CBS subscribed to Nielsen’s National Out-of-Home Reporting service and will receive out-of home viewing data for all programming, live plus seven days, the companies said in a news release Thursday. The service gives networks the ability to count an audience that was previously unmeasured. Out-of-home viewership is measured using portable people meters, and combined with TV panels represents 65 percent of U.S. TV households, they said.

Roku agreed to pay $3.5 million to buy all outstanding shares of a privately held Danish technology firm to “enhance” its “player product offering,” the streaming media company said in an amended S-1 registration statement filed Monday at the SEC for its initial public offering (see 1709050067). Roku didn’t identify the firm it acquired Sept. 6 -- five days after filing its original S-1 -- nor has it had time to complete “the initial accounting” for the acquisition, and so is unable to disclose “amounts recognized as of the acquisition date for major classes of assets and liabilities acquired and resulting from the transaction along with any potential goodwill,” it said. It will disclose that information in the 10-Q report it files at the SEC for the quarter ending Sept. 30, it said. Roku signed an independent contractor services agreement Sept. 12 with Neil Hunt, who joined the Roku board in August after an 18-year career as Netflix chief product officer, the filing said. Hunt also has been a Logitech board member since 2010, it said. Hunt was asked to sit on the Roku board “because of his extensive experience in the streaming media technology industry, as well as his prior service on a public company board,” it said. The contractor agreement will pay Hunt $5,000 for each day he provides consulting services to Roku CEO Anthony Wood, not to exceed $120,000 in any “rolling” 12-month period, it said.

There’s “lots more work to do” at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, “and I actually am not going anywhere,” said CEO Meg Whitman on a Tuesday earnings call when asked about her long-term commitment in light of her recent interest in the Uber CEO opening that ultimately went to Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (see the personals section of the Sept. 1 issue of this publication). Whitman was “called in very late in the Uber search and I thought it was a very interesting business model,” she said. Uber is “actually quite similar to eBay in many ways” in that “it’s very disruptive,” she said. Uber “relies on a community of drivers just like eBay relies on a community of sellers,” and its “growth prospects reminded me of eBay in its early days,” said Whitman, who owns stock in the ride-hailing service. “In the end,” Whitman decided the Uber CEO job “wasn’t the right thing” for her, she said. HPE “is quite special in its own right and we have a very focused strategy and a path forward to build a very big business on what I think is a quite compelling strategy,” she said. “I have dedicated the last six years of my life to this company and there is more work to do and I am here to help make this company successful.”

Samsung QLED TVs are the official 4K TV partner for the upcoming Xbox One X, said the TV maker in a Friday announcement. Gamers will be able to experience the Xbox One X on Samsung TVs at various marketing and retail demos around the country this fall, it said.

Asus began selling the 12.5-inch Chromebook Flip C302CA-DHM4 Friday ($499) with integrated support for Google Play. Features include a Full HD touch screen, Intel Core m3 processor, two USB Type-C ports capable of display output, data and charging; a backlit keyboard; 4 GB RAM; 64 GB storage; and 10-hour maximum battery life, according to specs. A higher power version, with an Intel Core m5 processor, retails for $649.

Epson continued its value approach to home cinema projectors with the Tuesday launch of the Home Cinema 660 (800 x 600 resolution, $359), Home Cinema 760HD (720p resolution, $549) and Home Cinema 1060 (1080p resolution, $649) projectors. The company positions the DLP projectors as alternatives to large flat-screen TVs, touting the 300-inch maximum screen size as “25 times the screen area of a 60-inch TV.” All three projectors include HDMI ports, and the model 1060 adds MHL (mobile high-definition link) support on one HDMI port, allowing users to source content from smartphones or tablets or supported streaming media players such as the Roku Streaming Stick, Epson said. Brightness is given as up to 3,300 lumens and contrast ratio as up to 15,000:1. The projectors are portable, have horizontal image correction and an “instant off” feature for quick power-down without the need for a cool-off period, said the company.

