Inventories “vary by store,” but Best Buy “has been receiving regular iPad shipments in the U.S.” since the device launched in April, a spokesman for the retailer said Tuesday, disputing an analyst’s claim. Best Buy stores “have not gotten a new shipment of iPads in weeks,” BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk had said. “Some have told us that there has been no re-fresh since the initial weekend but we were not able to verify this information,” he said.

SEATTLE -- The battle to deliver wireless HD video is expanding to PCs from CE products as the technology widens its reach from dongles to embedded technology, industry executives said at the Society for Information Display conference.

A divided federal appeals court said Vizio’s “work around” digital TVs don’t infringe Funai patents. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upends a ban last year by the International Trade Commission, a federal agency, on imports of Vizio DTV sets on grounds that they infringed Funai’s channel-mapping patents. Funai sued Vizio, Amtran, which assembles TV for Vizio, and 12 other companies on infringement allegations three years ago.

A recent decision by a federal judge in New York setting the royalties MobiTV is to pay ASCAP for use of songs that are part of the TV programming it distributes over wireless networks has brought a level of certainty to the mobile TV field and should help spur future business deals, MobiTV CEO Charlie Nooney said. “It’s a real watershed moment for the industry,” he said. “It puts mobile in the same category as cable TV or satellite TV, where it should be."

The FTC should reject CE industry proposals to make electronics energy-use labeling for TVs an alternative to physical labels, environmental groups said. Citing shrinking or disappearing bezels in new TVs and the potential for physical labels to cause damage to the surface of TV sets, some TV makers and the CEA had urged the commission to allow electronic labeling as an option, the green groups said in comments. The FTC has started a rulemaking to require EnergyGuide labeling for TVs.

Sony will expand sales of its Reader devices to Australia, China, Italy, Japan and Spain by year-end, it said Thursday. Sony will disclose “general availability, local pricing and pre-order dates … at a later date” for the new markets, the company said. Separately, Acer disclosed plans about its first e-reader, the LumiRead, also without pricing and ship dates.

Building 2D-to-3D conversion into 3D TVs may be controversial, but it’s a commercially needed hedge against the lack of available 3D content, a Samsung engineer told us in the company’s European labs Tuesday near Yately, Hampshire, in the U.K.

Hhgregg continues on a faster-than-expected track to become a national CE retailer, as it pounces on opportunities created by attractive real estate terms and other advantageous competitive conditions, CEO Dennis May said Thursday on its Q4 earnings call. The company opened 26 stores this quarter, including in the previously uncharted Baltimore and Philadelphia markets this month alone, and remains on course to open 40-45 stores this fiscal year, May said.

STANFORD, Calif. -- The State Department’s communications technology strategist pointed toward a generational solution for China’s restrictions on Internet use, rather than any short-term fix. “Demographics are destiny,” Alec Ross, the department’s innovation adviser, said late Wednesday at Stanford University. Of China’s 400 million Internet users, half are younger than 25 and “that number is going to go far higher,” he said. As it does, and the young people age, they'll demand freedom online from their government, Ross said.

SEATTLE -- As 3D TVs begin filling retail shelves, lack of content and interoperable 3D glasses are among the biggest sales hurdles that seem unlikely to go away soon, dealers said during the IMS TV 3.0 seminar at the Society for Information Display conference.