WASHINGTON—The revelation of additional FCC documents has shined more light on the Android TV-based CPE that T-Mobile might soon be deploying for its revamped TVision pay-TV service.

An FCC filing from Chinese vendor SEI Robotics reveals that the newly revised TVision might be based on an HDMI dongle similar to the one SEI Robotics supplies to Dish Network for the satellite TV company’s AirTV Mini Android TV-powered product. 

How similar? The user manual included in the filing is for the $80 AirTV Mini (see image below).

Last week, 9to5 Google unearthed a January T-Mobile filing that revealed a new TVision-branded remote control, one that indicates that the revised service will be based on Android TV. 

T-Mobile acquired Denver-based startup pay-TV company Layer3 TV for $325 million at the beginning of 2018. With the imminent departure of T-Mobile Chief Content Officer Lindsay Gardner, Layer3 TV’s top executives have all moved on. T-Mobile rebranded the Layer3 TV service as TVision some time ago, but it has not expanded the $90-a-month, 154-channel service beyond its limited footprint of New York, L.A., Chicago and several other big cities. 

TVision’s tech platform has reportedly been revised, and T-Mobile is said to be ready to nationally deploy its revamped TVision service as part of fixed wireless 5G service when the disruption of the pandemic lifts. 

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.—Dish has unveiled the latest edition of its cord-cutting AirTV brand with the new Wi-Fi enabled network tuner, AirTV 2. This new model is designed to wirelessly deliver free local over-the-air channels to connected devices, smartphones and tablets whether in or out of the house.

AirTV 2 comes equipped with a 802.11ac 2x2 dual-band Wi-Fi system and features a compact design and wireless capability to be placed anywhere. The tuner can connect to a digital antenna and a wireless or wired network, providing two live streams of digitally transmitted OTA content simultaneously; two can be viewed inside the home, one outside the home. By connecting to an external hard drive, AirTV can also record up to two local channels simultaneously and access them in and out of the home.

When using the AirTV 2, consumers can access local channels from ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS through the Sling app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and iOS and Android devices. Customers can also integrate local channels directly into their Sling channel guide.

AirTV 2 is now available at a price of $99.99. It is also available through bundle offers to new Sling TV customers. For more information, visit AirTV.net or Sling.com.

Looking build a full, robust pay TV feature set into its Sling TV streaming ecosystem, Dish Network today announced that it’s adding DVR functionality to its AirTV device.

The upgrade is free to AirTV users but it will require them to purchase an external USB hard drive up to 2 terabytes in size.

The new “Local Channels DVR” will let Air TV users record and watch local channels, both in the home and away, using the newly upgraded Sling TV app. Notably, Air TV users don’t have to have a subscription to the Sling TV virtual MVPD service to use the Local Channels DVR feature.

AirTV’s dual tuner lets users record up to two shows at once, with live and recorded content viewable from any device supported by the Sling TV app. The Local Channels DVR will show up next to the Cloud DVR content area of the app.

Sling TV is the most widely distributed vMVPD on the market, with more than 2.3 million users. And its $20-a-month base tier is among the least expensive, eschewing local broadcast channels.

Dish is trying to work around that with AirTV, a $120 device that sits on the users Wi-Fi network and connects to an over-the-air antenna. Through the user’s Wi-Fi network, the device streams local channels to mobile and OTT devices, both in and out of the home, that have the Sling TV app.

Dish has not disclosed how many AirTV devices it has sold.

"The Local Channels DVR rounds out the complete cord-cutting experience for those wanting to integrate free local channels and DVR with a streaming service like Sling TV," said Mitch Weinraub, director of product development for AirTV, in a statement. "Millions of Americans are embracing over-the-air antennas as part of their cord-cutting solution, and the ability to take their live and recorded content in and out of home with AirTV's Local Channels DVR is just an added bonus."

Dish Network’s Dish DBS Corp. officially launched its AirTV service Wednesday, an over-the-top, over-the-air service that gives customers access to dozens of over-the-air broadcast channels across multiple devices inside and outside of the home.

Dish originally introduced AirTV late last year in a limited soft launch of the device to test consumer interest. The company had also earlier debuted the AirTV Player, an Android TV based streaming device that allowed access to over-the-air content as well as Netflix, YouTube and apps on Google Play. The AirTV Player is still available – Dish also officially launched a cloud DVR for that product Wednesday, which it beta-tested earlier this year.

