Amazon and Warner Music Group are among 10 new members joining the Digital Entertainment Group, the group said Wednesday. Other new members are CenturyLink, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, MAI, Outpost Media, Parrot Analytics, Screen Engine, V2Solutions and W2O Group, DEG said. "DEG continues to adjust its agenda to serve the needs of the full home entertainment in order to help support the transformation of the industry,” DEG President Amy Jo Smith said in a statement.

Pandora updated its terms of use and privacy policy effective June 30, the company said in an email to users Wednesday. Changes include making it easier for artists to connect with users, and for users to control how artists connect with them; two new policies -- on community and content and on intellectual property -- were created about the content a user posts on Pandora; updates were made in how Pandora can contact users; and a provision was added to the privacy policy to ensure the company complied with the EU-Swiss safe harbor privacy principles, and describes how Pandora uses data for measurement purposes and how users can control their participation in those measurement studies. “If you don't agree to these updated agreements, you may close your account and you won't be bound by them,” the email said.

Regulation of technology and the Internet -- even regulation invited by some tech companies -- is chipping away at the nation's "historic commitment to innovation without permission," NCTA CEO Michael Powell said in a column posted Monday on CNET. Regulators "do not relish the sidelines" and jump into emerging markets based more often on hypotheticals than actual problems with the market, Powell wrote in his piece, "On the importance of 'regulatory humility.'" The problem is that policies built on predictions and hypothetical scenarios result in "a host of unintended consequences that disrupt markets," Powell said. "Ill-founded regulation is not harmless. Laws are easier to enact than to remove and usually remain long after the past due date. Regulatory agencies simply are not able to adapt quickly to continuing change." The past 20 years has brought "a fast-paced technological age largely free of government control and direction," Powell said. "The next 20 years holds even more promise but only if regulatory humility remains the highest virtue."

When wireless connectivity startup company Keyssa's Kiss technology platform launches in the fall, it will be from “two large data customers,” Steve Venuti, vice-president-strategic solutions, told us in a follow-up to a recent interview on the platform (see 1507020037). In addition, “two large branded companies are hopefully going to be launching products by the end of this year,” said Venuti, the former president of HDMI Licensing. “I can’t give any clue to what devices. I am not allowed to.” Led by Chairman Tony Fadell, founder of Nest, Keyssa is backed by $47 million in funding from heavyweights such as Dolby Labs, Intel and Samsung. Its near-field communications-based technology claims video and data transfer rates of 6 Gbps wirelessly. Kiss is “very sweet technology” that’s “protocol-agnostic” and consumes “very low energy,” Venuti said. “It’s the energy equivalent of a wire, not like Wi-Fi. I love giving a demo to CTOs, they marvel.” Kiss technology “is so new it takes a lot of learning how to focus,” he said. “Tolerances are very tight. It’s like when we first launched HDMI there was so many pains trying to get people to change their mentality from analog to digital. It’s the same sort of thing. Every new technology has a learning curve.” Above all, Kiss will be “extremely affordable,” Venuti said. “We have done a lot to make it manufacturable. It will be very inexpensive -- a dollar or two on our side, at component level.” Asked whether Keyssa sees Kiss ultimately replacing HDMI, Venuti said: “A connector never goes away or goes away very slowly. It will be a slow gradual descent.” Citing “the Intels and Qualcomms of this world,” Venuti said many large companies “are talking about a wire-free world.” Kiss technology “goes hand to hand with wireless power,” he said. “We see them on the same ascent. Once you get rid of the need for data transfer and power from wires, devices just don’t need wires any more. Although the consumer is very happy with one wire, with HDMI, we all know they much prefer zero wires. But that’s over time.” As for whether he sees an HDMI cable in his future with Kiss connectors at each end, Venuti said: “You could envision that. In fact, we envision that as well. It’s still a cable but with an invisible connector. A connector you can’t see.”

The May FCC order requiring pay-TV carriers to pass through emergency alerts on a secondary audio stream to mobile devices streaming their content (see 1505210056) takes effect Aug. 10, the Media Bureau said in a public notice posted Friday in docket 12-107. Aug. 10 is also the deadline for comments on some other proposed aspects of the rule, such as whether school closing information should be included on the secondary audio stream; and whether the FCC should require multichannel video programming distributors to provide “a simple and easy to use activation mechanism” for accessing the emergency information on the secondary stream. Reply comments on those matters are due Sept. 8, the PN said.

