DirecTV shareholders voted to approve AT&T’s proposed takeover of the DBS provider. More than 99 percent of votes cast were in favor of the deal at the DirecTV shareholder meeting Thursday, DirecTV said. AT&T will work with the various regulatory agencies reviewing the deal to gain their approval as well, an AT&T spokesman said in a statement.

Public Knowledge kicked off a more formal campaign against the provision of the Satellite Television Access and Viewer Rights Act (S-2799) that would repeal the set-top box integration ban. The provision “would make it difficult for consumers to use devices like TiVo DVRs, which use CableCARDs to access video programming,” Public Knowledge said in a widely circulated email message Thursday. “No member of Congress should prioritize broadcast and cable company interests over the rights of the people using these services.” NCTA has strongly lobbied in favor of the integration ban repeal. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., had proposed and withdrew an amendment during the bill’s markup session last week that would have changed the integration ban provision. He blocked the Senate’s Sept. 18 attempt to pass by unanimous consent a Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act bill that included the STAVRA provisions, prompting backlash from Senate Commerce leaders of both parties. That was the last day Congress was in session until mid-November, and STELA expires Dec. 31. Public Knowledge backs the Markey amendment and asked people to spread the following message on Twitter: “#STAVRA reauthorization must not hurt consumers, learn more: bit.ly/Yd6sGC @MarkeyMemo @publicknowledge.” The message links to a Sept. 17 blog post from senior staff attorney John Bergmayer blasting the STAVRA provision.

Nearly nine of 10 millennials say their smartphone never leaves their side, while six of 10 predict that within five years, it will be the only device they'll need for everything from banking to enrolling in classes. So said the results released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1n20yo6) of a Zogby Analytics survey of 1,000 millennials commissioned by Mitek, a supplier of mobile imaging technology for banking and other business applications. The survey found that the “mobile habits of this important demographic extend beyond just apps, to also include widespread use of the camera on their mobile devices,” and that this trend will “only continue to grow as the smartphone camera evolves,” Mitek said. Of those canvassed, 37 percent said they've made a decision on where to bank or spend money “based on what the organization allowed users to accomplish with a mobile device,” it said. Forty-eight percent said they wish they could do more banking with a snapshot, while 41 percent would like more mobile imaging in retail, 35 percent would like more in insurance and 34 percent would like the credit card industry to adopt more uses for the camera, it said. One in every three expressed the wish “that nearly every industry would adopt more mobile imaging functionality, so they would be able to enter information by snapping a picture,” it said.

The number of consumers using tablets to watch TV shows and movies has skyrocketed, a survey by Altman Vilandrie & Co. found. Tablet ownership penetration increased to 50 percent last year, up from 40 percent in 2012, said the consulting firm Thursday. The portion of all consumers watching TV shows or movies on tablets on a weekly basis jumped from 17 percent to 26 percent last year, it said. More than 40 percent of consumers under age 35 use smartphones to watch TV or movies, it said. More than 70 percent of the consumers binge watch at least once a month, and 41 percent use their cable providers’ TV Everywhere service each month, it said. The survey also found that over-the-top use increased from 26 percent last year to 35 percent in 2014. The survey received input from more than 3,000 U.S. respondents. It was drawn from an online panel by Research Now, Altman Vilandrie said.

DisplaySearch predicts Apple will ship 74 million iPhone 6 handsets and 42 million iPhone 6 Plus phones this calendar year, David Hsieh, vice president-Greater China market, said Thursday in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1u2xu0j). LG Display, Japan Display and Sharp are the LCD panel suppliers for the iPhone 6, while LG Display and Japan Display are supplying the panels for the iPhone 6 Plus, he said. “The panel makers need to ramp up production quickly, as we estimate that Apple has ordered more than 100 million iPhone 6 panels for 2014,” he said. That’s a strong indication that Apple “is clearly confident about iPhone 6 sales into 2015,” he said.

Insteon said it added voice interaction to its home automation platform via an update to the Insteon app for Windows Phone 8.1 (http://bit.ly/1stZ1sy). Support for Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant, lets consumers control and monitor smart home products via voice commands, a “major development in the evolution of the home automation industry,” Steven Guggenheimer, Microsoft corporate vice president, said Thursday. Adding Cortana support to Insteon products enables users to turn on and dim lights, lock and unlock doors, and open a garage door by voice while inside or outside the home. Users also can activate scenes by saying, for instance, “Insteon, leaving the house,” which could set in motion a series of events such as turning off lights, setting a thermostat to a lower temperature and locking doors, Insteon said. Other features of the app include Visitor Mode, which restricts access to the system by children or guests; enhanced camera support for multiple, simultaneous camera views; multi-house support to control a second home or business; and a dashboard that provides a view of a home’s status, it said.

