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'Bring Your Own Glasses'
Videogames to Help Drive 3D Penetration, ESPN’s Pagano Says
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — ESPN won’t be the only "driver" of 3D penetration in U.S. homes,
Chuck Pagano, ESPN executive vice president of technology, said Thursday at a news briefing at Disney World,
where he cited the significant role he thinks videogames and Blu-ray movies will also play. He thinks gamers in
droves will buy 3D TVs to use with their PS3s and other consoles, and that standalone Blu-ray players will also
be a significant factor, he said.
Pagano and Anthony Bailey, ESPN vice president of emerging technology, don’t think the need to buy and
wear 3D glasses will stop consumers from buying 3D TVs, they said. Home 3D will see the birth of a "whole new
ecosystem" that will include designer glasses, and even glasses with the logos of consumers’ favorite teams, Pagano
predicted. When viewers are caught up in a 3D experience, wearing the glasses doesn’t matter, Bailey said. He
told us he wasn’t sure how much the glasses will cost, but conceded it "could be a problem," at least early on, when
the buyers of 3D TVs want to have multiple viewers in their house watch content such as the Super Bowl in 3D but
won’t have enough glasses for everyone. The solution to that issue could be simple — "BYOG," for "bring your
Today’s News:
VIDEOGAMES TO HELP DRIVE 3D, not just live sports
and movies, ESPN’s technology guru says. (P. 1)
PROPOSED LITHIUM BATTERY SAFETY RULES
would ‘seriously hamper’ supply chain in tough eco-
nomic times, CEA, CERC, 32 others tell DOT. (P. 3)
DIRECTV TO LAUNCH THREE 3D CHANNELS in June,
sporting mix of movies, live sports, video-on-demand,
CEO says. (P. 4)
EPA URGED NOT TO 'LOWER BAR' on Energy Star
set-top box service provider requirements. Agency to
weigh changes in March. (P. 5)
CONGRESS, APPLE ARE LAGGARDS on recognizing
need for open content, Harvard’s Lessig says. (P. 6)
3D NOTES: Panasonic, Samsung each staging big
3D TV debut events March 10 in New York. (P. 9)
COMPANIES: TiVo will introduce two new HD DVRs
this week through Best Buy at $299 and $499. (P. 9)
INDUSTRY NOTES: EPEAT no ‘substitute for sound
end-of-life treatment' of e-waste, says Green Electron-
ics Council head. (P. 9)
E-COMMERCE: Social publisher Scribd offering ‘send
to device’ feature for e-readers, free content. (P. 9)
Copyright© 2010 by Warren Communications News, Inc. Reproduction or retransmission in any form, without written permission, is a violation of Federal Statute (17 USC01 et seq.).
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 VOL. 10, NO. 39
2—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010
own glasses" — Pagano said. But both executives predicted the prices of 3D glasses won’t so cost-prohibitive that
it turns consumers off.
How quickly the home 3D market grows will come down to the content that’s made available, said Bai-
ley. You need strong 3D content to get consumers to buy 3D TVs, he said: "The adoption rate is going to go as fast
as the content creation" allows it. He predicted it will "start slow and ramp its way up." It’ll take "12, 18, 24
months ... before you start seeing mass adoption" of the technology, he predicted. There's an entire "ecosystem"
that needs to get up and running to support the technology, including cable and satellite providers, and mass adop-
tion might not be as fast as HD was, he said.
Sky is testing 3D in the U.K. first in pubs and clubs, Bailey said, calling that "an interesting approach" to
demonstrating and explaining the benefits of the technology, in comparison to the strategy in the U.S. which is to
immediately bring the 3D experience into consumers’ homes. Not all programming will be available in 3D,
however fast the installed base grows, he said. For example, he questions how many consumers would be will-
ing to "walk around with glasses" to view news shows or soap operas, he said. On the production side, the extra
costs involved in shooting programming in 3D will be another constraint, he said. To shoot in 3D, for example, a
production would need to have two camera operators for every camera position, along with a conversion engi-
neer for each camera, he said.
ESPN demonstrated a live 3D broadcast of a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game for reporters at the
newly rebranded ESPN Wide World of Sports facility at Disney World. It was the first time ESPN tried to ex-
tract 2D programming from a 3D feed. The 2D broadcast was to run on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD Friday, while
the 3D version was going to be shown only internally at ESPN, Bailey said. There were no plans to broadcast
the game in 3D on ESPN’s coming 3D TV station, ESPN 3D, which will show only live sports events, he told
us. The goal was to use only one truck and one production crew for the broadcast instead of separate ones for 2D
and 3D, he said. Pagano later said there’s "limited real estate" available for production trucks at a live event, and
there isn’t always room for more than one. Two cameras were used for the test — one a standard HD camera
intended for the left eye in the 3D broadcast, which would be used to extract the 2D broadcast, he said. The
other camera was an HD camera used for the right eye in the 3D broadcast. The images from both cameras were
used together for the 3D presentation.
The broadcast demonstration for reporters was shown on multiple brands of 3D TVs, including a set from
Sony, which at CES signed on as a charter sponsor of ESPN 3D. Other sets we observed bore the Hyundai and
Pace brands. Which type of glasses work best, active-shutter or passive, is purely subjective, Pagano told us: "If I
were a gamer I would probably be more acclimated toward the active" pairs, but "it depends on your eyes." On its
top-end 3D-ready Bravia LCD TVs, Sony has said it will bundle two pairs of active-shutter glasses with each
set. Other sets in the Sony Bravia line will be 3D-capable, meaning consumers will need to buy the 3D glasses and
transmitter separately when they're ready to step up to the 3D feature. Other manufacturers will follow similar mar-
keting tacks. For the demo we saw at Disney World, the Sony active-shutter glasses weren’t functioning properly
for reasons that were unclear. The 3D images looked fine on the Hyundai and Pace sets when we viewed them
through RealD passive glasses.
Pagano said he’s concerned about reports that some TV makers will resort to using 2D-to-3D conversion
chips in their sets, possibly as a means to keep the costs of their sets lower. "I’m not convinced that’s a smart thing
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MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—3
to be doing," he said. The industry is trying to show how great 3D looks, but the quality of the image will likely be
inferior if conversion chips are used, he said: "The consumer will know."
ESPN also said it designated the ESPN Innovation Lab at ESPN Wide World of Sports, formerly Disney’s
Wide World of Sports, as "the hub for developing 3D technology." The lab opened in October. The company will
invite technology companies to use the site for emerging technology enhancements focused on 3D TV, it
said. ESPN 3D will show "a minimum of 85 live sporting events during its first year," starting with the first FIFA
World Cup match June 11 featuring Mexico vs. South Africa, ESPN said.
ESPN also set up a new production center at the venue that can be used for producing live sports events
for multiple ESPN platforms, it said. The new center will be "a training facility for production personnel to gain
experience in telecasting 3D events," ESPN said. The new center also controls 45 robotic cameras scattered
throughout the Wide World of Sports complex that will capture highlights from the various sports events played
there, ESPN said.
As part of an expanded selection of sports events, the venue will also be used for videogame tournaments
for the first time, said Ken Potrock, senior vice president of Disney Sports Enterprises, during a news confer-
ence. The venue will be a 2010 tournament stop on the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit featuring U.S. pro and
amateur gamers competing during a three-day competition, ESPN said. The tournament is expected to attract more
than 250 and almost 2,500 gamers, it said.
