Comments are due July 26 and replies Aug. 9 on a Pluto TV ask for a one-year waiver of rules requiring closed captioning of IPTV content, said an FCC Media Bureau public notice in docket 11-54 Thursday. The streaming service's petition said more than 90 percent of its users have access to captions, but some platforms are dated and lack core capabilities or that Pluto's engineering work has focused on the most heavily used platforms.

YouTube is working with Universal Music Group to remaster “iconic music videos,” with 100 available at launch in high-quality audio and video, blogged the Google company. Close to 1,000 remastered titles are due before the end of 2020. Some of the greatest music videos in YouTube’s catalog have been available only in the outdated standards originally intended for tube TVs with mono speakers, said the companies, which are upgrading videos to improve the viewing experience for mobile, desktop and living room screens. The new videos will replace the original versions on YouTube and within YouTube Music, retaining the same URL, view-counts and “likes,” they said Wednesday.

VidAngel said it plans to appeal a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles jury's awarding of $62.4 million in damages to Hollywood studio plaintiffs that alleged Copyright Act and Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations for streaming their content to subscribers without permission (see 1708110038). VidAngel said Monday the ruling was "unfortunate, but it has not lessened our resolve to save filtering for families." It said it also will "explore options in the bankruptcy court" and "checks and balances" in the court system but didn't elaborate. Parents TV Council President Tim Winter said the judgment "may sound the death knell for content filtering unless the Congress steps forward to update the Family Movie Act of 2005."

Some 74 percent of U.S. TV households have at least one internet-connected device, such as smart TVs, streaming sticks, set-top boxes, connected videogame systems and connected Blu-ray players, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. That’s similar to last year’s penetration and up 5 points from 2017, LRG said. Fifty percent of TV households have at least one stand-alone streaming device, up from 40 percent two years ago. Thirty-one percent of adults in U.S. TV households watch video daily on a TV via a connected device vs. 25 percent two years ago, 11 percent in 2014 and 1 percent in 2010. Among adults with a pay-TV service, 25 percent watch video via a connected device daily vs. 49 percent of consumers who don’t subscribe to pay-TV.

One video rebuffering incident could result in more than $85,000 in lost revenue, blogged Alex Balford, senior product marketing manager at Akamai Thursday. There's no set industry standard to measure online video quality of experience, but rebuffering consistently “resonates in every conversation,” Balford said. He quoted an executive at a major broadcaster who said customer engagement drops when viewers see the spinning wheel “more than a couple of times.” The broadcaster’s target is to keep that rate below 0.5 percent; when it achieves that level, 90 percent of viewing sessions are completed, he said. At 0.5 percent-1 percent, the session completion rate falls to 80 percent, and at 1 percent, it plummets to 50 percent. Causes can be traced to the ISP, content delivery network, playback device or browser, Wi-Fi configurations, available bandwidth, network traffic and content itself, Balford said, quoting a broadcast executive calling video delivery “a complicated process with many loopholes and rabbit holes.” Audiences, Balford said, are becoming increasingly sophisticated in communicating about and identifying service issues. A video aggregator said users became upset when the company experimented with transcoding, leading to an apology and assurances it wasn’t trying to reduce quality or costs. Based on video traffic for a major U.S. network June 2017-June 2018, one rebuffer translates to 496,417 hours lost, or 10.7 million advertising impressions, assuming 11 minutes of ad time hourly at an average of 30 seconds per ad, Balford said.

Online video watching is skyrocketing, NTIA said Tuesday, citing its latest internet-use survey results. Seventy percent of internet users watched video online in 2017, up from 45 percent in 2013. That viewing rate varies with age, it said, with 86 percent of internet users between the ages of 15 and 24 watching, compared with 40 percent of users 65 and older. It added questions to the 2017 survey about pay-TV consumption and of the 27 percent of U.S. households that lack an MVPD subscription, 60 percent never had one and 40 percent were cord cutters. "Cord never" households tended to be younger, lower income and less likely to be non-Hispanic white than those with cable. Cable-subscribing households typically are over 50 and less likely to have children in the household than cord cutters.