The AirTV is a sleek portable box that connects directly to a home broadband connection utilizing Dish’s Slingbox technology to offer broadcast content both at home and on the go.

With AirTV, free local channels, like ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and PBS, are available for viewing via the Sling TV or AirTV app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and iOS and Android phones and tablets. Local channel availability depends on the OTA signal availability at the user’s home location. In many major markets, customers can receive 50 or more local channels for free.

[Read: Sling’s AirTV Expected To Blend OTA + OTT]

There is no monthly charge for AirTV. Customers just have to buy the equipment, which retails for $119.99 and the service can be integrated into an existing SlingTV subscription – meshing with the customers other pay TV channels – or as a standalone. Customers don’t have to subscribe to Sling TV to use the Sling TV app for the broadcast service.

“Customers can mount their antenna connected to AirTV wherever the signal is strongest, whether it’s tucked away in an attic or hidden behind the living room TV,” AirTV director of product development Mitch Weinraub said. “AirTV wirelessly streams to AirTV-enabled devices visible to a home Wi-Fi network, so there’s no longer a need to run cables across the home to get OTA signals.”

Existing Sling TV users can integrate AirTV directly into their accounts. Customers can also set up a free Sling TV account to access their local channels via AirTV, or create a free account with the stand-alone AirTV app.

The AirTV device also eliminates the need to wire multiple rooms with individual antennas – the box connects devices and TVs throughout the house via WiFi connection. The AirTV box also can be located anywhere in the house – making for optimal antenna placement – and up to two streams are available inside the home. One of those streams can be viewed outside of the home.

Weinraub said SlingTV hasn’t offered broadcast channels in the past specifically because of the cost and hassle for customers. Local broadcast channels can be pricey – he estimated that the typical pay TV customer spends between $10 and $15 per month to receive broadcast stations via their pay TV subscription.

“That’s a lot of money,” Weinraub said. “Our goal is to not make them pay that when they don’t have to.”

The device also helps Sling TV avoid retransmission consent fees – the national service has no carriage deals with local broadcast channels. Customers who buy an AirTV box also have to buy an antenna – which can vary in size from shelf units to roof-top mounted devices and can be purchased separately or through professional installers -- to access channels for free over the air.

The AirTV box is available for purchase on Amazon.com, through regional retailers like Microcenter and via the AirTV website. Weinraub said Dish is talking to other retailers like BestBuy and hopes the equipment will be available through their stores soon.

With about 14 million homes without a pay TV subscription and more and more households cutting the cord every day, Weinraub said AirTV believes the market is ripe for the product. And he added that most customers don’t understand the level of content that is available for free over the air. In addition to the major broadcast networks ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, My Network TV, the CW and PBS stations, some metro markets have 50 or more digital channels available, ranging from station-affiliated networks like MeTV and Acorn TV and movie channels and lifestyle channels. In the New York area alone, 72 channels are available over the air in SD and HD quality. Customers can determine which channels are available in their areas via the AirTV website. 

ENGLEWOOD, COLO.—AirTV, a subsidiary of Dish that’s focused on products for pay TV cord-cutters, has released a “Local Channels DVR” beta for the Android TV-powered AirTV Player that enables users to record shows from over-the-air broadcast TV channels.

The free beta, open to all AirTV Player customers, requires that customers purchase and connect an external storage device to record OTA channels from broadcasters such as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. That feature adds to Sling TV’s in-app Cloud DVR service. Dish’s Sling TV OTT TV service has been integrated with the AirTV Player, a product that was introduced in January 2017, but a subscription to Sling TV is not required for the Local Channels DVR offering.

The beta for the AirTV Player also includes an integrated DVR menu, with recorded OTA content appearing in the same menu as Sling TV Cloud DVR recordings. AirTV Player users can record one show at a time and set single-episode or series recordings via the menu.

The DVR beta is emerging as Dish’s AirTV unit faces off with competitors, including Channel Master, Nuvyyo/Tablo and TiVo, that have also developed OTA/OTT combo devices tailored for cord-cutters.

AirTV recommends several storage devices, such as the SanDisk Ultra 128 GB Thumb Drive, SanDisk Cruzer Glide 64 GB and 128 GB Thumb Drive, Western Digital My Passport or Easy Store 1 TB Hard Drive, and Seagate Expansion 500 GB Hard Drive. AirTV also notes that while USB thumb drives work for recording and playback, a hard drive is recommended for “optimal performance.”

