SEATTLE -- Prime View International’s subsidiary E Ink will deliver its first color electrophoretic displays (EPDs) to OEM customers late this year, Prime View Executive Vice President T.H. Peng told us at the Society for Information Display conference. Based on that timing, Prime View thinks the first EPD-based color e-readers will reach store shelves by early 2011, Peng said. Peng spoke as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was telling shareholders at the company’s annual meeting Tuesday that a color-display Kindle e-reader was “still a ways out” (CED May 26 p3).

SEATTLE -- U.S sales of 3D TV sales will hit 4 million sets this year, much higher than its late-2009 estimates of just more than 1 million sets, the company said Wednesday at the IMS TV 3.0 seminar at the Society for Information Display conference. The impending release of Blu-ray 3D movies and the debut of dedicated 3D channels like ESPN 3D is spurring Samsung to upgrade its forecast, said John Revie, senior vice president of product marketing for home entertainment.

CE makers building 2D-to-3D conversion chips into their 3D TVs and studios converting legacy 2D program content to 3D have been understandably secretive about the techniques they're using or studying to reproduce simulated 3D from 2D video. But published patents reveal a wealth of more detailed information than manufacturers and studios are willing to share about the 2D-to-3D conversion techniques that are available.

The federal appeals court that granted en banc review of a decision enforcing TiVo’s patents against Dish Network appears interested in bigger-picture questions about patent law rather than the details of the case, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said Tuesday on the company’s Q2 earnings call. “They clearly are looking at these broader policy questions,” Roger said. “And if you believe that our case is strong, when it comes to the facts and the patent, we think it only becomes a more compelling case when it comes to these policy issues.” The policy question at issue is how long it should take to enforce an injunction over a patent when the infringer claims to have made changes to its product that mean it no longer infringes the patents, Rogers said.

Nearly a year after the analog TV cutoff, some consumers who made the switch to DTV with a government-subsidized converter box have complained their set-top suddenly stopped working. Reviews for some boxes still being sold online vary, with some buyers claiming certain brands of boxes broke down within six months of installation.

Amazon remains upbeat about its Kindle business and is unfazed by the growing number of competing devices with LCD screens including the iPad, CEO Jeff Bezos told a shareholders meeting in Seattle Tuesday.

SEATTLE -- Long described as awaiting their debut just over the horizon, OLED TVs at long last will arrive in 30- to 40-inch screen sizes by 2013 as manufacturers scale up production and resolve product life expectancy and production issues, industry executives said at the Society for Information Display (SID) conference.

Sony named former Vaio PC executive Mike Abary to head its core CE operations as it lays the groundwork for launching Google TV-based products in the fall. Abary, most recently senior vice president of Sony’s IT Division, assumes a new post that will oversee the company’s sprawling TV, home AV and connected home products groups, the company said.

Natural Resources Canada rejected a proposal by TV manufacturers to accept the FTC’s proposed energy use label for TVs instead of its own. Sets will resemble bulletin boards if countries and jurisdictions mandate their own energy use labels for the sets, TV makers told NRCan. The Canadian agency is proposing an EnerGuide label for TVs along the lines of the EnergyGuide label being considered by the FTC. Besides the FTC, California is requiring its own energy use label, the manufacturers said on a conference call. Since what Canada is proposing is similar to what the U.S. is considering, “we question the reason for having two labels,” a Sony representative said.

Trans World Entertainment completed its restructuring, having closed 133 unprofitable f.y.e., Suncoast Motion Picture Co. and Saturday Matinee stores to shrink the chain to 576 outlets, Chief Financial Officer John Sullivan told us.