DTS Play-Fi announced AirPlay 2 support Thursday, with availability on the McIntosh RS200 wireless speaker and Arcam rPlay music streamer. More products will be announced later this year, it said. DTS Play-Fi products supporting AirPlay 2 are Works with Alexa-compatible, allowing household users to choose between Siri or Alexa voice assistants, said the company. The launch Play-Fi brands for AirPlay 2 support emphasized choice as a primary benefit of the feature addition. “AirPlay 2 brings multi-room music playback to the Apple ecosystem,” said Nicholas Clarke, senior director-global engineering, luxury audio, at Harman, saying Arcam rPlay customers get more ways to access their product with Hi-Res streaming audio support. Adding AirPlay 2 expands multi-room streaming possibilities, said DTS. Music playback on AirPlay 2 products can be started via spoken commands to Siri or to a HomePod; users can group AirPlay 2 speakers via voice commands through HomePod, or transfer music playback from a HomePod to other AirPlay 2 products in the home, it said. AirPlay 2 also provides transmission reliability in cases where Wi-Fi connections are temporarily unavailable or unstable, it said. The Play-Fi ecosystem includes more than 200 products, said DTS, from brands including Aerix, Anthem, Arcam, Audiolab, Definitive Technology, Dish TV, Elite, Integra, Fusion Research, Klipsch, MartinLogan, McIntosh, Mission, Onkyo, Paradigm, Phorus, Pioneer, Polk Audio, Quad, Rotel, Sonus Faber, Soundcast, SVS Sound, Wharfedale and Wren Sound.

Disney is taking over operational control of Hulu under an agreement with Comcast/NBCUniversal that says by January 2024, Comcast can require Disney to buy out its stake at fair market value at that time. The companies said Tuesday that Disney at minimum will pay Comcast $27.5 billion for its Hulu stake. Disney and Comcast said they jointly are funding Hulu's purchase of AT&T's 9.5 percent stake back from that company and, going forward, Comcast will have the option to fund its proportionate share of Hulu's future capital calls, but it's not obligated. They said Comcast's share will be diluted if it doesn't fund, and Comcast agreed to extend Hulu's license of NBCU content and the Hulu Live carriage agreement for NBCUniversal channels until late 2024. They said in one year's time, NBCU will have the right to show on its own over-the-top service some content currently licensed exclusively to Hulu, with Hulu in turn paying a smaller license fee. With the deal, Disney is "now able to completely integrate Hulu into our direct-to-consumer business," said CEO Bob Iger. It will be able to "leverage the full power" of the Disney brands, and "creative engines to make the service even more compelling and a greater value for consumers,” he said.

All Samsung 2019 smart TVs as of Monday, and select 2018 models with a firmware update, will have the new Apple TV app. It’s the first TV maker to integrate the Apple TV app on a smart TV platform, it said. Users select the Apple TV icon on screen to access their iTunes movies and TV show purchases; they can also browse more than 100,000 iTunes movies and TV shows to buy or rent, including 4K HDR titles, said the company. Samsung smart TV customers will be able to use the Apple TV Plus original video subscription service in the app when the service launches in the fall. AirPlay2, meanwhile, enables users to play videos and other content from their iPhone, iPad or Mac directly on a Samsung smart TV. The app will work with Bixby, Samsung’s voice assistant. The app will be available in more than 100 countries; Samsung smart TVs will offer AirPlay support in 176 countries.

Avengers: Endgame debuts Dec. 11 on Disney Plus, a month after the direct-to-consumer streaming service launches, announced Disney CEO Bob Iger on a Q2 earnings call Wednesday. The hit movie grossed nearly $2.3 billion in worldwide box office in its first two weeks in theaters, he said. The company “did some deals” to get “some of the content back” for Disney Plus “that had been licensed to third parties,” said Iger. “We continue to explore ways that we might be able to get more back.” There’s “still some out there” that Disney will try to “buy back or negotiate back,” he said. Disney is “bullish about Hulu,” said Iger. It now owns 67 percent after closing its acquisition of the Fox entertainment assets (see 1903120006) and AT&T’s divestiture last month of its $1.43 billion stake (see 1904150069). “It's the best consumer television proposition out there because it offers linear channels that include a lot of live news and sports, in-season stacking of network programming, a lot of great original programming, and then, of course, a lot of library,” said Iger. With Comcast as the remaining 33 percent owner, “any big decisions that are made as it relates to investment or expansion would have to be done with their cooperation,” he said. “I think we would probably both share a bullish outlook.” Disney has publicly confirmed “dialogue with Comcast about them possibly divesting their stake,” said Iger. “You can expect that if that were to occur, there probably would be some ongoing relationship” related to programming, he said. Comcast declined comment Thursday. Disney has no intention to enter the sports gambling business, said Iger. “We'll provide programming” on the ESPN Plus streaming service that will be “designed to enlighten people who are betting on sports, but that's as far as we would go,” he said.