AirTV also lists out several limitations for the new DVR beta. Among them, recordings are not playable until the program has completely finished recording (though users can continue to each the channel live as the recording is being made); recordings canceled before completion of the program will not be saved to the DVR; and recordings are only viewable via the AirTV Player where the recordings were made (i.e. they can’t be transferred to another device or played back on another AirTV Player), and rescanning for local channels will also remove all future recordings.

[AirTV Player First Product From AirTV]

"AirTV continuously pushes to meet consumer demand for a better cord cutting and OTA experience," Mitch Weinraub, director of product development for AirTV, said in a statement. “With the introduction of Local Channels DVR and the existing Sling TV Cloud DVR on AirTV Player, customers can now watch and record both OTA and OTT programs, imitating traditional pay-TV for a fraction of the cost."

Update: Dish confirmed that the new DVR beta program is only for the AirTV Player, and not for a newer AirTV box that was soft-launched late last year that lets users access and stream OTA TV channels in and out of the home.

This story originally appeared on TVT's sister publication Multichannel News.   

PARIS—AirTV, which was recently introduced by EchoStar, has announced that its first product is now available, the Android TV streaming device AirTV Player. Constructed by Technicolor, the AirTV Player features built-in Wi-Fi capability and the ability to integrate free local over-the-air channels with streaming services.

The AirTV Player can be used with the AirTV Adapter and an OTA antenna for live streaming and video-on-demand shows, as well as providing access to OTA TV channels. In addition, consumers can access the Sling TV OTT video platform and games and applications from the Google Play Store.

The AirTV Player is also capable of delivering 4K content.

AirTV Player is now available at AirTV.net.

WASHINGTON—EchoStar has been given the greenlight to import, market and sell its AirTV system by the FCC. The Commission issued an opinion and order last week that found the AirTV, which is targeted at cord-cutters and reportedly support over-the-air digital TV signals and over-the-top content, is “capable of adequately receiving all channels allocated by the Commission to the television broadcast service.”

Read the full story on TVT’s sister publication, Multichannel News.

BETHESDA, MD.—“AirTV,” an anticipated Echostar Sling Media service that will deliver live local TV programs plus streamed video, is expected to debut imminently, again. An Echostar spokeswoman declined to provide details or a timetable regarding the hybrid product, which apparently treads where Aereo legally stumbled in carriage of local broadcast TV channels. But she did not disavow independently published reports about AirTV, which apparently combines the IP-based “slinging” capacity of DISH’s SlingTV (an Echostar subsidiary) and Echostar’s own Sling Media unit.

Stories about AirTV have been bruited around since “coming soon” offers for the $149 receiver device began appearing on Amazon and B&H PhotoVideo websites several months ago. Those listings are no longer visible on the ecommerce sites or at Echostar’s own site. A company website that presumably explains the antenna service—www.airtv.net/antennas— was behind a customer firewall at deadline time.

Melodie VirtueSTRANGE BEDFELLOWS?
Analysts expect that the AirTV receiver, which would connect to an OTA antenna and home network, will handle broadcast tuning and also streaming content to be directed to smart TVs and wireless devices in the home.

Increasing chatter about AirTV coincided with a DISH announcement in August that it will support efforts by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the National Association of Broadcasters, Antennas Direct and TVfreedom.org to give away free OTA antennas. Although Echostar subsidiary DISH operates separately from the Echostar AirTV venture, there is believed to be extensive coordination between the two companies for this convergent venture.

“Complementing the pay-TV experience, which includes the increasing adoption of streaming services like Sling TV... is good business and may drive a solution to the otherwise compounding problem of ever-rising retransmission consent fees for local TV,” said Warren Schlichting, DISH executive vice president of marketing/programming/media sales.

SlingTV monthly pricing is about $20 for single-stream service, with additional fees for larger tiers. Again, Echostar declined to indicate what a bundled product would cost consumers.

A spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, which reveled at the defeat of the Aereo venture two years ago, declined to comment about the AirTV proposal.

