FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski urged CEOs of Fox and Cablevision to end their retransmission consent dispute, he said, saying he spoke to officials at both companies by phone Tuesday. “I reminded the companies that they share responsibility for consumer disruption, and that they shouldn’t punish consumers because of their unwillingness to reach a deal. I also insisted that they negotiate in good faith,” Genachowski said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

The Department of Energy should adopt with “specified discrete changes,” the ANSI/CEA-2037 test procedure for measuring the energy use of TVs, the CEA said. The Energy Star program now references ANSI/CEA-2037 and the DOE should embrace it to “avoid the federal government using and promoting two different test procedures,” the group said in comments on the DOE’s rulemaking on developing a federal TV test procedure. The department repealed its 1979 TV test procedure after industry groups and the California Energy Commission pointed out that it was outmoded in light of the digital transition.

IPhone 4 demand “in all countries is absolutely staggering,” even higher than Apple had expected, said Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook on an earnings call. He said he couldn’t “predict when supply will meet demand.” Apple has boosted shipments and is working to do more, but “it will take some time to increase further,” he said. The company sold 14.1 million iPhones in Q4 ended Sept. 25, 91 percent more units than a year earlier, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said. CEO Steve Jobs went after Google and other rivals on the call.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Like the Home Technology Specialists of America two weeks ago at their fall meeting in St. Louis, members of the former PARA organization met at the CEA Industry Forum here with an urgent agenda for change. PARA, folded into CEA six years ago, had become an acronym, “and no one knew what PARA meant,” according to Vance Pflanz, owner of Pflanz Electronics and chairman of the newly named CEA Audio-Video Retailer division. The group took on the new name to improve its identity within CEA and better reflect its place in CEA, Pflanz said.

Sonic Solutions will “accelerate and expand” distribution of DivX-encoded titles as it works to bring them onto its RoxioNow video download platform, Mark Ely, executive vice president of strategy, told us.

Online content accessibility was raised for the first time in a continuing dispute between a broadcaster and cable operator when News Corp. wouldn’t let Cablevision subscribers access the Internet programming from its Fox network because of a linear content blackout, communications lawyers said. A retransmission consent impasse begun around 12:01 a.m. Saturday means all 3 million of the cable operators’ video subscribers can’t see Fox’s three New York and Philadelphia TV stations via Cablevision, and a quick resolution may not occur, industry and government officials said. For more than half the day Saturday, all of Cablevision’s 2.6 million Internet service subscribers couldn’t access any Fox content on Hulu, the video website partly owned by News Corp.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Connected TV will be the focus of TV makers at the upcoming CES and for 2011, Jason Oxman, CEA’s senior vice president of industry affairs, said Monday at the CEA Industry Forum. But the growth of connected TV, whether from TVs themselves, Blu-ray players or set-top boxes from third-party companies, will hinge on managing the content and helping consumers navigate the vast amount of content available.

Low-income, Medicaid-eligible analog Cablevision customers on Long Island can get up to two free digital cable boxes from the company for five years as part of “a special offer,” Government Affairs Director Joan Gilroy told the Suffolk County Legislature’s Consumer Protection Committee at a recent meeting, according to minutes of the gathering. After the five years, those subscribers would have to pay the same monthly fee -- now about $7 per box -- that everybody else pays, she said. The amount won’t go up an onerous amount because the fee is “regulated” by New York state’s Public Service Commission, she said.

Apple’s recently announced AirPlay streaming media protocol could have a significant impact on the connected home in a way that DLNA hasn’t, said a report from ABI Research. Apple’s opening of the AirPlay software development kit to third-party vendors should result in a “significant increase” in the development of networked audio and video devices in the home, said Jason Blackwell, practice director of digital home at ABI. DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technology is found in more than 200 million products from more than 200 partner companies, according to ABI, and its primary shortcoming has been lack of consumer awareness. “We would be hard-pressed to find an average consumer who knows what DLNA is or how to use it,” the report said.

Industry and FCC attention has turned to the AllVid rulemaking for all pay-TV providers’ services to be accessible from consumer electronics devices, now that commissioners have approved an order making fixes in the interval until the gateway devices become available (CED Oct 15 p1). A rulemaking that could be voted on this year now becomes the focus of lobbying at the FCC concerning video devices, agency and industry officials said. No AllVid item is ready for a commission vote, and it’s unclear when such a rulemaking notice will circulate, commission officials said.