NTIA will hold its first multistakeholder meeting on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAS) Aug. 3, 1-5 p.m., in the boardroom at the American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Ave. NW, an agency blog post said Monday. President Barack Obama called on NTIA “to launch a multistakeholder process to develop best practices that enhance privacy and promote transparent and accountable operation of UAS by commercial and private users,” NTIA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Angela Simpson wrote in a separate blog post Monday. “The end goal is best practices that mitigate consumer concerns while promoting growth and innovation in this exciting sector,” Simpson said. “In April, we received more than 50 comments regarding the most pressing UAS issues and potential solutions,” Simpson said. “This input will be the basis of the group’s initial discussions.” Multistakeholder meetings are also scheduled for Sept. 24, Oct. 21 and Nov. 20, NTIA said.

BenQ, CEA, Celestron, Elan Home Systems, Epson and Velodyne are among the confirmed CE exhibitors that have signed on for the Luxury Technology Show, set for Sept. 30 at the W Hollywood Hotel in California, said the show’s producer, Rand Luxury, in a Friday statement. Product categories will include Ultra HD, wearable technology, 3D printing, connected cars and wellness and fitness devices, it said.

CEA hailed the Senate’s passage Thursday of the E-Warranty Act (S-1359), which allows manufacturers to meet warranty and labeling requirements for consumer products by displaying the terms of warranties online. S-1359 “is common sense legislation that modernizes warranty requirements” by directing the FTC to give manufacturers the option to meet legal notice requirements by posting warranties on their websites, said Veronica O’Connell, CEA vice president-government and political affairs, Friday in a statement. “This will reduce paper usage, help our environment and provide easy access to product warranties.” She urged the House “to address and pass this consumer-friendly legislation as quickly as possible.”

DVBLogic, one of the many small companies in Eindhoven, Netherlands, that grew out of Philips’ restructuring away from consumer electronics, thinks many people who now use a network attached storage (NAS) device to store all their data and entertainment at home and share it between multiple PCs and players would welcome the chance to record off-air TV direct to the same NAS. The company’s TVButler innovation, under development since 2008 and due for launch next week in countries that use the European DVB DTV system, does the trick, DVBLogic executives say. Pavlo Barvinko, DVBLogic’s founder and chief technology officer, gave us a preview in London Tuesday using a Wi-Fi laptop to access live and recorded HDTV content from his home in Holland. Barvinko, originally from Kiev, Ukraine, worked on hard disc DVRs at the Philips Advanced Products Lab, later with the Philips spin-off Civolution, the company behind the watermark/fingerprint system used to control Oscar screener piracy and by Sony for its TrackID music identification. TVButler is a hardware-software bundle. A small TV tuner dongle connects to a TV antenna and plugs into a USB socket on a NAS hard disc storage device. Proprietary server software, bought with the dongle, is installed on the NAS to turn it into a DVR. The NAS then networks live or recorded TV around the home or around the world. The dongle, and the server software license needed to activate it, costs 100 euros ($110). The software supports up to three more dongles at 60 euros ($66) each with the same NAS for multi-channel recording. Mobile client apps, allowing remote viewing, are free, as is basic 14-day electronic program guide software. For an annual fee of 25 euros ($28), the viewer can add an enhanced EPG, called TVAdviser, which builds a profile of content likes and dislikes. Barvinko acknowledged that open-source software already exists that enthusiasts can use to convert a NAS to a DVR. “But this is the first all-in-one solution, with all the hardware and software that’s needed in one box,” he said. “We are not aiming it at casual TV viewers. But you don’t have to be a geek. If you can set up a NAS, you can add TVButler to it. And you can then view home TV from anywhere in the world, including the USA.”

Vonage joined the NYC Media Lab and will work with the lab and its university partners on innovation-oriented projects and programs, the group said in a release Wednesday. NYC Media Lab connects digital media and technology companies with members of New York City's universities, and Vonage will collaborate with experts in "engineering, data science, computer science, design and more" to further its innovation goals, the group said. Other NYC Media Lab company members include The Associated Press, Bloomberg, ESPN, Hearst, MLB Advanced Media, NBCUniversal, News Corp., Publicis Group, Rogers Communications, Showtime, Tenfore Holdings, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and Viacom. Members participate in annual seed projects, which can yield research papers and prototypes.