ESPN will begin airing Monday Night Football in 3D beginning in 2014, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday, following the announcement of ESPN’s eight-year contract extension with the NFL, which includes 3D distribution rights. The multiplatform agreement also includes expanded NFL studio programming (beginning this week), highlight rights for TV and ESPN.com, the Pro Bowl, the NFL Draft, 3D rights, and enhanced international rights, ESPN said. The package of NFL rights supports ESPN’s “best available screen” strategy with NFL programs on TV, online and on mobile devices via authentication and digital rights, ESPN said. Rights also include simulcast network coverage of ESPN’s MNF and NFL studio programs on tablets through ESPN’s WatchESPN App, ESPN said. The agreement is international as well, including Super Bowl rights, for 30 million households in 144 countries including Brazil, the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Israel, Australia-New Zealand and Europe, ESPN said.
Former Sony and Pioneer exec Mike Fidler is returning to CEDIA in Indianapolis this week as chief marketing officer of In2Technologies, a manufacturer of an integrated sound system for flat-panel TVs. Fidler, who stepped down as CEO of DVR maker Digeo in 2008, is joined by Todd Beauchamp, president, formerly with Apple and Carver, the company said. In2 will be showing offsite at the Canterbury Hotel, by appointment only, the Unity audio system, which combines a three-piece stand with HDMI, subwoofer, audio system and a slot-loading disc player in the base, according to the invitation for a private viewing. Calling the Unity a “new category,” In2 said it’s designed to boost attach rates for audio after a TV sale, by “refining into a single buying decision the many steps usually needed to select components, a TV rack and speakers.” It’s designed to hold flat-panel TVs up to 60 inches, a company spokesperson told us.
With advances in cell phone cameras putting increasing pressure on standalone camera manufacturers to bring out compelling features at affordable price points, Samsung announced Wednesday at a new product launch in Manhattan two feature-packed $279 point-and-shoot models and an NX family compact system camera. “People see cell phones as a threat to the digital camera business,” Reid Sullivan, senior vice president of Samsung’s digital imaging business, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Representing a brand that has toes in both waters, Sullivan said camera phones have expanded consumers’ interest in taking pictures, and Samsung’s camera division sees the interest generated by cell phone cameras “as an opportunity” rather than a threat. The $279 MV800 camera is an ultra-compact point-and-shoot model with a flip-out 3-inch LCD viewfinder that adjusts to varying angles to facilitate high and low shots, said Tim Baxter, president of Samsung America. The 16-megapixel camera has a 5x optical zoom lens and 26mm wide-angle lens, he said. The camera has an app for 3D stills and a panorama function that can use different images to stitch together a shot, he said. The $279 12-megapixel WB750 point-and-shoot camera touts an 18x optical zoom lens and can capture stills at 10 frames per second in high-speed mode, Sullivan said. The camera can also capture Full HD video while recording 10-megapixel stills simultaneously, he said. The Action Panorama feature tracks a moving person or object with a static background to record movement within a single, still photo, the company said. The 20-megapixel NX200 compact camera system comes with an 18-55mm lens and is supported by nine NX lenses from Samsung, including four shipping this fall. Users can have direct control of ISO -- which ranges from 100-12800 -- from the viewfinder so they don’t have to take their eyes off the subject, Sullivan said. Suggested retail price is $900, he said. The NX200 takes Full HD video at 30 frames per second with the H.264 codec and has a 3.0 VGA AMOLED screen, the company said. Shipping for all three cameras begins later this month, the company said.
With a strong vested interest in supporting two PC categories, Lenovo executives downplayed the suggestion that tablets would cannibalize the ultraportable PC market, it said during a webcast. During the webcast, the company released additional details of an Android tablet previewed earlier this summer (CED July 21 p 1) -- including an aggressive $199 price tag -- and launched a trio of slim and light PCs based on Intel’s Ultrabook platform.
Despite a 3 percent drop in Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar store sales for fiscal Q1 2012, CEO William Lynch said in the company’s earnings call that the consolidation of the physical bookstore market has begun “in a meaningful way” and the company forecasts a 2-3 percent sales uptick for the fiscal year ending April 28. The turnaround is a direct result of increased store traffic from Borders’ liquidation of 200 stores, Lynch said, and Barnes & Noble’s expectation is to become the “bookstore of choice for those displaced customers.” With less competition, the company is forecasting this holiday season to deliver the most traffic Barnes & Noble stores have seen in 5 years, Lynch said. For Q1 2012, Barnes & Noble’s physical book business slipped 3 percent to $1 billion, with comparable store sales shaved by 1.6 percent for the quarter.
Barnes & Noble forecasts a 2-3 percent sales uptick for the fiscal year ending April 28, CEO William Lynch said in the company’s earnings call Wednesday. Barnes & Noble’s Nook digital segment -- including Nook content, hardware and related accessories -- continues to be a “rapidly growing business,” delivering $280 million revenue for Q2, he said. The company continues to plan to fuel growth in the “massive digital opportunity before us,” Lynch said. Gross margins from bn.com were 21 percent, up from 3.7 percent a year ago, he said. Attach rates are “slightly above plan,” Lynch said, saying Nook owners spend more at Barnes & Noble in total than they did prior to purchasing the reader. On the iPad and other devices, Lynch said ebook penetration has increased but he wouldn’t break out numbers. “The notion that customers will own just one device isn’t accurate,” and that’s borne out in purchase activity on iOS and Android devices, he said. Still, most Nook store downloads are purchased through bn.com, he said. Apps sales for Nook Color have exceeded company forecasts by 200 percent, Lynch said. Run rate is in the tens of millions, he said, with the company taking a 30 percent cut of each app sale. Hundreds of new apps are being added each month and the company plans to have thousands of apps shortly, he said.
After 15 years, with the Home Technology Specialists of America, including a name change, Richard Glikes, executive director, resigned Wednesday over a contract dispute and is looking to start a new buying group, Glikes told Consumer Electronics Daily. Glikes’ departure comes two weeks after the exit of David Berman, HTSA’s training director, to join Texas-based AV specialty store Stereo East. “I'd been paid the same salary for the last 5 years,” Glikes said, saying the board rejected his request for a salary increase and a 3-year contract.
Philips, Sharp, TCL and Toshiba “expressed support” for activities of the Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative, said a statement released Tuesday by Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Xpand. The initiative is intended to provide a technology standard for consumer 3D active shutter glasses, the consortium said. The standardization encompasses RF and IR protocols including M-3DI, proprietary protocols from Samsung and Sony and chips provided by Broadcom, Nordic and CSR (CED Aug 9 p1).
The push to smaller and lighter speakers is on a collision course with the meteoric price rise of neodymium magnets that make such compact speakers possible, speaker suppliers, OEMs and others close to the situation told Consumer Electronics Daily. They peg the surging price of neodymium -- a rare earth element used to make the extremely powerful magnets found in speaker drivers, microphones, cellphones, hybrid vehicle motors and many other products -- to Chinese government supply and demand tactics that are creating crisis conditions for speaker makers who depend heavily on the element that’s almost exclusively mined in China.
Micron’s strategic move to shift mix from DRAM to NAND memory is paying off, said CEO Steve Appleton during the webcast of Micron’s Summer Analyst Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Appleton said the company’s diversified portfolio, despite softness in its low-margin PC and consumer products business, “is very strong."