Lawyers for Ford and General Motors and their respective suppliers Clarion and Denso got a 14-day deadline extension to Oct. 10 to answer recording industry allegations they violated the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) by shipping car infotainment systems with CD-copying hard drives without building the Serial Copy Management System into the devices (CED July 31 p5). Lawyers for the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies, which filed the complaint July 25 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, did not oppose the deadline-extension motion, which was filed Monday and granted Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, court documents said (http://1.usa.gov/1pdd3Iu). “Good causes exist to grant this motion,” the documents said. They said more time was needed because Ford, Clarion, Denso and GM are trying to “coordinate in an effort to streamline their responses” to the complaint. The complaint “involves potentially complex issues of law” arising under the AHRA, and several lawyers for the defendants have only recently joined the case “and thus have been working to familiarize themselves with the claims and defenses in the action,” the motion said. It was the second time Jackson has granted the defendants more time to answer the complaint.

The NFC Forum released a free white paper (http://bit.ly/1wLwwox) targeted to developers so they can give consumers “seamless access” to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi services using near-field communication (NFC), the group said Wednesday. The white paper describes the process for the connection handover capability built into the NFC technical spec that enables secure one-touch setup of NFC combined with high-speed, longer-distance communication of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, the forum said. Use cases include situations where the amount of data to be transferred is too large to be sent over NFC or when data is to be streamed for a longer time, the forum said. Examples include enabling audio streaming between a smartphone and speaker or headset, streaming between a smartphone and TV or the transfer of a photo from a digital camera to a smartphone over Wi-Fi, it said. NFC spokeswoman Ruth Cassidy told us the NFC Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group formed an alliance and jointly created a document that gives examples for simple, secure pairing of Bluetooth devices using NFC. “Wireless technology providers are increasingly turning to NFC to help ensure a positive user experience during device-to-device communications, whether pairing consumer electronics or enabling the Internet of Things,” said Koichi Tagawa, NFC Forum chairman, saying a revised application document will make it easier for developers to implement the two technologies. The NFC Forum also partnered with the Wi-Fi Alliance, and the latter recently added NFC to its Wi-Fi Protected Setup, which allows consumers to “tap-to-connect” to wireless networks using smartphones or tablets, Cassidy said. That capability enables devices including cameras, gaming devices, smart home appliances and thermostats to connect to networks with a single tap, she said.

Scottish hi-fi company Linn adopted a radically new approach for products it debuts, unveiled at a London briefing Tuesday. Its new Akurate Exaktbox corrects for room acoustics and speaker positioning, not just with all Linn speakers, but other brands of speakers as well, Linn said. For the London event, Linn’s demonstrators used a pair of B&W Nautilus speakers and Linn’s new compact Akudorik units. They acknowledged that they could not recall ever before demonstrating Linn hardware with a competitor’s product. The Akurate Exaktbox is software-configured, with a dropdown menu that lists all suitable speakers. The original analog crossover in the speaker is bypassed and the Akurate Exaktbox performs the crossover digitally and optimizes sound for the room. The speakers are run actively, with separate amplifiers for each drive unit. Linn claims this eliminates magnitude and phase distortion. The 24-bit/192 kHz signal is carried by Cat 5 cable, using a proprietary protocol -- Exakt Link -- rather than Ethernet. Ten channels of digital-to-analog conversion handle a stereo pair of speakers with five drivers each. Exaktbox has 13 inputs, including an RCA phono jack, such as for a turntable. Exakt Akudorik is a new compact speaker with the Exakt electronics housed in its floor-standing column. A pair costs nearly $29,000. The London demonstration showed Exakt to provide a clearly audible improvement in bass and imaging when the speakers were moved from the acoustically ideal but family-unfriendly position that is away from a room wall, to an acoustically un-ideal, but visually neater, position that is close to a wall.

The total cost of the Apple Watch’s plastic AMOLED display “is highly dependent on yield rates throughout the manufacturing and assembly process,” DisplaySearch said Wednesday in an emailed sales pitch for its Flexible Displays Technology and Market Forecast Report (http://bit.ly/1msRbgB). “Producing a high resolution AMOLED display alone is challenging,” the company said. “Add the processes for coating the flexible substrate on carrier glass, encapsulation, and laser-lift off and the module process becomes even more complicated.” Assuming a 60 percent yield rate, DisplaySearch estimates the Apple Watch’s display costs more than $27 on bill of materials terms, “depending on the costs of the module, touch panel interface, and cover lens.” For the Apple Watch, Apple is sourcing 1.3- and 1.5-inch AMOLEDs on plastic substrates from LG Display, a DisplaySearch blogger said last month, saying a big benefit of AMOLED on plastic is that it can be extremely thin, light and rugged (CED Aug 26 p6). DisplaySearch has estimated average yield rates above 60 percent would allow LG Display to produce more than 10 million AMOLED-on-plastic panels in 2014. Apple hasn’t given a precise release date on the Apple Watch, but has said it would debut the watch in early 2015 at $349 (CED Sept 10 p1).