Thiel Audio’s addition last week of Amazon to its roster of authorized retailers has left dealers in the speaker maker’s struggling brick-and-mortar AV specialty base gloomy and anxious about the impact of additional online competition, say merchants canvassed by Consumer Electronics Daily. “I was warned it might happen about three to four months ago,” said Tom Wells, president of Integrated Media Systems in Sterling, Va., typifying other specialty retailers. “But I still don’t understand it."

The Department of Justice has sent numerous demands for information about Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal to companies in various sectors, asking many questions about programming seen on TV and over the Internet and set-top boxes and for several years’ worth of data, industry executives and lawyers said.

The Colder’s purchase of Flanner’s Home Entertainment gives new life to the CE specialty retailer two months after it closed its doors in a climate not well-suited to AV specialists. The four-store Colder’s paid $140,000 for Flanners’ name and inventory and the lease on its Brookfield, Wis., store, according to court records. Colder’s, which sells furniture, major appliances and CE, plans to reopen Flanner’s 26,000-square-foot store by fall as a prelude to adding smaller outlets in southeastern Wisconsin, Colder’s executive Randy Felker told us. Details of the expansion haven’t been nailed down, but stores probably will be about the size of Flanner’s 14,000-square-foot showroom, since Colder’s will warehouse inventory, Felker said.

CTIA questioned whether the FCC can get complete, accurate data if it moves forward on a proposal to test mobile broadband speeds. AT&T called measuring the speeds a “daunting task” more difficult than testing fixed connections, as the commission plans to do in a study to be run by SamKnows. Verizon Wireless questioned what would be gained if the FCC “involves itself” in performance testing. But Google encouraged the FCC to push forward, saying accurate information is critical to consumers.

The U.K. government is distancing itself from the controversial 2015 date for an analog radio switch-off and making clear that the cutoff date came from the broadcast industry, not public officials. A 2015 cutoff “is the target that the industry thinks is achievable,” Ed Vaizey, minister for culture, communications and creative industries, told a conference Thursday. “That date is not set in stone. It will have to be driven by listeners."

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sony’s 3D TVs are better than Panasonic’s or Samsung’s, Sony executives said in a media briefing Wednesday. Though the executives in their spoken remarks avoided mentioning their rivals by name, a flyer they handed out specifically slammed Panasonic and Samsung 3D TVs as inferior to Sony’s on picture stability, brightness and energy efficiency.

Tight supply of active-matrix OLEDs (AMOLEDs) is forcing some smartphone vendors to return to LCDs for the main display, as OLED producers scramble to keep up with demand, said industry officials and iSuppli.

YES Network has added seven distributors to the list of those showing the first Major League Baseball games to be televised in 3D, between the New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners this weekend. Joining in the telecast with DirecTV, a co-sponsor of the event along with Panasonic, are Blue Ridge Communications, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox, Service Electric, Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS. The game is being played in Seattle, but the feed is being offered only to current YES Network affiliates in the Yankee’s home-team TV viewing territory.

LONDON -- Converting 2D content to 3D “can never be as good as original 3D, but it can be very good,” Martin Brennand of specialist post-production company Imagineer Systems told the British Kinematograph Sound and TV Society at a Monday briefing. “There is a huge back catalog of material that is good for conversion and the value of sales outweighs the cost of the work,” Brennand said.

As MTI Micro Fuel Cells field tests its methanol micro fuel cells for external charger applications for handheld CE and other devices, the company will also look at getting feedback from device makers about fuel cells for embedded applications in smart phones and other systems, CEO Peng Lim said. The company started in June a $1.5 million testing program for its fuel cells for universal charger applications with support from the Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.