The newest attraction at the venue is a PlayStation Pavilion that’s part of a sponsorship deal with Sony
Computer Entertainment America. The Pavilion was "designed to entertain guests between competitions and
host gaming tournaments," ESPN said. It will also be a "wait buster" for athletes to kill time between sports
events, said Potrock. It features 17 PS3 stations where various games for Sony’s console are spotlighted,
along with a SingStar stage spotlighting Sony’s karaoke game franchise. The area also features 40-inch Sony
TVs. Games spotlighted initially included FIFA 10 and Madden NFL 10 from Electronic Arts, and MLB 10:
The Show and Uncharted 2 from Sony. The MLB baseball game was available to play at the venue almost a
week before the game’s release, an SCEA spokesman said. The goal is to "refresh" the games as new titles are
released, he said. — Jeff Berman
‘Advance’ Rulemaking Urged
Lithium Battery Safety Rules Would Hurt Supply Chain, CEA, 33 Others Tell DOT
Tough new rules proposed at the Department of Transportation for shipping lithium batteries on airplanes
would seriously threaten distribution of the cells and the devices they power at a time when industry is trying to
recover from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 34 companies and trade groups told the de-
partment by letter Thursday.
In January, the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) proposed rules
that include lifting exemptions in the agency’s hazardous materials rules for air shipments of small lithium-ion and
lithium-metal cells and the equipment packed with them. If the changes are adopted, manufacturers and distribu-
tors would need to declare and label those products as Class 9 hazardous materials when shipping them on cargo or
passenger planes and package them in United Nations-standard containers certified for holding substances classed
as medium-level threats.
Industry estimates of the cost to CE makers and distributors, mainly from added shipping expenses for
products that move largely by air freight, range from the tens of millions of dollars a year to more than $1 bil-
lion. Retailers also say they fear that under the proposed rules, any store employee who opens a box containing
4—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010
lithium batteries or takes a service return would need to have had hazardous-materials training. The PHMSA esti-
mates that the rules would cost industry $9 million the first year and a little more than $70 million over the first
decade. But Black & Decker, in comments to the PHMSA opposing the rules, said it has 274 SKUs containing lith-
ium batteries. Changing their packaging to conform to the rules would cost the company $2.5 million a year, plus
$535,000 in new tooling and documentation, it said.
The proposed rules will "enhance safety by ensuring that all lithium batteries are designed to withstand nor-
mal transportation conditions, packaged to reduce the possibility of damage that could lead to an incident, and ac-
companied by hazard communication information that ensures appropriate and careful handling by air carrier per-
sonnel and informs transport workers and emergency response personnel of actions to be taken in an emergency,"
the PHMSA said in its January rulemaking notice. Since 1991, PHMSA and the Federal Aviation Administration
"have identified over 40 air transport-related incidents and numerous additional non-transport incidents involving
lithium batteries and devices powered by lithium batteries."
But industry critics of the new rules say that none of the episodes involved a laptop or cell phone that was
commercially packed for shipping. "If the PHMSA rule is finalized as written, the production and transportation
of lithium batteries will be seriously hampered," said the letter to DOT, signed by CEA, the CE Retailers Coali-
tion and the ITI Council, and 31 others, including FedEx, UPS, the Air Transport Association and the Interna-
tional Air Cargo Association. It would harm the nation’s supply chain and "an economy already struggling to
exit the most serious recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s," the letter said. "Most of the signatories
to this letter will be filing comments detailing individual impacts of the proposed rule, but the group collectively
feels that it is extremely important to recognize the potentially devastating effect on the economy generally if the
current proposal is adopted."
Those signing the letter said they recognize that the federal government needs to take up the risks of lithium
batteries on airplanes. The problem should be dealt with as promptly "as possible consistent with scientific facts
and with care not to destroy a major element of economic growth," the letter said. "A major problem with the in-
stant rulemaking is that it does not allow for adequate consideration and full understanding of the potential impact
this proposal will have on the economy and variously affected industries."
Comments in the rulemaking are due March 12. The PHSMA has denied several requests for a deadline
extension, including from CEA, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Com-
merce, because it wants to promptly take up the risks of shipping lithium batteries by air, the agency said. The let-
ter suggests converting the rulemaking to an "advance" proceeding in which the PHSMA would seek "factual input
from the industry before proposing final rules," it said. "In order to obtain this input, consideration should also be
given to the formation of an Advisory Committee of industry experts to provide advice to PHMSA. This Commit-
tee could be chartered with a relatively short life span so as not to delay any final rule. In short, PHMSA should not
rush to judgment without an adequate factual base." A public meeting on the proposed rules is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Friday at DOT’s Washington headquarters. — Paul Gluckman
All-Star Game in 3D
DirecTV to Bow Three 3D Channels in June, Each Dedicated to Different Content
DirecTV will take a three-pronged approach when it launches its 3D channels in June, company executives
said in recent conference calls and investor conferences, apparently with little fanfare. The satellite operator will
dedicate one 3D channel to documentaries, movies and concerts, and a second to live sports and concerts, the ex-
ecutives said. A third channel will be devoted to video-on-demand, they said. A highlight will be DirecTV's 3D
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—5
airing of Major League Baseball's All-Star Game in July, CEO Michael White said on an earnings call. We were
awaiting word from DirecTV at our Friday deadline whether the game will be aired live in 3D.
DirecTV's 3D programming will be beamed from the DirecTV-12 satellite at 102.8 degrees west. The Boe-
ing BSS-702 satellite launched Dec. 29 and began testing Feb. 13 at 76 degrees west, company officials said. The
satellite is expected to be operational in early Q2 and will reach 102.8 degrees west in early May, company officials
said. In addition to 3D, DirecTV-12 will give the satellite service capacity for 200 HD channels nationwide,
DirecTV said in a 10-K filed Friday at the SEC. The satellite also will deliver local HD programming in 19 new
markets, increasing the number of them with local HD channels to 157, DirecTV said.
DirecTV will broadcast 3D in frame-compatible side-by-side format that’s supported by most 3D TVs, said
Hanno Basse, DirecTV vice president of broadcast systems engineering, at the Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Re-
treat in Rancho Mirage, Calif. DirecTV’s existing head-end equipment and set-top box receivers support the 3D
format with "minimal modifications," Basse said. DirecTV customers will get 3D programming using their exist-
ing HD STBs but need a 3D TV to display it, he said.
It also will introduce DirecTV Cinema, which will "substantially increase" the number of new release mov-
ies available through VoD, the company said. DirecTV on Demand offered about 6,000 titles as of Dec. 31, the
company said. DirecTV also expects to deliver a MoCA-based multi-room viewing service in the second half, pro-
viding HD, SD and DVR functionality throughout the home, the company said. Subscribers also will be able to
access stored content including video, photos and music from any Internet-connected TV, the company
said. DirecTV is weighing building a backup satellite for additional capacity. If it buys the satellite, it will go into
service in 2013, the company said.
