The Advanced Media Workflow Association disclosed changes in its membership, in written notifications filed with the U.S. attorney general and the FTC, said a Justice Department notice in Wednesday's Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1ylmueC). Canon U.S.A., Swedish companies Vizrt and Kista, and John Fleming of Australia were added to the organization, while EMC, Encompass, The Weather Co., Andreas Georg Stasheit of Germany and Jone Lee of South Korea withdrew from the association, the notice said.

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) is “seeing the right trends illustrating that the marketplace is accepting” Version 1.0 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, said Danielle Kriz, director-global cybersecurity policy, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1rpPQmz). ITI was one of several information and communications technology (ICT) sector participants that submitted comments to NIST on industry use of the framework, which the agency released in February (see 1410140173). Companies in the ICT sector “are having new conversations about cybersecurity risk management” and the market is responding with new products and services to manage cyber risks outside the sector, Kriz said. ITI said it is urging NIST to “pivot away from developing a framework or standard and focus its work on” on its Privacy Engineering Objectives and Risk Model, which is meant to address gaps in privacy-related technical best practices. “Such a resource would be useful to organizations seeking to improve how they build privacy into their information management structures,” Kriz said. ITI suggested NIST seek out additional comment on the Cybersecurity Framework in a year’s time.

The Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) added integrator members ACT Technologies, Nashville, and Sound Xperience, Philadelphia. Both dealer member companies are experienced in design and installation of electronics systems including AV, home theater, lighting control, security, IT and home automation, HTSA said. ACT Technologies and Sound Xperience are aligned with HTSA vendors including Bowers & Wilkins, Control4, Savant and Sony, it said. HTSA also said member company Electronic Integration of Colorado has expanded operations to include the Minneapolis region through a strategic partnership with Lelch AV, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. The business will operate as Lelch AV under the direction of Roger Koehler and Alex Lelchuk, HTSA said.

"Futurecast,” the technology that LG, Zenith Labs and GatesAir submitted to the Advanced TV Systems Committee as their proposal for the “guts” of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system (CED April 9 p1), will be showcased in a demonstration in the wee hours of Oct. 22 in Madison, Wisconsin, at Quincy Broadcasting’s WKOW, Futurecast’s backers said Friday. WKOW will transmit Futurecast-modulated advanced TV signals to specially designed receivers, but Futurecast transmissions can’t be received by current DTV products, and the station will be able to transmit Futurecast only from 1 to 4 a.m. that day, they said. As one of the proposed ATSC 3.0 physical layer technologies, Futurecast’s “flexible parameters allow broadcasters to mix diverse services within a single RF channel with maximum efficiency,” the backers said. Next-gen broadcasting services enabled by Futurecast “range from deep indoor handheld reception to high-speed mobile reception to Ultra HDTV for the ultimate home entertainment experience, all within a single 6 MHz TV channel,” they said.

Mobile phone accessory sales were a record $249 million in the two weeks following the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, said a report by NPD Group released Friday. Last year, in the two weeks following the release of the iPhone 5s and 5c, mobile phone accessory sales were $195 million, it said. “New iPhone form factors always provide a short-term boost to traffic and volume to the consumer electronics market, but it’s the accessory purchases that keep the momentum going,” said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry analysis. Sales of cases primarily and accessories in general are “an excellent proxy in measuring the long-term demand for a phone,” Baker said. An NPD smartphone accessory report said 41 percent of iPhone customers say they buy accessories when they buy the phone and 58 percent buy accessories after they've left the store. Buyers also said they spend nearly double after they leave the store as they did during the initial purchase, NPD said. New iPhone releases and associated mobile accessory purchases resulting from purchases help “set the stage for a strong fourth quarter and holiday season,” Baker said.

RadioShack was running a three-day sale on audio products through Sunday, the retailer said in an email to customers Friday. Featured products included the company’s private-label branded Auvio Element earbuds with microphone for $14.99, down from $29.99; Auvio 3-foot stereo audio cables for $9.99, down from $14.99; and RadioShack 2.1 multimedia speakers marked down to $14.99 from $24.99, said the ad. Also on sale was the RadioShack Slim Portable Power Bank for $34.99, a $10 discount, it said.

Not putting a cap on the amount of population served that a broadcaster can lose as a result of the incentive auction repacking “would be a plain violation of the Spectrum Act,” said NAB in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Oct. 7, according to an ex parte filing posted online Friday in docket 12-268 (http://bit.ly/1yWXSgi). FCC predictions that TV stations after the auction will receive no more than 2 percent interference are “underestimates” NAB said. “For some reason, the staff elected not to take into account that more than half of all stations will move, and thus arrived at a smaller per station percentage,” said NAB. If the commission stands by that figure, it should institute a 2 percent cap, NAB said, though NAB has previously asked for a 1 percent cap, the ex parte filing said. The FCC should “foster confidence” among broadcasters by “providing them the certainty they need through capping the amount of new losses in population served they can receive,” NAB said.

Comments are due Dec. 8 in a Department of Energy rulemaking that proposes revising the DOE’s test procedure for external power supplies, the agency said in Thursday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1t5oh9g). The proposed revisions would harmonize the “instrumentation resolution and uncertainty requirements” with the second edition of the IEC’s 62301 standard when measuring standby power along with other international standards programs, said the department’s notice. “These specifications will assist in ensuring that testing is performed with equipment that is capable of reaching these tolerances and that the resulting measurements are consistent.” The rulemaking also would clarify several testing set-up requirements, it said. DOE also is proposing an optional test to measure the active-mode efficiency of external power supplies at a 10 percent loading condition “and an optional recording of power factor at this loading condition and each of the other required loading conditions,” it said.

Nearly four in every 10 U.S. broadband equipped homes “regularly use transactional services,” such as online video rentals and downloads, for over-the-top video, Parks Associates said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1EzsXHt). “The vast majority of consumers making these a la carte purchases also have a streaming video subscription, emphasizing the potential role of transactional services to supplement subscription OTT,” it said. For example, about two-thirds of Amazon Instant Video subscribers also rent or buy titles through the service, and “their average expenditures are increasing,” it said. “By contrast, expenditure on downloads among Netflix subscribers is decreasing.” Though subscription services “are the most popular form” of OTT video, transactional services that offer a wide selection of titles and are easy to use “can score with consumers and create new revenues,” the company said. “However, the lack of content can be the death knell for a service.” For example, Redbox Instant by Verizon “failed in large part because only a limited number of titles were available to rent through its streaming library,” it said. “What the service needed was a large selection of online titles, with easy access for streaming."

The MIPI Alliance will use the AES convention Saturday in Los Angeles to present a technical paper on MIPI SoundWire, a new audio interface spec for amplifiers, mics and audio codecs used in smartphones, tablets, mobile PCs and other devices, the group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/10WrwmP). “Companies can apply the specification as needed to best fit their particular systems integration requirements.” It said more than 25 companies “from across the audio technology ecosystem” took part in developing MIPI SoundWire. Ratification of the spec is expected to be done by year-end, but products based on it “are already in development and IP, silicon components and test tools based on the specification are expected to become commercially available also by year-end 2014,” it said. MIPI SoundWire is a hardware interface and transport protocol that companies can apply “to add intelligence to audio peripherals, increase the number of peripherals attached to a link and optimize their implementations without compromising product cost, pin count, power consumption, software complexity, or key audio metrics,” it said. “The boundaries between mobile phones, tablets and PCs are converging but until now, standardized audio interfaces have been specific to the individual market segments,” it said. “The fragmentation has made it very challenging for firms to scale their product designs for use across segments. MIPI SoundWire was developed to provide a common interface to overcome this challenge.”