTA said. Comcast, with 346,419, had the largest number of CableCARDs “installed in active customer homes,” NCTA said.

BSA, the IT Industry Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group were among the several tech groups we polled that by and large declined comment on news reports that ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will declare her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination May 4. The exception was CEA President Gary Shapiro who, when asked his reaction to Fiorina's impending candidacy, emailed us to say he was "initially thrilled as she is from the tech industry, keynoted CES, is a woman and has immersed herself in great charitable endeavors." However, "my enthusiasm waned dramatically as she supports patent trolls and attacked the tech industry for taking on the cause of equal treatment of gays," Shapiro said. "Not wise for any candidate to attack his or her business roots." As HP CEO, Fiorina used her January 2004 CES keynote to describe the introduction of the HP Entertainment Hub as “the central repository and distribution engine for digital content throughout the entire home,” according to a transcript of her speech that's still posted on the HP website. Within five years after being ousted from HP in 2005 (see 0502100150), Fiorina turned more political and ran an unsuccessful campaign as the Republican nominee to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. (see 1011040069). In recent years, Fiorina has become an outspoken advocate of conservative causes and chairs the American Conservative Union Foundation. In that role, she took the podium at a March 4 patent reform symposium to blast the Innovation Act as a cure in search of a disease and as a measure that would bolster big companies at the expense of small innovators, according to a transcript posted at IPWatchdog.com. Said Fiorina: “If the Innovation Act were law tomorrow, Thomas Edison would be a Patent Troll. Really? Some of our greatest inventors would be Patent Trolls under this law. Our universities would be patent trolls. We are fixing problems that don’t exist. We are boiling the ocean.” As for Shapiro’s criticism that Fiorina attacked the tech industry for its support of gay rights, that’s a reference to her calling out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite in an April 2 Wall Street Journal interview for criticizing Indiana's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act while his company does business in multiple countries that discriminate against their own citizens or are guilty of human rights abuses. In the wake of the uproar over the Indiana law, which Fiorina has defended, Shapiro was among the more than 100 tech leaders who signed their names to a statement urging legislators to add nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people to civil rights laws, the Human Rights Campaign said earlier this month (see 1504070059). Fiorina's representatives didn’t comment on Shapiro’s remarks.

The Digital Living Network Alliance created new extensions of its VidiPath specifications that “allow for cloud delivery of commercial video content to retail consumer electronics devices,” DLNA said in an ex parte filing posted in FCC docket 15-64 Tuesday. Content using the extensions is protected using digital rights management and delivered through “standards-based MPEG-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP,” it said. Leading desktop browsers already support the extension specifications or are planned to, DLNA said. The guidelines will let multichannel video programming distributors and over-the-top content providers offer commercial content to retail devices either using traditional content delivery mechanisms or using cloud/IP content delivery mechanisms, DLNA said. “VidiPath Cloud Extension Guidelines also support accessibility services including closed captions, emergency alert messages, and secondary audio programming.”

The Home Technology Specialists Association (HTSA) and Azione Unlimited buying groups updated their respective membership status Tuesday as HTSA members were making their way to that group’s spring conference in Nashville. HTSA announced two new members: Jacksonville, Florida-based Hoyt Stereo and ResCom Integration, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Competing buying group Azione Unlimited, said three new members were elected to its board. The vendor member is Ryan Donaher, CEO, Meridian, and dealer members are Kim Michels, president, Electronic Environments in New York, and Kevin Lambidonis, CEO, DES, Rogers, Arkansas.