DirecTV also is expected to ship a new TiVo DVR-compatible satellite receiver in the first half, company
officials have said. As of late December, 11 percent of DirecTV’s 18.8 million customers subscribed to the DVR
service. DirecTV parted with TiVo in 2005 as it switched to NDS’ DVR platform. DirecTV signed a new agree-
ment with TiVo in September 2008 that runs through 2015, the company said.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit of Court of Appeals in January upheld a summary judgment finding invalid
patent infringement claims that Finisar lodged against DirecTV, the company said. A federal court jury awarded
Finisar $78.6 million in 2005, finding that DirecTV infringed a patent for a tiered system that schedules program-
ming transmission and a so-called "intelligent subscriber anticipation scheme," DirecTV said. An appeals court
reversed the verdict in 2008, saying a lower court erred in interpreting the terms of some claims, DirecTV said.
Liberty Media also was sued last month by shareholders claiming its board breached fiduciary duties in
connection with the "business terms and approval process" of DirecTV’s merger with Liberty Entertainment last
fall, DirecTV said. The suit, filed Feb. 9 in Delaware Chancery Court, alleged Liberty Chairman John Malone re-
ceived "disparate allocation of consideration" in the transaction, DirecTV said. Similar suits filed last year that al-
leged DirecTV board members breached their fiduciary duties in approving the deal were settled last fall. The suits
were filed in Delaware Chancery Court and California Superior Court by DirecTV stockholders. Liberty Media
purchased News Corp.’s 42 percent of DirecTV in 2008. Liberty increased that to 57 percent before merging
DirecTV with Liberty Entertainment. Liberty Media kept 24 percent voting share in DirecTV. — Mark Seavy
EPA Urged Not to 'Lower Bar'
EPA Soon to Weigh Changes in Energy Star Set-Top Box Service Provider Rules
The EPA will consider changes in the Energy Star set-top box specification for cable, satellite and IPTV
service providers to "allow both utilities and manufacturers to further their promotion" of compliant boxes, the
6—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010
agency said in response to comments. It said talks with interested parties on proposed changes will start this
month. The EPA has started work on revising the specification for box makers, releasing last week the first draft of
version 3.0, which would make the program stricter.
One commenter asked the EPA not to change the set-top box and service provider programs "in anticipation
that a particular program model will be used" for utility rebate programs. There are opportunities for "creative pro-
grams between energy utilities and service providers" such as those targeting the removal of old non-compliant
boxes, using software upgrades to improve the energy efficiency of boxes in the field and in-home energy "tune-
ups," the commenter said. The EPA doesn't identify those who file comments.
The EPA was also urged not to "lower the bar" for service provider purchase and "fleet" requirements, be-
cause many providers already have made "significant commitments in qualifying, labeling and promoting" Energy
Star boxes. Easing deployment requirements below the current 50 percent would "greatly diminish the ‘star' status
that current participants have earned and that future program participants must earn," a commenter said. Only four
providers, including AT&T and DirecTV, have joined the program. No cable operator has joined, but Comcast has
indicated that it will buy enough Energy Star boxes in 2010 to qualify.
The EPA responded that it's looking for ideas to "lower the barriers to entry for service providers to label
efficient boxes, without diminishing the status of service providers who have made significant fleet or purchase
commitments." Currently, service providers who don't join the Energy Star program can't use its label on boxes
that meet the specification.
Responding to another commenter, the EPA stood by its methods for testing compliance. "The random
sample testing approach has been successfully implemented for various Energy Star consumer electronics and
IT products for many years," the agency said. "Because the manufacturing tolerances and component varia-
tions differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, the EPA has left it up to the manufacturer to ensure that all
products meet Energy Star requirements." That approach also makes it easy to verify set-top box energy use in
the field, it said. The commenter had called the method of randomly selecting a "very small number" of boxes
for testing "unfair" because it assumes that any box is representative of all of the set-top boxes "within a line
of products." — Dinesh Kumar
Global Open-Tech Webcast
Harvard’s Lessig Scores Congress as Captive,
Apple as 'Tone-Deaf' on Open Content
Supporters of fair use and the digital remix culture may well be winning in the courts, but they can't get the
copyright changes they need out of a Congress whose captivity to corporate money can only get worse with the Su-
preme Court's recent ruling on campaign finance, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said on a webcast organ-
ized by the Open Video Alliance. Apple would do well financially to take a lead from Google and open its technol-
ogy platforms — but a push from "free culture" supporters could help it along, he said.
"Amateur creativity" involving the use of copyrighted works should be exempted from charges of infringe-
ment, Lessig said: "Not fair use — free use." There's no substantial commercial market for the mashups and they
don't cut into demand for the works they sample, he said. "Fair use is also important," Lessig said, calling himself a
"reluctant proponent" of the doctrine. It doesn't mean unlimited P2P file-sharing, but it does mean a great deal of
activity is off-limits to copyright enforcement, he said.
The conventional "Britney Spears model" of centralized production and distribution for maximum profit
must be protected, but to "encourage the widest spread and development of culture," so must a "build-and-share-
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—7
freely model," Lessig said. He showed and praised clips from an online video on this point by the Cato Institute's
Julian Sanchez.
Copyright law needs to change to get "orphan works," those whose rightsholders can't be found, into the
public domain, and to require holders to step forward every several years to maintain their rights, Lessig said. But
this kind of "copyright maintenance" requirement, like one in patent law, is considered "almost a sin in the IP uni-
verse," he said. Lessig called this view a "perversion" of the law. The Google Book Search settlement showed
"genius in the way in which it solved" the orphan-works problem, he said: "But the problem shouldn't be settled this
way," because it's a legislative issue.
"Congress has yet to make any progress at all" on fixing copyright law, Lessig said. "It is a hopeless situa-
tion" under the established lobbying and campaign-finance setup. "There will be no such thing as change until we
change this culture." He encouraged listeners to contribute time to his efforts to overhaul the relationship between
Congress and corporate money. Meanwhile, though, "the courts are increasingly getting it right" by "shifting the
line" to protect creative freedom, he said.
Time limits on U.S. copyrights should be "much less" than they are now, and no copyright should be ex-
tended, because the possibility of prolonging rights gives holders great incentive to lobby to lengthen the time, Les-
sig said. He lost the Eldred case on the constitutionality of extension legislation in the Supreme Court.
Lessig took questions that viewers sent over Twitter and identica, a free-software microblogging ser-
vice. The event hashtag "trended" in the U.S. on Twitter as one of the most popular topics during Lessig's talk,
organizers said.
Thousands of people around the world watched the 80-minute webcast, believed to be the largest streaming
event ever using nonproprietary technologies, said Ben Moskowitz, the video alliance's general coordinator. He
estimated that more than 1,000 people attended 32 formal viewing events on four continents. The largest crowds,
of 150-200 each, were in Toronto and at Stanford University, where Lessig taught until this year, and in Cam-
bridge, Mass., where he spoke. About 3,000 others watched the webcast on their own, as many as 700 at a time,
Moskowitz said. A crush of traffic just before the scheduled start brought down the alliance's server, delaying the
event about 20 minutes, he said. Moskowitz said he expects 10,000-15,000 people to have seen it within a
week. The alliance hopes to do additional webcasts with speakers such as Wikimedia's Jimmy Wales and New
York University's Clay Shirky, he said.