Several telecom and electronics blogs posted sketchy reports about AirTV in late summer, suggesting that the device works with an antenna and SlingTV’s app to carry over-the-air local channels plus Sling TV’s over-the-top streaming video. The stories speculated that the service would include a program guide and possibly other add-ons, but not a digital video recorder. Dave Zatz, who covers cord-cutting at his ZatzNotFunny site (http://zatznotfunny.com) observed that a Spring debut may have been postponed because of limited retailer interest in selling the $150 device. Later speculation focused on a September launch. The Echostar spokeswoman repeatedly told TV Technology in late September that “We don’t have anything to share at this time.”

AVOID AEREO PITFALLS
Kevin Goldberg, an attorney specializing in first amendment and intellectual property issues at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, a Washington, D.C. law firm, observed that the AirTV proposal seems to “work into the gray area of the Aereo case.” In June 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo, a television streaming service, violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas at a central location and then delivering them via the internet to subscribers for a fee.

“The justices seemed sympathetic if the device had been entirely in the home,” Goldberg told TV Technology. He speculated that Echostar may differentiate itself by “setting it up entirely in the home” rather than at a remote location, which was Aereo’s architecture.

“Transmitting signals into the subscriber’s home” may make the difference, he explained. Goldberg also observed that a “live only” solution would likely placate the Supreme Court’s apparent concern about the DVR record and playback functions. While such programming could be “slung” using Sling’s AirTV set-top box via IP to consumer viewing devices (such as a smart TV, smartphones or tablets), the activity would be entirely run at the consumer’s premises. But he fretted that “there may still be a problem... for out-of-home transmissions.”

“The biggest impediment is that the Copyright Office has been clear that it will not treat internet systems as cable TV,” he said, adding that live sports events would be a primary usage for this function.

Separately, in mid-September, SlingTV (which is run by DISH) added two more ESPN-owned sports networks to its line-up: ESPN3, a multi-platform online channel that carries games not usually transmitted on the primary ESPN networks; and ESPN’s SEC Network, the Southeastern Conference college sports channel. Earlier in the month, SlingTV picked up the streaming signals of six regional feeds from the Pac-12 Networks, which collectively offer live coverage of more than 800 sporting events.

Although this collection of college sports programming is large but limited, the streamed channels provide a base of popular sports content.

LINING UP CONTENT
Sling has begun carrying about two dozen Fox Network Group channels earlier this year, including local broadcast stations in 17 markets plus Fox regional sports networks. At the time, a SlingTV official said he expected to add more Fox affiliates later this year.

Analysts have pointed out that the deals with broadcasters may assuage DISH’s frequent uneasy relationship with group owners during transmission consent negotiations.

Marrying SlingTV to OTA signals already exists on an ad hoc basis. Antenna maker Channel Master, which calls itself a “DVR for cord cutters,” integrated SlingTV into its hardware earlier this year, using Echostar technology.

Melodie Virtue, a broadcast and internet attorney at the Garvey Schubert Barer law firm in Washington, also agreed that compared to Aereo, AirTV “will have a better argument if it’s confined to the home” and OTA signals are picked up directly at the consumer premises. But she warned that, “It’s hard to know without knowing how it’s configured.” She expects that, “whatever they’re doing will get pushback from the networks.” But Virtue cautioned that networks and local stations “have their own copyright fees to worry about.” She speculated that AirTV might “need to get additional clearances” for its plan, but warned that it is inappropriate to speculate about the structure until details are presented.

WASHINGTON—In response to a petition filed by EchoStar to the FCC on Oct. 7 that the Commission waive Section 15.117(b) of its rules, which requires broadcast receives to be capable of receiving all channels allocated by the Commission to the television broadcast service until Aug. 31, 2017, the FCC is now requesting comments from the industry. EchoStar wants to waive this rule to allow it to import, market, distribute and sell its AirTV, an internet-enabled set-top box that does not include analog tuners.

Comments may be filed using the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System, or sent in by hand or messenger delivery, commercial overnight courier, or the U.S. Postal Service. Hand delivered filings must be sent to 445 12th St., SW, Room TW-A325, Washington D.C., 20554. Commercial overnight delivery must be sent to 9300 East Hampton Drive, Capitol Heights, Md., 20743. U.S. Postal Service filings must be sent to 445 12th St., SW, Washington D.C., 20554.

The Comment filing deadline is Oct. 26. The Reply Comment deadline will be on Nov. 2.

For more information, contact Brendan Murray at Brendan.Murray@fcc.gov or 202-418-1573.