GENEVA -- The U.S., Japan and Taiwan won in a World Trade Organization dispute over European duties as high as 14 percent on some information technology gear covered under the Information Technology Agreement for tariff-free treatment, officials said. About $44 billion in global exports of set-top boxes, LCD panels and multi-function printers is at stake in the agreement. Questions linger over the possible future tariffs on consumer goods that continue to evolve and incorporate communications and other functions.

Gefen, a supplier of home theater accessories for custom installation, is heading to the CEDIA show next month hoping to broaden dealer support for a new approach to multi-room audio/video distribution to address needs not being met in the market by existing multi-room AV solutions. “We wanted better control over HDMI signal path,” said CEO Hagai Gefen, citing challenges and “a lot of confusion” over the implementation of HDMI. “The main issue is the way everybody is conceiving audio/video distribution -- that the signal goes through the [AV receiver],” he said.

The CE and wireless industries are concerned that a potential settlement of a disagreement over whether terrestrial stations ought to pay royalties when they air music could include requirements of chips to allow cellphones to get radio broadcasts, executives favoring and opposing a deal told us. The pact on the table would bypass the Performance Rights Act -- which broadcasters worry could pass over their opposition in the waning days of this Congress -- but it isn’t a done deal, broadcast industry officials said. There appears to be wide support among broadcasters for the deal, our survey found.

Blockbuster continues to “face extremely challenging conditions” and may still be forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it said in a 10-Q filing Friday with the SEC. The chain could also be forced into a Chapter 7 liquidation, it said.

LG and Panasonic are jumping into the 3D TV bundling wars, joining Sony and Samsung in what promises to be a promotional fall selling season, retailers said. Panasonic’s promotion, which launches Aug. 28, will package a 3D TV kit: two pairs of 3D glasses, a Blu-ray player and two movies, Universal’s Coraline and Fox’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, with the VT25 series of 50 ($2,599), 54 ($2,999), 58 ($3,399) and 65 inch ($4,299) 3D plasma TVs. The sets are already being bundled with glasses, so three pairs will be available in the promotion, which runs through September, retailers said.

U.S. videogame industry sales were a mixed bag in July, according to NPD sales data. The gloomiest results were for handheld game systems. The DS and PSP were the only systems whose sales declined from a month and a year earlier.

An FCC proposal to require that all pay-TV providers let devices connect to their networks by 2012 without complicated or expensive equipment such as CableCARDs and get online video drew fears of content unbundling from cable programmers, telco-TV, direct broadcast satellite providers and cable operators. AT&T, Cablevision, NCTA, Verizon and a group of seven major media companies that own cable networks were among those voicing fears that the so-called AllVid regime could lead to disaggregation of video content.

BALTIMORE -- Polk Audio launched sales of DXi 12-volt products through Best Buy, giving its car audio national distribution lacking since Circuit City’s demise, Polk executives told us Wednesday. The 17 DXi products, including amplifiers, subwoofers and speakers, reached Best Buy’s stores about three weeks ago, they said.

A deal between Cox Communications and TiVo will bring the cable operator’s VoD programming to some broadband-connected DVRs. A Cox digital TV customer who buys a TiVo Premiere box and broadband service from Cox will be able to access its VoD programming menus next year, the companies said Thursday. The service will be limited to customers who take both cable TV and broadband from Cox because requests from the TiVo box to the cable headend will be handled on the cable operator’s upstream Internet connection, Cox Vice President Steve Necessary said in an interview. When a customer makes a VoD request from a TiVo box, a signal will leave the box through the Ethernet port and travel through the cable modem up the Cox broadband path to equipment from SeaChange that will translate it for Cox’s VoD servers, he said.

Broadcasters’ future with mobile DTV is “up in the air,” Gray TV CEO Bob Prather told investors Thursday. He said the formation at this year’s NAB show of Pearl Mobile DTV with just nine large station groups divided station owners. “There’s now a split between those guys and the rest of us out there,” he said. “It’s delayed us from coming up with a plan overall. At this point mobile DTV is in flux.” The technology works, and Prather remains optimistic about it, but “it may be delayed a little longer than I initially thought,” he said.