The EPA said it’s shutting down the Energy Star program for external power supplies and end-use products that use power supplies. The agency had sought comments on its proposal to terminate the program in June. Some stakeholders wanted to continue using the Energy Star label but they didn’t provide “compelling information contradicting the rationale to sunset” the program, said Ann Bailey, chief of the Energy Star labeling branch.

Unauthorized copying of Blu-ray Disc movies pales in comparison with that of DVDs but is “growing rapidly” and is “going to be a major concern in the next several years for content owners,” Michael Greeson, founding partner of the research firm Diffusion Group, said Tuesday at a Rovi-sponsored presentation in New York about infringement. Even with the rise of unauthorized sharing over peer-to-peer services, he said, DVD copying remains another significant threat to content owners.

SEATTLE -- Even with hundreds of millions of Internet users playing daily, the social games industry will be in trouble if it can’t up the percentage of users paying for premium features and services, Playdom CEO John Pleasants told the Casual Connect conference here Tuesday. The West is lagging Asian markets, where savvy companies have convinced users to buy subscriptions or make microtransactions, he said. Facebook may be the industry’s best hope with its Credits program, Pleasants said, while acknowledging the leverage that the massive social network has over game makers.

Seeking to plunge into the U.S. e-reader business, Sharp is in discussions with Verizon Wireless to carry in its stores devices based on Sharp’s eXtending Mobile Documents Format (XMDF) platform, a Sharp U.S. spokesman told us. A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman declined comment.

Republican senators seeking to limit FCC power over the Internet plan to introduce legislation Wednesday designed to stop the FCC from applying common carrier regulations to broadband, said telecom industry officials. Under the Freedom for Consumer Choice (FCC) Act, the commission couldn’t regulate unless it first showed harm to consumers from a lack of competition and it weighed the possible costs of action against the benefits. Passing the legislation is a long shot in the current political climate, telecom industry analysts said.

The former Koss Corp. executive indicted in January for embezzling $34 million from the company to buy herself expensive clothes, jewelry, cars and vacations (CED Feb 2 p1) will plead guilty to all six counts of wire fraud against her and pay “full restitution” for her crimes, says a plea agreement filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee. Company CEO Michael Koss didn’t respond to requests for comment about the plea agreement, and he hasn’t replied to numerous inquiries about how the crimes went on for five years without being discovered.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) pegged “UltraViolet” as the brand name for its cloud-based digital content management system, the consortium’s top executive told Consumer Electronics Daily. “I liked UltraViolet because it was outside the visible spectrum,” Mitch Singer, DECE president and chief technology officer at Sony Pictures Entertainment, told us. “Wherever you go, it’s always there.”

3D Tile, the 3D broadcasting technology that Sisvel, an Italian company, plans to showcase at next month’s IFA show in Berlin (CED July 16 p7), builds on the company’s previous work with another Italian company, 3DSwitch. That collaboration produced a system that lets a TV set recognize the 3D format in which source material was coded, while detecting whether viewers are wearing 3D glasses. So a 3D TV can automatically show 2D content when viewers aren’t wearing stereographic glasses, and it immediately switches to 3D when viewers put the glasses on.

U.S. wholesale TV revenue will fall to $22.5 billion this year from $26 billion in 2008, despite a rise in unit sales to 37 million from 31 million, as retailers continue a price war, PRO Group Executive Director David Workman told Citigroup investors Monday in a conference call.

Bowers & Wilkins became the latest high-end loudspeaker manufacturer to rock the specialty retailing world, when it announced Monday that it will begin selling “a significant portion” of its product portfolio through the three levels of Magnolia retail outlets, including Magnolia Home Theater stores in Best Buy outlets.