The Natural Resources Defense Council will intervene as a co-defendant in a CEA and ITI Council lawsuit seeking to stop the New York City e-waste law from being carrier out (CED July 29 p2), U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley said in an order that the sides in the case had agreed to. The council’s involvement in the case had been expected. CE and IT makers allege that the law is unconstitutional because it exceeds the city’s authority over interstate commerce. The council’s lawyer Kate Sinding, who, according to the order will file an affidavit in the case, has called the allegations bunk. In the order, Pauley appeared to take steps to limit the amount of paperwork in the case. The city and the council have until Oct. 9 to file an opposition to CE maker’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Filed Aug. 7, the motion ran more than 400 pages, including 16 sworn expert declarations from CE environmental executives and others attesting to how the e-waste law would hurt their companies. Pauley wants no more than two declarations to accompany the Oct. 9 opposition, the order said. CE makers may file a reply by Nov. 20 that “shall not exceed 25 pages,” the order said.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
Best Buy shares fell about 5 percent Tuesday after the chain reported lower-than-expected Q2 earnings per share despite better-than-expected same-store sales performance. Despite the miss, Best Buy slightly upgraded its earnings per share forecast for the year, and senior executives on a quarterly earnings call Tuesday exuded optimism about the chain’s second-half prospects.
Philips on Sept. 1 finished the first year of its licensing deal giving Funai responsibility for sourcing, marketing, distribution and sales of all Philips and Magnavox TVs, DVD players, Blu-ray decks and home cinema products in North America (CED April 9/08 p1), and the results “have exceeded our expectations,” Andy Mintz, senior vice president for Philips Consumer Lifestyle, told us in an interview at the IFA show in Berlin.
RadioShack signed a contract last week to launch AT&T ConnecTech support services in its 4,500 company-owned stores because it has become increasingly important “to have the ability to offer someone some help when they come into your store” and their home network hub “isn’t working with the router,” RadioShack CEO Julian Day said at the Goldman Sachs Global Retailing Conference in New York.
BERLIN -- Producers of the IFA show have said consumers they have polled increasingly rank “green” factors such as energy efficiency or product recyclability higher in the CE purchase decision than do their American counterparts (CED Sept 3 p1). But when IFA opened its doors to the German public Friday, the overflow crowds we observed at the largest stands seemed more infatuated with home 3-D than with the progress companies had made developing more energy-efficient Blu-ray players.
BERLIN -- A day after Sony used its IFA pulpit to declare it would drive the 3-D “train” home by introducing 3- D Bravia LCD TVs and perhaps other consumer products next year (CED Sept 3 p1), Panasonic sought at its own IFA news conference Thursday to one-up its rival. Others may bring 3- D products to market in 2010, but Panasonic will be first, the company vowed. Moreover, Panasonic will be the first brand to introduce 3-D-capable plasma TVs and Blu-ray players as bundled “sets,” Yoshiiku Miyata, senior vice president and director of the company’s Visual Products and Display Devices Business Group, told the news conference.
BERLIN -- Sony will bring the “magic” of 3-D “directly to consumers’ homes through movies, games and sporting events, all in 3-D, in 2010,” CEO Howard Stringer told a pre- IFA news conference Wednesday. Though Stringer’s talk lacked many product specifics, his remarks put Sony as the second company, following Panasonic, to declare plans to debut 3-D consumer products next year.
CEA concedes that filing a lawsuit to block New York City from enforcing its e-waste law (CED July 27 p1) froze any chance of the dialog it seeks with the city to improve the program for manufacturers, said Parker Brugge, the association’s vice president for environmental affairs and industry sustainability. But “given the July 31 deadline for submitting plans” to the city on e-waste collections, “coupled with the enormous fees associated with not filing the plans, we were left with no option but to file the lawsuit,” he said. “We continue to be open and available to discuss with the city a more reasonable and effective recycling solution for New York City residents.” The suit has achieved CEA’s goal of blocking enforcement of the law: The city Department of Sanitation has agreed not to crack down on manufacturers that don’t file collection plans for at least 30 days after any rejection of CEA’s motion for a preliminary injunction. With a court hearing put off at least a month from the scheduled Oct. 23 date, collection plans probably won’t have to be filed until well into December if a judge denies the manufacturers’ motion. But the companies still would need to file their plans at the peak of the holiday selling season or risk fines of $1,000 a day. Asked whether manufacturers are preparing for that possibility, Brugge said CEA is “confident that the court will find various provisions of the New York City e-waste law and regulations unconstitutional,” as the association’s July 24 complaint contended. “However, in the event the industry is required to develop plans in accordance with the existing or modified law and regulations, our member companies are prepared to comply, albeit at a significant cost and impact to the environment.”
The shift to Blu-ray/DVD/CD combo drives for computers “will happen more quickly” than iSuppli forecasts, Pioneer executive Andy Parsons told us. The research firm said this week it thinks BD drives in computers will eventually find success, but growth the next five years will be minimal (CED Aug 27 p5). Parsons, spokesman for the Blu-ray Disc Association, said by e-mail Wednesday the growth of BD drives in computers “is dependent on a number of factors, since they can be used for different applications.” For example, “they can be used as movie players -- both DVD and BD -- to watch content in whichever format you buy a movie in,” he said. “In other words, owning a laptop with a BD drive means you can enjoy your BD movie away from your HDTV home theater, with portability trumping high def in this case.” A BD drive “can also be a writer,” Parsons said. “With so many people capturing HD content on inexpensive camcorders now, transferring it to BD-R or BD-RE allow an archive copy to be made (hard drives are temporary containers in every respect) that can also be played on the home theater BD player. And it can be easily shared with others -- much easier than trying to send a multi-gigabyte file over a network. This application will become more important as the population of BD players become increasingly ubiquitous, a key gating factor for computer adoption.” BD drives won’t “eliminate” DVD drives, they'll “incorporate them,” Parsons said he believes strongly. “So once the cost becomes low enough, it’s inevitable that they will find their way into more and more computer SKUs. This is already happening in Japan. Then users have the option of using a much higher-capacity medium for photo and MP3 library backups in addition to CD and DVD formats. I remember saying about 10 years ago that most users didn’t generate enough of their own content to fill up a whole DVD-R, a statement that seems pretty silly now.”
The Digital Entertainment Group will restructure immediately to concentrate more on digital content delivery, Blu-ray and green issues, it said Thursday. “Most noteworthy” will be an “expansion directed at the digital media landscape, an area that has seen significant and steady growth in recent years,” it said.