Internationally, allowing countries to take their own approaches to copyright is better than imposing
uniformity, Lessig said. The U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Report listing of "pirate nations" runs
contrary to that principle, he said. Lessig said foreign governments can't "experiment" with the "full version"
of the voluntary or mandatory collective licensing he supports without running afoul of the TRIPS Agreement
on intellectual property. The idea that consumers in the U.S. and China should pay the same for a piece of
content is "crazy," Lessig said.
Choosing between the fair-use approach of the U.S. and the more specifically defined copyright exceptions
in European countries and Japan is difficult, Lessig said. Fair use sacrifices clarity for the benefit of flexibility, in-
cluding in response to new technology, but only for suspects and defendants who can afford court fights, he
said. There's a proposal in Japan for "layering on fair use" to specific protections, "which might make a nice hy-
brid," Lessig said.
Leaders in Hollywood and the music industry have adjusted their thinking to the point that they now sound
just like copyleft activists of several years ago, Lessig said. Established companies should recognize out of finan-
cial self-interest that they should take advantage of the interactivity of digital media to make use of content created
8—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010
by consumers, the way Amazon, Flickr, Google, Twitter and Yelp have, he said. But they shouldn't adopt the
"sharecropping vision" of the Star Wars mashup sites and David Bowie, soliciting works by fans but claiming all
copyright in them, Lessig said. "More and more businesses" will recognize that they'll do better respecting the
creativity of users by allowing them the copyrights, he said.
"Google should be paying for the remixed content" posted on its YouTube, Lessig said. The law is
"backwards" now, he said: It makes users posting mashups liable for copyright infringement and immunizes com-
panies that accept them.
Users should be allowed flexibility to download content in the formats most convenient to them and do with
it what they want, Lessig said. It shouldn't be wrapped in DRM in a way that disables them" or put under unreason-
able legal restrictions, he said. Blip.tv recognized this from the start, and YouTube is moving that way, "maybe not
quickly enough," Lessig said.
"The urgency to solve these issues is becoming more intense as mobile technology becomes the default
platform" for online communication and entertainment, Lessig said. "Heavy protection is going to make no sense"
as users demand portability, he said. And "we need a culture where you can hack devices as easily as you can con-
tent," Lessig said. "Platforms and hardware have got to be part of this."
"There's something tone-deaf about Apple," Lessig said. The company insists on full control of its tech-
nologies and is "aggressive in attacking" anyone who tries to tinker with them, Lessig said. Google's Android oper-
ating system, in contrast, "invites tinkering" — "free software development" — and eventually will "outcompete"
Apple in applications, though "it obviously hasn't so far." — Louis Trager
MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—9
3D Notes
Days after Samsung lay claim to supplying the first 3D TV sets to Sears, Panasonic on Friday invited re-
porters to a March 10 event at Best Buy's Union Square store in Manhattan to witness what it called the sale of the
world's first 1080p 3D home theater system to a consumer. Presiding over the event will be Mike Vitelli, newly
promoted to Best Buy president for the Americas, and Shiro Kitajima, president of Panasonic Consumer Electron-
ics, the Panasonic announcement said. The Panasonic event begins at 9 a.m. About an hour later, Samsung will
officially introduce what it's calling "the world's largest 3D HDTV lineup" at a news conference in the Samsung
Experience gallery in Manhattan's Time Warner Center.
Companies
TiVo will ship new Premier HD and Premier XL DVRs this week through Best Buy priced at $299 and $499,
retail sources said. Premier HD is capable of recording 45 hours of HD content, up from 20 hours in the model it
replaces. The Premier XL model can record 150 hours of HD. TiVo’s current entry-level HD DVR has been pro-
moted in recent weeks at $249 after a $50 discount. The step-up model has been featured with a $100 price cut at
$499. Best Buy and TiVo allied last fall to introduce new models, including a combo TV/DVR (CED Dec 8 p1).
——
Altec Lansing President Vicki Marion will get a $7,500 lump sum payment and a "turnaround" incentive if
bonuses are earned, Altec's former parent Plantronics said in an SEC filing. Plantronics sold Altec to Prophet Eq-
uity in December for $62 million. Marion resigned her post at Plantronics on Dec. 1 to join the new owners, the
company said. A decision on whether a bonus will be paid Marion will be made by June 15, Plantronics
said. Marion’s unvested options to buy Plantronics stock were accelerated and can be exercised starting March 1,
Plantronics said. It said about 15,000 shares of restricted company stock that Marion held also have vested.
Industry Notes
"EPEAT is a green purchasing tool, not a substitute for sound end-of-life treatment" of e-waste, Jeff Omel-
chuck, the Green Electronics Council’s founder, said at last week’s Greener Gadgets conference in New York. The
council runs the EPEAT program whose acronym is short for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment
Tool. "Recycling systems don’t change the nature of products" and their recyclability, he said. "There’s no e-
waste system on the planet that has effectively changed the design of products. All the products collected at the
end of their lives "in essence wind up in a big pile," Omelchuck said. "Sometimes the financial responsibility for
coping with that pile is doled out to the manufacturers by brand share or return weight. But no manufacturer gets
any financial benefit at all from greening their product." E-waste recycling is "a huge environmental issue, but it’s
not going to change the products," he said.
E-Commerce
Social publishing company Scribd.com has created a "send to device" feature for free works on the site
and for for-purchase books and chapters from major publishers, including O’Reilly Media and Lonely Planet. Us-
ers can send more than 10 million mobile-enabled works, from research to recipes, to their smartphones and e-
readers, as well as their own documents in PDF, Word, PowerPoint and other formats, Scribd said in a blog
post. The feature only works if uploaders have designated their documents DRM-free and enabled them to be
downloaded. Scribd said it will start in March rolling out a series of mobile applications for Android devices and
10—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010
the iPhone that will provide a "richer search, browsing and social experience." Scribd is best known for its proprie-
tary iPaper "streaming" format, a lightweight rival to PDF (CED March 20 p5).
Videogames
The PSP repeated as the best-selling videogame system in Japan, according to Media Create data for the
week ended Feb. 21, but PSP hardware sales fell to about 32,800 units from about 39,300 the previous week (CED
Feb 22 p9). The PSP Go handheld system came in last again among hardware systems, sales flat at about
1,400. The PS3 moved up two to No. 2, sales increasing to about 32,100 from about 24,800, probably from strong
demand for Capcom’s new edition of Resident Evil 5, which became the top-selling videogame in Japan its first
week available, moving about 143,300 copies. The Wii fell one to No. 3 among hardware systems, its sales falling
to about 31,700 from about 37,500. The new DSi LL, available only in Japan, fell one to No. 4, its sales slipping to
about 24,400 from about 27,600. The DSi repeated at No. 5, but sales dropped to about 15,400 from about
18,100. The DS Lite was again No. 6 at about 5,100, down from about 5,700. The Xbox 360 repeated at No. 7, but
sales fell to about 2,500 from about 3,400. The PS2 was again No. 8, sales flat at about 1,900. Namco Bandai’s
God Eater for the PSP, the best-selling videogame in Japan for two straight weeks, dipped to No. 2 in its third
week, its sales tumbling to about 64,200 copies from about 110,200.
Consumer Electronics People
Best Buy promotes Mike Vitelli and Shari Ballard to co-presidents, Americas. Vitelli will have responsibil-
ity for Canada and will remain executive vice president for the chain's U.S. Customer Solutions Group and for Best
Buy's private label brands. Ballard, who'll be responsible for Mexico, will remain executive vice president for U.S.
stores and for BestBuy.com.
