FORT LAUDERDALE -- Snap One’s domestic local branches are “key to supporting our growth strategy,” said the company’s first 10-K report since going public in July. Snap One dealers we canvassed at the Home Technology Specialists of America spring meeting this week wondered how that growth strategy would affect them.

Nearly half of U.S. broadband homes subscribe to four or more over-the-top video services, with streaming now the primary way consumers view TV content, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson on a Thursday Future of Video webcast. But service stacking is starting to slow, as viewing bumps up against an “inevitable point of subscription overload from having a finite amount of time and budget to spend on watching video,” Erickson said.

With ATSC 3.0-compliant TV sets “beginning to make advances in the consumer marketplace,” the day should come “in the near future” when rising household penetration of 3.0 TVs “will enable us to be able to start phasing out 1.0,” Sinclair President-Technology Del Parks told the TV Tech Summit Thursday. “The question for us is, how soon can we turn off 1.0 and take advantage of all of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0?”

California's privacy agency should try to counter inequity and manipulation, said academics at California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) informational sessions this week (see 2203290062). The CPPA board held the second day Wednesday of a virtual hearing to gather background information for an upcoming rulemaking to implement the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which is the sequel to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Across the country, the Maryland House Economic Affairs Committee weighed a bill Wednesday to set up a privacy study group to make recommendations for comprehensive legislation next year.

Noncommercial educational stations that haven’t had the chance to participate in the ATSC 3.0 transition could receive temporary, internet-only channels to allow their content to be received by 3.0 devices, said Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle in an interview.

Four rounds of Section 301 tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on more than $400 billion worth of Chinese imports have “not incentivized China to change” its unfair trade practices as the former president intended, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Wednesday on the Biden administration's 2022 trade policy agenda. Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., had asked Tai what her plan was to “bring China to the table” and hold it accountable for the commitments it made under the February 2020 phase one trade agreement.

The global semiconductor supply chain is “experiencing pressure” above and beyond the existing shortages and logistical bottlenecks, due to the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, said Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on an earnings call Tuesday for its fiscal Q2 ended March 3. “The region is an important source for the global supply of noble gases and other critical minerals that are used in semiconductor manufacturing,” he said.

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Despite persistent supply chain constraints, the Home Technology Specialists of America had a 23.7% jump in purchases from HTSA vendors in 2021, after a “mid-20s” bump in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Executive Director Jon Robbins told us at the buying group’s spring meeting here.

The complexities of the content distribution system, a lack of uniformity among different platforms and absence of regulatory requirements are among the reasons for inconsistency in which online content includes audio description, said panelists from streaming services and consumer groups at the FCC’s Video Programming Accessibility forum Monday.

Autonomous vehicles aren’t possible without a steady supply of microchips, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., said Monday during a field hearing in Detroit on China package implications for the auto industry (see 2203230065). Peters joined a chorus of legislators pushing for Congress to move chip legislation, including Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.