RANCHO BERNARDO, Calif. -- The increase in 3D movies scheduled for release in theaters this year only to 20 from 17 in 2009 implies that the studios are cautious “about producing a film and having no place to play it,” Sony Pictures Technologies President Chris Cookson told reporters at Sony Electronics’ headquarters Tuesday.

MUNICH -- Panasonic’s first 3D products for Europe will arrive in the spring, the company said Tuesday at its annual briefing for European reporters. The initial entries will comprise two plasma TVs and a Blu-ray 3D player. The announcement came a week after Panasonic said it would ship two plasma 3D sets for sale in Japan on April 23 (CED Feb 10 p1).

Lack of capacity and resources for recycling e-waste is hampering efforts in most African countries, said Environmental Technologies Analyst Derrick Chikanga of Frost & Sullivan. Unable to recycle all computer components, for instance, they must send hazardous materials from not only African computers but those shipped in from Europe to places like Malaysia for handling, he said. Nevertheless, the recycling market is starting to develop, with South Africa taking the lead, Chikanga and others said.

LONDON -- Toshiba touted power-saving notebook PCs, among other green products, at a briefing for European reporters last week. Besides its ‘Eco Utility’ tool for laptops, the company introduced a growing selection of LCD TVs with either energy-saving LED back-lighting or edge-lighting.

RANCHO BERNARDO, Calif. -- AV specialty retailers are “extremely important to the industry,” and will be “vital” to the success of home 3D, Sony Electronics Chief Marketing Officer Mike Fasulo told reporters in a briefing at Sony headquarters here Tuesday. His comments in Q-and-A came in the wake of last week’s demise of AV specialist MyerEmco and calls by the PRO Buying Group for vendors to be more specialist-friendly.

Consumers planning to buy a new TV and who deem it important in their purchase decisions to know the retailer’s policy on recycling an old set likely will get a mixed bag of responses when they bring their green questions to the sales floor, our rounds of electronics stores last week in the St. Louis area suggested. We mystery-shopped about a half-dozen stores in the area posing as flat-panel TV customers who didn’t want our 32-inch CRT set sent to landfill or shipped to unscrupulous recyclers. For us, we told salespeople who greeted us, responsible recycling of our old TV was as important a consideration as the price and installation costs of our new flat-panel set in deciding where we were going to buy.

Samsung will ship its first 3D-ready LCD TVs to retailers between Feb. 24 and March 10, retailers who were briefed on Samsung’s plans told Consumer Electronics Daily. Samsung executives didn’t respond right away to requests for comment.

The Design Innovate Create Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit in Las Vegas this week will be the first major game industry event of 2010 after a challenging 2009. “The good news” so far this year is that “some of the new IP that was launched … has performed well,” said Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. AIAS produces the annual event.

PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware sales increased in January from the same month a year ago, but that growth wasn’t enough to offset declines on every other hardware system, and Nintendo’s DS and Wii remained the best-selling systems, according to NPD sales data. Overall hardware sales tumbled 21 percent from January 2009 to $353.7 million, NPD said. Not surprisingly, sales of every system fell from December 2009, the height of the holiday season.

TV vendors squeezing credit and a bank unwilling to extend its loans ended MyerEmco’s 55-year run as a Baltimore-Washington area retailer, President Jon Myer told us in an interview Friday.