Asus announced Friday the VivoBook Pro N580 ($1,299), a 15-inch laptop with Harman Kardon audio, an Intel Core i7 processor, 16 GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics. The PC includes a sound system with dual speakers and smart amplifier technology, a fingerprint sensor for one-touch login and support for Asus Pen.

Google "strongly" supports employees' rights to express themselves, CEO Sundar Pichai said, but a now-fired engineer's 10-page document circulated inside the company violated its code of conduct, "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." Pichai's Monday note made public Tuesday didn't mention the document's author, James Damore, reportedly fired Monday. "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive," said Pichai. But he said employees, "especially those with a minority viewpoint," shouldn't be afraid of expressing their views and the company needs to find a way to debate issues without violating the code of conduct. Pichai said he was cutting a vacation short to discuss the issue. Contact information for Damore couldn't be found.

Universal Electronics’ shares closed 4.8 percent lower Friday at $62.70 as positive results for Q2 were offset by Q3 guidance that was below analysts’ expectations. UE had Q2 revenue of $177.9 million vs. $176.5 million in the year-ago quarter, but earnings-per-share guidance was short of consensus. Dougherty & Co. analyst Steven Frankel called UE’s Q2 results a “mixed bag.” Noting accelerating revenue and growing production volume in UE's new China factory, Frankel said Comcast purchases will become a smaller percentage of overall revenue. "It’s only a matter of time” before the company reaches double-digit revenue growth and margin expansion, said the analyst, citing new customer wins and the growing need of MVPDs to launch next-gen set-top boxes. On the company’s Thursday earnings call, CEO Paul Arling said Comcast, Cox and Shaw continued to upgrade customers to the X1 platform and its voice remote and that additional operators worldwide are in design and testing stages of the company’s technology. Chief Financial Officer Bryan Hackworth said Comcast was 24.2 percent of sales in the quarter and DirecTV was 10 percent. Arling also referenced new connection protocols and devices in home security and energy monitoring, and said the company expects to leverage existing relationships for that technology. UE expects home sensing and security sales to be five times what they were when it acquired Ecolink two years ago, and its purchase of thermostat control company RCS in May expands the company’s offerings in residential sensing, control and monitoring products, he said. In its Asia-Pacific OEM business, Universal picked up new customers in the home appliance market, including HVAC and home appliance makers, and later this year the company will introduce Wi-Fi thermostat controller modules for several major Japanese brands. Arling said UE’s Wi-Fi modules will enable HVAC systems to become “smart and/or communicating to the point where the original unit put into your home will be capable of this integrated feature.”

Apple shares closed 4.7 percent higher Wednesday at $157.14 after a better-than-expected fiscal Q3 earnings report Tuesday. Revenue jumped 7 percent over the 2016 quarter to $45.4 billion on strength in the company’s services business, iPhone 7 and 7 Plus sales, and gains across all categories, said CEO Tim Cook on the earnings call. IPhone sales reached 41 million units, and the company reduced inventory by 3.3 million, its lowest point in two-and-a-half years, said Cook. On rumors components shortages could cause a shipping delay of the 10th anniversary iPhone that's expected to launch next month, Cook said, "We have no comment on anything that's unannounced.” Average iPhone selling prices reached $606 in Q3, up from $595 a year ago, which Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri attributed to the iPhone 7 Plus, which had a higher percentage of the iPhone mix than the flagship Plus model in the year-ago quarter. Reversing a downward trend, iPad sales saw 15 percent growth year on year, improving in all geographies, producing Apple’s highest tablet global market share in four years, he said. Maestri quoted NPD figures showing iPads grabbed 55 percent of U.S. tablet share in Q2, including eight of the 10 best-selling models. Among tablets priced over $200, which excludes Amazon’s best-selling Kindle Fire tablets, iPad's share was 89 percent, said Maestri, largely driven by sales to the education market. On Apple’s China business, Cook said the iPhone was “relatively flat” year over year, but the services business grew “extremely strongly” in the quarter. Hong Kong, he said, dragged down the Greater China segment. Profit in the quarter grew to $8.7 billion from $7.8 billion in Q3 FY 2016, Apple said.