Crestron joined the AVnu Alliance, becoming the industry consortium’s 65th member and its first home control and automation company, the alliance said Thursday. AVnu certifies audio video bridging (AVB) products for interoperability, and the addition of Crestron “furthers the progression of AVB in professional audio/video and residential market,” the alliance said in a news release. It’s seeing “accelerated momentum for AVB across a breadth of markets including professional A/V, automotive, and residential with member companies working together to drive AVnu-certified devices as the highest performance, most reliable, more flexible, and more affordable market solutions,” it said. It’s seeing “growing momentum in all market segments,” it said. The alliance is testing AVB-enabled networking devices at its appointed testing house, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory, and has “many products in the certification process,” it said.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether to accept cert on broadcasters’ case against Aereo will likely be announced Jan. 13, said a blog post on the Fletcher Heald website (http://bit.ly/1eYALs4). Though the matter is listed on the Supreme Court website as set for conference Jan. 10, the results of such conferences are typically announced on the next available court date, said Fletcher Heald appellate attorney Harry Cole in an email. The next court date following the conference is Jan. 13. Broadcasters want the Supreme Court to overturn the decision of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to grant a preliminary injunction against Aereo’s streaming TV service (CD Oct 15 p15) . The cert petition was distributed to the justices on Dec. 24 (CD Jan 2 p9). Four justices would have to vote in favor of taking the case for cert to be granted, said Cole. “We don’t know for sure that all nine Justices will participate, since one or more recusals are always possible,” said Cole in the blog post.

Consumer spending on video entertainment in the U.K. remained flat for 2013 at 2.2 billion pounds due to the continuing overall decline in packaged media, the British Video Association reported Tuesday. “Video entertainment is still dominated by physical formats,” with more than 162.2 million units sold in 2013, the BVA said. On monetary terms, discs represented 73 percent of the total video retail and rental commerce for the year, it said. But retail spending on packaged media fell 6.8 percent to 1.4 billion pounds and rental spending for physical discs declined 24 percent to 197 billion pounds, it said. DVD unit sales fell by 11.5 percent, “as video audiences changed their mix of format use,” including a 12.4 percent increase in Blu-ray unit sales and a growing “ownership” of content bought through digital delivery, it said. Blu-ray sales on a monetary basis jumped 10 percent for the year, the BVA said, without giving a monetary breakout. The 40.2 percent rise in revenue from digital video entertainment to 621 million pounds “reflects the growing number of people who are using connected devices and the increasing ease of access to video services in and out of the home, driven by the strong demand for the smaller tablets and jumbo smart TVs,” the BVA said. “Current estimates suggest that over 10 million tablets have been sold this year alone, alongside 1.8 million smart TVs, as new models are launched and the prices of digital technology continue to fall.” Digital delivery accounted for 27 percent of overall spending for the year, the BVA said. The 2013 results “demonstrate that the millions of people who bought video titles as Christmas presents are joined by millions more who just love watching video all year round, in both physical and digital formats,” said Lavinia Carey, the BVA’s director general.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether to grant cert on broadcasters’ case seeking an injunction against Aereo during a conference on Jan. 10, according to the court’s website (http://1.usa.gov/19EQqoS). The broadcasters asked the high court to overturn the decision of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not to grant a preliminary injunction against Aereo’s streaming TV service (CD Oct 15 p15). In December, Aereo filed a response supporting the broadcasters’ request for the court to take up the matter (CD Dec 13 p10). “We want this resolved on the merits rather than through a wasteful war of attrition,” said Aereo in a release. The cert petition was distributed to the justices on Dec. 24, said the court website.