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CED030110

  • 1. 'Bring Your Own Glasses' Videogames to Help Drive 3D Penetration, ESPN’s Pagano Says LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — ESPN won’t be the only "driver" of 3D penetration in U.S. homes, Chuck Pagano, ESPN executive vice president of technology, said Thursday at a news briefing at Disney World, where he cited the significant role he thinks videogames and Blu-ray movies will also play. He thinks gamers in droves will buy 3D TVs to use with their PS3s and other consoles, and that standalone Blu-ray players will also be a significant factor, he said. Pagano and Anthony Bailey, ESPN vice president of emerging technology, don’t think the need to buy and wear 3D glasses will stop consumers from buying 3D TVs, they said. Home 3D will see the birth of a "whole new ecosystem" that will include designer glasses, and even glasses with the logos of consumers’ favorite teams, Pagano predicted. When viewers are caught up in a 3D experience, wearing the glasses doesn’t matter, Bailey said. He told us he wasn’t sure how much the glasses will cost, but conceded it "could be a problem," at least early on, when the buyers of 3D TVs want to have multiple viewers in their house watch content such as the Super Bowl in 3D but won’t have enough glasses for everyone. The solution to that issue could be simple — "BYOG," for "bring your Today’s News: VIDEOGAMES TO HELP DRIVE 3D, not just live sports and movies, ESPN’s technology guru says. (P. 1) PROPOSED LITHIUM BATTERY SAFETY RULES would ‘seriously hamper’ supply chain in tough eco- nomic times, CEA, CERC, 32 others tell DOT. (P. 3) DIRECTV TO LAUNCH THREE 3D CHANNELS in June, sporting mix of movies, live sports, video-on-demand, CEO says. (P. 4) EPA URGED NOT TO 'LOWER BAR' on Energy Star set-top box service provider requirements. Agency to weigh changes in March. (P. 5) CONGRESS, APPLE ARE LAGGARDS on recognizing need for open content, Harvard’s Lessig says. (P. 6) 3D NOTES: Panasonic, Samsung each staging big 3D TV debut events March 10 in New York. (P. 9) COMPANIES: TiVo will introduce two new HD DVRs this week through Best Buy at $299 and $499. (P. 9) INDUSTRY NOTES: EPEAT no ‘substitute for sound end-of-life treatment' of e-waste, says Green Electron- ics Council head. (P. 9) E-COMMERCE: Social publisher Scribd offering ‘send to device’ feature for e-readers, free content. (P. 9) Copyright© 2010 by Warren Communications News, Inc. Reproduction or retransmission in any form, without written permission, is a violation of Federal Statute (17 USC01 et seq.). MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 VOL. 10, NO. 39
  • 2. 2—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 own glasses" — Pagano said. But both executives predicted the prices of 3D glasses won’t so cost-prohibitive that it turns consumers off. How quickly the home 3D market grows will come down to the content that’s made available, said Bai- ley. You need strong 3D content to get consumers to buy 3D TVs, he said: "The adoption rate is going to go as fast as the content creation" allows it. He predicted it will "start slow and ramp its way up." It’ll take "12, 18, 24 months ... before you start seeing mass adoption" of the technology, he predicted. There's an entire "ecosystem" that needs to get up and running to support the technology, including cable and satellite providers, and mass adop- tion might not be as fast as HD was, he said. Sky is testing 3D in the U.K. first in pubs and clubs, Bailey said, calling that "an interesting approach" to demonstrating and explaining the benefits of the technology, in comparison to the strategy in the U.S. which is to immediately bring the 3D experience into consumers’ homes. Not all programming will be available in 3D, however fast the installed base grows, he said. For example, he questions how many consumers would be will- ing to "walk around with glasses" to view news shows or soap operas, he said. On the production side, the extra costs involved in shooting programming in 3D will be another constraint, he said. To shoot in 3D, for example, a production would need to have two camera operators for every camera position, along with a conversion engi- neer for each camera, he said. ESPN demonstrated a live 3D broadcast of a Harlem Globetrotters basketball game for reporters at the newly rebranded ESPN Wide World of Sports facility at Disney World. It was the first time ESPN tried to ex- tract 2D programming from a 3D feed. The 2D broadcast was to run on ESPN2 and ESPN2 HD Friday, while the 3D version was going to be shown only internally at ESPN, Bailey said. There were no plans to broadcast the game in 3D on ESPN’s coming 3D TV station, ESPN 3D, which will show only live sports events, he told us. The goal was to use only one truck and one production crew for the broadcast instead of separate ones for 2D and 3D, he said. Pagano later said there’s "limited real estate" available for production trucks at a live event, and there isn’t always room for more than one. Two cameras were used for the test — one a standard HD camera intended for the left eye in the 3D broadcast, which would be used to extract the 2D broadcast, he said. The other camera was an HD camera used for the right eye in the 3D broadcast. The images from both cameras were used together for the 3D presentation. The broadcast demonstration for reporters was shown on multiple brands of 3D TVs, including a set from Sony, which at CES signed on as a charter sponsor of ESPN 3D. Other sets we observed bore the Hyundai and Pace brands. Which type of glasses work best, active-shutter or passive, is purely subjective, Pagano told us: "If I were a gamer I would probably be more acclimated toward the active" pairs, but "it depends on your eyes." On its top-end 3D-ready Bravia LCD TVs, Sony has said it will bundle two pairs of active-shutter glasses with each set. Other sets in the Sony Bravia line will be 3D-capable, meaning consumers will need to buy the 3D glasses and transmitter separately when they're ready to step up to the 3D feature. Other manufacturers will follow similar mar- keting tacks. For the demo we saw at Disney World, the Sony active-shutter glasses weren’t functioning properly for reasons that were unclear. The 3D images looked fine on the Hyundai and Pace sets when we viewed them through RealD passive glasses. Pagano said he’s concerned about reports that some TV makers will resort to using 2D-to-3D conversion chips in their sets, possibly as a means to keep the costs of their sets lower. "I’m not convinced that’s a smart thing To e-mail readers: By using our e-mail delivery service, you understand and agree that we may use tracking software to ensure accurate electronic delivery and copyright compliance. This software forwards to us certain technical data and newsletter usage information from any computer that opens this e-mail. We do not share this information with anyone outside our company, nor do we use it for any commercial purpose. For more information about our data collection practices, please see our Privacy Pol- icy at www.warren-news.com/privacypolicy.htm.
  • 3. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—3 to be doing," he said. The industry is trying to show how great 3D looks, but the quality of the image will likely be inferior if conversion chips are used, he said: "The consumer will know." ESPN also said it designated the ESPN Innovation Lab at ESPN Wide World of Sports, formerly Disney’s Wide World of Sports, as "the hub for developing 3D technology." The lab opened in October. The company will invite technology companies to use the site for emerging technology enhancements focused on 3D TV, it said. ESPN 3D will show "a minimum of 85 live sporting events during its first year," starting with the first FIFA World Cup match June 11 featuring Mexico vs. South Africa, ESPN said. ESPN also set up a new production center at the venue that can be used for producing live sports events for multiple ESPN platforms, it said. The new center will be "a training facility for production personnel to gain experience in telecasting 3D events," ESPN said. The new center also controls 45 robotic cameras scattered throughout the Wide World of Sports complex that will capture highlights from the various sports events played there, ESPN said. As part of an expanded selection of sports events, the venue will also be used for videogame tournaments for the first time, said Ken Potrock, senior vice president of Disney Sports Enterprises, during a news confer- ence. The venue will be a 2010 tournament stop on the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit featuring U.S. pro and amateur gamers competing during a three-day competition, ESPN said. The tournament is expected to attract more than 250 and almost 2,500 gamers, it said. The newest attraction at the venue is a PlayStation Pavilion that’s part of a sponsorship deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America. The Pavilion was "designed to entertain guests between competitions and host gaming tournaments," ESPN said. It will also be a "wait buster" for athletes to kill time between sports events, said Potrock. It features 17 PS3 stations where various games for Sony’s console are spotlighted, along with a SingStar stage spotlighting Sony’s karaoke game franchise. The area also features 40-inch Sony TVs. Games spotlighted initially included FIFA 10 and Madden NFL 10 from Electronic Arts, and MLB 10: The Show and Uncharted 2 from Sony. The MLB baseball game was available to play at the venue almost a week before the game’s release, an SCEA spokesman said. The goal is to "refresh" the games as new titles are released, he said. — Jeff Berman ‘Advance’ Rulemaking Urged Lithium Battery Safety Rules Would Hurt Supply Chain, CEA, 33 Others Tell DOT Tough new rules proposed at the Department of Transportation for shipping lithium batteries on airplanes would seriously threaten distribution of the cells and the devices they power at a time when industry is trying to recover from the worst economic decline since the Great Depression, 34 companies and trade groups told the de- partment by letter Thursday. In January, the DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) proposed rules that include lifting exemptions in the agency’s hazardous materials rules for air shipments of small lithium-ion and lithium-metal cells and the equipment packed with them. If the changes are adopted, manufacturers and distribu- tors would need to declare and label those products as Class 9 hazardous materials when shipping them on cargo or passenger planes and package them in United Nations-standard containers certified for holding substances classed as medium-level threats. Industry estimates of the cost to CE makers and distributors, mainly from added shipping expenses for products that move largely by air freight, range from the tens of millions of dollars a year to more than $1 bil- lion. Retailers also say they fear that under the proposed rules, any store employee who opens a box containing
  • 4. 4—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 lithium batteries or takes a service return would need to have had hazardous-materials training. The PHMSA esti- mates that the rules would cost industry $9 million the first year and a little more than $70 million over the first decade. But Black & Decker, in comments to the PHMSA opposing the rules, said it has 274 SKUs containing lith- ium batteries. Changing their packaging to conform to the rules would cost the company $2.5 million a year, plus $535,000 in new tooling and documentation, it said. The proposed rules will "enhance safety by ensuring that all lithium batteries are designed to withstand nor- mal transportation conditions, packaged to reduce the possibility of damage that could lead to an incident, and ac- companied by hazard communication information that ensures appropriate and careful handling by air carrier per- sonnel and informs transport workers and emergency response personnel of actions to be taken in an emergency," the PHMSA said in its January rulemaking notice. Since 1991, PHMSA and the Federal Aviation Administration "have identified over 40 air transport-related incidents and numerous additional non-transport incidents involving lithium batteries and devices powered by lithium batteries." But industry critics of the new rules say that none of the episodes involved a laptop or cell phone that was commercially packed for shipping. "If the PHMSA rule is finalized as written, the production and transportation of lithium batteries will be seriously hampered," said the letter to DOT, signed by CEA, the CE Retailers Coali- tion and the ITI Council, and 31 others, including FedEx, UPS, the Air Transport Association and the Interna- tional Air Cargo Association. It would harm the nation’s supply chain and "an economy already struggling to exit the most serious recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s," the letter said. "Most of the signatories to this letter will be filing comments detailing individual impacts of the proposed rule, but the group collectively feels that it is extremely important to recognize the potentially devastating effect on the economy generally if the current proposal is adopted." Those signing the letter said they recognize that the federal government needs to take up the risks of lithium batteries on airplanes. The problem should be dealt with as promptly "as possible consistent with scientific facts and with care not to destroy a major element of economic growth," the letter said. "A major problem with the in- stant rulemaking is that it does not allow for adequate consideration and full understanding of the potential impact this proposal will have on the economy and variously affected industries." Comments in the rulemaking are due March 12. The PHSMA has denied several requests for a deadline extension, including from CEA, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the U.S. Chamber of Com- merce, because it wants to promptly take up the risks of shipping lithium batteries by air, the agency said. The let- ter suggests converting the rulemaking to an "advance" proceeding in which the PHSMA would seek "factual input from the industry before proposing final rules," it said. "In order to obtain this input, consideration should also be given to the formation of an Advisory Committee of industry experts to provide advice to PHMSA. This Commit- tee could be chartered with a relatively short life span so as not to delay any final rule. In short, PHMSA should not rush to judgment without an adequate factual base." A public meeting on the proposed rules is scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday at DOT’s Washington headquarters. — Paul Gluckman All-Star Game in 3D DirecTV to Bow Three 3D Channels in June, Each Dedicated to Different Content DirecTV will take a three-pronged approach when it launches its 3D channels in June, company executives said in recent conference calls and investor conferences, apparently with little fanfare. The satellite operator will dedicate one 3D channel to documentaries, movies and concerts, and a second to live sports and concerts, the ex- ecutives said. A third channel will be devoted to video-on-demand, they said. A highlight will be DirecTV's 3D
  • 5. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—5 airing of Major League Baseball's All-Star Game in July, CEO Michael White said on an earnings call. We were awaiting word from DirecTV at our Friday deadline whether the game will be aired live in 3D. DirecTV's 3D programming will be beamed from the DirecTV-12 satellite at 102.8 degrees west. The Boe- ing BSS-702 satellite launched Dec. 29 and began testing Feb. 13 at 76 degrees west, company officials said. The satellite is expected to be operational in early Q2 and will reach 102.8 degrees west in early May, company officials said. In addition to 3D, DirecTV-12 will give the satellite service capacity for 200 HD channels nationwide, DirecTV said in a 10-K filed Friday at the SEC. The satellite also will deliver local HD programming in 19 new markets, increasing the number of them with local HD channels to 157, DirecTV said. DirecTV will broadcast 3D in frame-compatible side-by-side format that’s supported by most 3D TVs, said Hanno Basse, DirecTV vice president of broadcast systems engineering, at the Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Re- treat in Rancho Mirage, Calif. DirecTV’s existing head-end equipment and set-top box receivers support the 3D format with "minimal modifications," Basse said. DirecTV customers will get 3D programming using their exist- ing HD STBs but need a 3D TV to display it, he said. It also will introduce DirecTV Cinema, which will "substantially increase" the number of new release mov- ies available through VoD, the company said. DirecTV on Demand offered about 6,000 titles as of Dec. 31, the company said. DirecTV also expects to deliver a MoCA-based multi-room viewing service in the second half, pro- viding HD, SD and DVR functionality throughout the home, the company said. Subscribers also will be able to access stored content including video, photos and music from any Internet-connected TV, the company said. DirecTV is weighing building a backup satellite for additional capacity. If it buys the satellite, it will go into service in 2013, the company said. DirecTV also is expected to ship a new TiVo DVR-compatible satellite receiver in the first half, company officials have said. As of late December, 11 percent of DirecTV’s 18.8 million customers subscribed to the DVR service. DirecTV parted with TiVo in 2005 as it switched to NDS’ DVR platform. DirecTV signed a new agree- ment with TiVo in September 2008 that runs through 2015, the company said. Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit of Court of Appeals in January upheld a summary judgment finding invalid patent infringement claims that Finisar lodged against DirecTV, the company said. A federal court jury awarded Finisar $78.6 million in 2005, finding that DirecTV infringed a patent for a tiered system that schedules program- ming transmission and a so-called "intelligent subscriber anticipation scheme," DirecTV said. An appeals court reversed the verdict in 2008, saying a lower court erred in interpreting the terms of some claims, DirecTV said. Liberty Media also was sued last month by shareholders claiming its board breached fiduciary duties in connection with the "business terms and approval process" of DirecTV’s merger with Liberty Entertainment last fall, DirecTV said. The suit, filed Feb. 9 in Delaware Chancery Court, alleged Liberty Chairman John Malone re- ceived "disparate allocation of consideration" in the transaction, DirecTV said. Similar suits filed last year that al- leged DirecTV board members breached their fiduciary duties in approving the deal were settled last fall. The suits were filed in Delaware Chancery Court and California Superior Court by DirecTV stockholders. Liberty Media purchased News Corp.’s 42 percent of DirecTV in 2008. Liberty increased that to 57 percent before merging DirecTV with Liberty Entertainment. Liberty Media kept 24 percent voting share in DirecTV. — Mark Seavy EPA Urged Not to 'Lower Bar' EPA Soon to Weigh Changes in Energy Star Set-Top Box Service Provider Rules The EPA will consider changes in the Energy Star set-top box specification for cable, satellite and IPTV service providers to "allow both utilities and manufacturers to further their promotion" of compliant boxes, the
  • 6. 6—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 agency said in response to comments. It said talks with interested parties on proposed changes will start this month. The EPA has started work on revising the specification for box makers, releasing last week the first draft of version 3.0, which would make the program stricter. One commenter asked the EPA not to change the set-top box and service provider programs "in anticipation that a particular program model will be used" for utility rebate programs. There are opportunities for "creative pro- grams between energy utilities and service providers" such as those targeting the removal of old non-compliant boxes, using software upgrades to improve the energy efficiency of boxes in the field and in-home energy "tune- ups," the commenter said. The EPA doesn't identify those who file comments. The EPA was also urged not to "lower the bar" for service provider purchase and "fleet" requirements, be- cause many providers already have made "significant commitments in qualifying, labeling and promoting" Energy Star boxes. Easing deployment requirements below the current 50 percent would "greatly diminish the ‘star' status that current participants have earned and that future program participants must earn," a commenter said. Only four providers, including AT&T and DirecTV, have joined the program. No cable operator has joined, but Comcast has indicated that it will buy enough Energy Star boxes in 2010 to qualify. The EPA responded that it's looking for ideas to "lower the barriers to entry for service providers to label efficient boxes, without diminishing the status of service providers who have made significant fleet or purchase commitments." Currently, service providers who don't join the Energy Star program can't use its label on boxes that meet the specification. Responding to another commenter, the EPA stood by its methods for testing compliance. "The random sample testing approach has been successfully implemented for various Energy Star consumer electronics and IT products for many years," the agency said. "Because the manufacturing tolerances and component varia- tions differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, the EPA has left it up to the manufacturer to ensure that all products meet Energy Star requirements." That approach also makes it easy to verify set-top box energy use in the field, it said. The commenter had called the method of randomly selecting a "very small number" of boxes for testing "unfair" because it assumes that any box is representative of all of the set-top boxes "within a line of products." — Dinesh Kumar Global Open-Tech Webcast Harvard’s Lessig Scores Congress as Captive, Apple as 'Tone-Deaf' on Open Content Supporters of fair use and the digital remix culture may well be winning in the courts, but they can't get the copyright changes they need out of a Congress whose captivity to corporate money can only get worse with the Su- preme Court's recent ruling on campaign finance, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said on a webcast organ- ized by the Open Video Alliance. Apple would do well financially to take a lead from Google and open its technol- ogy platforms — but a push from "free culture" supporters could help it along, he said. "Amateur creativity" involving the use of copyrighted works should be exempted from charges of infringe- ment, Lessig said: "Not fair use — free use." There's no substantial commercial market for the mashups and they don't cut into demand for the works they sample, he said. "Fair use is also important," Lessig said, calling himself a "reluctant proponent" of the doctrine. It doesn't mean unlimited P2P file-sharing, but it does mean a great deal of activity is off-limits to copyright enforcement, he said. The conventional "Britney Spears model" of centralized production and distribution for maximum profit must be protected, but to "encourage the widest spread and development of culture," so must a "build-and-share-
  • 7. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—7 freely model," Lessig said. He showed and praised clips from an online video on this point by the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez. Copyright law needs to change to get "orphan works," those whose rightsholders can't be found, into the public domain, and to require holders to step forward every several years to maintain their rights, Lessig said. But this kind of "copyright maintenance" requirement, like one in patent law, is considered "almost a sin in the IP uni- verse," he said. Lessig called this view a "perversion" of the law. The Google Book Search settlement showed "genius in the way in which it solved" the orphan-works problem, he said: "But the problem shouldn't be settled this way," because it's a legislative issue. "Congress has yet to make any progress at all" on fixing copyright law, Lessig said. "It is a hopeless situa- tion" under the established lobbying and campaign-finance setup. "There will be no such thing as change until we change this culture." He encouraged listeners to contribute time to his efforts to overhaul the relationship between Congress and corporate money. Meanwhile, though, "the courts are increasingly getting it right" by "shifting the line" to protect creative freedom, he said. Time limits on U.S. copyrights should be "much less" than they are now, and no copyright should be ex- tended, because the possibility of prolonging rights gives holders great incentive to lobby to lengthen the time, Les- sig said. He lost the Eldred case on the constitutionality of extension legislation in the Supreme Court. Lessig took questions that viewers sent over Twitter and identica, a free-software microblogging ser- vice. The event hashtag "trended" in the U.S. on Twitter as one of the most popular topics during Lessig's talk, organizers said. Thousands of people around the world watched the 80-minute webcast, believed to be the largest streaming event ever using nonproprietary technologies, said Ben Moskowitz, the video alliance's general coordinator. He estimated that more than 1,000 people attended 32 formal viewing events on four continents. The largest crowds, of 150-200 each, were in Toronto and at Stanford University, where Lessig taught until this year, and in Cam- bridge, Mass., where he spoke. About 3,000 others watched the webcast on their own, as many as 700 at a time, Moskowitz said. A crush of traffic just before the scheduled start brought down the alliance's server, delaying the event about 20 minutes, he said. Moskowitz said he expects 10,000-15,000 people to have seen it within a week. The alliance hopes to do additional webcasts with speakers such as Wikimedia's Jimmy Wales and New York University's Clay Shirky, he said. Internationally, allowing countries to take their own approaches to copyright is better than imposing uniformity, Lessig said. The U.S. Trade Representative's Special 301 Report listing of "pirate nations" runs contrary to that principle, he said. Lessig said foreign governments can't "experiment" with the "full version" of the voluntary or mandatory collective licensing he supports without running afoul of the TRIPS Agreement on intellectual property. The idea that consumers in the U.S. and China should pay the same for a piece of content is "crazy," Lessig said. Choosing between the fair-use approach of the U.S. and the more specifically defined copyright exceptions in European countries and Japan is difficult, Lessig said. Fair use sacrifices clarity for the benefit of flexibility, in- cluding in response to new technology, but only for suspects and defendants who can afford court fights, he said. There's a proposal in Japan for "layering on fair use" to specific protections, "which might make a nice hy- brid," Lessig said. Leaders in Hollywood and the music industry have adjusted their thinking to the point that they now sound just like copyleft activists of several years ago, Lessig said. Established companies should recognize out of finan- cial self-interest that they should take advantage of the interactivity of digital media to make use of content created
  • 8. 8—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 by consumers, the way Amazon, Flickr, Google, Twitter and Yelp have, he said. But they shouldn't adopt the "sharecropping vision" of the Star Wars mashup sites and David Bowie, soliciting works by fans but claiming all copyright in them, Lessig said. "More and more businesses" will recognize that they'll do better respecting the creativity of users by allowing them the copyrights, he said. "Google should be paying for the remixed content" posted on its YouTube, Lessig said. The law is "backwards" now, he said: It makes users posting mashups liable for copyright infringement and immunizes com- panies that accept them. Users should be allowed flexibility to download content in the formats most convenient to them and do with it what they want, Lessig said. It shouldn't be wrapped in DRM in a way that disables them" or put under unreason- able legal restrictions, he said. Blip.tv recognized this from the start, and YouTube is moving that way, "maybe not quickly enough," Lessig said. "The urgency to solve these issues is becoming more intense as mobile technology becomes the default platform" for online communication and entertainment, Lessig said. "Heavy protection is going to make no sense" as users demand portability, he said. And "we need a culture where you can hack devices as easily as you can con- tent," Lessig said. "Platforms and hardware have got to be part of this." "There's something tone-deaf about Apple," Lessig said. The company insists on full control of its tech- nologies and is "aggressive in attacking" anyone who tries to tinker with them, Lessig said. Google's Android oper- ating system, in contrast, "invites tinkering" — "free software development" — and eventually will "outcompete" Apple in applications, though "it obviously hasn't so far." — Louis Trager
  • 9. MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY—9 3D Notes Days after Samsung lay claim to supplying the first 3D TV sets to Sears, Panasonic on Friday invited re- porters to a March 10 event at Best Buy's Union Square store in Manhattan to witness what it called the sale of the world's first 1080p 3D home theater system to a consumer. Presiding over the event will be Mike Vitelli, newly promoted to Best Buy president for the Americas, and Shiro Kitajima, president of Panasonic Consumer Electron- ics, the Panasonic announcement said. The Panasonic event begins at 9 a.m. About an hour later, Samsung will officially introduce what it's calling "the world's largest 3D HDTV lineup" at a news conference in the Samsung Experience gallery in Manhattan's Time Warner Center. Companies TiVo will ship new Premier HD and Premier XL DVRs this week through Best Buy priced at $299 and $499, retail sources said. Premier HD is capable of recording 45 hours of HD content, up from 20 hours in the model it replaces. The Premier XL model can record 150 hours of HD. TiVo’s current entry-level HD DVR has been pro- moted in recent weeks at $249 after a $50 discount. The step-up model has been featured with a $100 price cut at $499. Best Buy and TiVo allied last fall to introduce new models, including a combo TV/DVR (CED Dec 8 p1). —— Altec Lansing President Vicki Marion will get a $7,500 lump sum payment and a "turnaround" incentive if bonuses are earned, Altec's former parent Plantronics said in an SEC filing. Plantronics sold Altec to Prophet Eq- uity in December for $62 million. Marion resigned her post at Plantronics on Dec. 1 to join the new owners, the company said. A decision on whether a bonus will be paid Marion will be made by June 15, Plantronics said. Marion’s unvested options to buy Plantronics stock were accelerated and can be exercised starting March 1, Plantronics said. It said about 15,000 shares of restricted company stock that Marion held also have vested. Industry Notes "EPEAT is a green purchasing tool, not a substitute for sound end-of-life treatment" of e-waste, Jeff Omel- chuck, the Green Electronics Council’s founder, said at last week’s Greener Gadgets conference in New York. The council runs the EPEAT program whose acronym is short for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. "Recycling systems don’t change the nature of products" and their recyclability, he said. "There’s no e- waste system on the planet that has effectively changed the design of products. All the products collected at the end of their lives "in essence wind up in a big pile," Omelchuck said. "Sometimes the financial responsibility for coping with that pile is doled out to the manufacturers by brand share or return weight. But no manufacturer gets any financial benefit at all from greening their product." E-waste recycling is "a huge environmental issue, but it’s not going to change the products," he said. E-Commerce Social publishing company Scribd.com has created a "send to device" feature for free works on the site and for for-purchase books and chapters from major publishers, including O’Reilly Media and Lonely Planet. Us- ers can send more than 10 million mobile-enabled works, from research to recipes, to their smartphones and e- readers, as well as their own documents in PDF, Word, PowerPoint and other formats, Scribd said in a blog post. The feature only works if uploaders have designated their documents DRM-free and enabled them to be downloaded. Scribd said it will start in March rolling out a series of mobile applications for Android devices and
  • 10. 10—CONSUMER ELECTRONICS DAILY MONDAY, MARCH 1, 2010 the iPhone that will provide a "richer search, browsing and social experience." Scribd is best known for its proprie- tary iPaper "streaming" format, a lightweight rival to PDF (CED March 20 p5). Videogames The PSP repeated as the best-selling videogame system in Japan, according to Media Create data for the week ended Feb. 21, but PSP hardware sales fell to about 32,800 units from about 39,300 the previous week (CED Feb 22 p9). The PSP Go handheld system came in last again among hardware systems, sales flat at about 1,400. The PS3 moved up two to No. 2, sales increasing to about 32,100 from about 24,800, probably from strong demand for Capcom’s new edition of Resident Evil 5, which became the top-selling videogame in Japan its first week available, moving about 143,300 copies. The Wii fell one to No. 3 among hardware systems, its sales falling to about 31,700 from about 37,500. The new DSi LL, available only in Japan, fell one to No. 4, its sales slipping to about 24,400 from about 27,600. The DSi repeated at No. 5, but sales dropped to about 15,400 from about 18,100. The DS Lite was again No. 6 at about 5,100, down from about 5,700. The Xbox 360 repeated at No. 7, but sales fell to about 2,500 from about 3,400. The PS2 was again No. 8, sales flat at about 1,900. Namco Bandai’s God Eater for the PSP, the best-selling videogame in Japan for two straight weeks, dipped to No. 2 in its third week, its sales tumbling to about 64,200 copies from about 110,200. Consumer Electronics People Best Buy promotes Mike Vitelli and Shari Ballard to co-presidents, Americas. Vitelli will have responsibil- ity for Canada and will remain executive vice president for the chain's U.S. Customer Solutions Group and for Best Buy's private label brands. Ballard, who'll be responsible for Mexico, will remain executive vice president for U.S. stores and for BestBuy.com. 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