IBM team member Epiq Systems won’t say, but the “all- time largest multi-year individual client engagement in the class action market” it said Tuesday it had won during Q3 seems to have all the markings of the DTV coupon contract (CED Aug 16 p1). Epiq didn’t answer our queries and has snubbed previous interview requests because the contract bars the company from discussing the coupon program with reporters. Under the contract, Epiq will run the “coupon distribution and consumer support system,” including call centers, using its experience as an administrator of large class-action settlements, IBM’s contract proposal said (CED Oct 10 p1). Epiq won the “client engagement” through “an extremely competitive process,” President Christopher Olofsen told analysts Tuesday in a quarterly earnings call. Epiq thinks it will see “a small component” of revenue from the project in Q4, but most of the revenue will “come through” in 2008 and 2009 when the project has its “largest impact,” Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Braham said, though “we're still learning” how the contract will progress.
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.
LG canceled its weekend line show at the Grand Hyatt in San Diego because of the raging wildfires. The decision was made in “the interest of your safety and health,” LG told invitees Wednesday. LG plans “an alternative event” later this year, it said. A day earlier, LG said the line show would go on as planned because “none of the downtown areas where the airport or Grand Hyatt is located is affected by fires, nor is it anticipated to be.” Meanwhile, Sony Electronics headquarters in Rancho Bernardo -- one of the hardest hit parts of San Diego -- has been closed since Monday, Senior Vice President Rick Clancy said on his company blog. The fires came to within a few hundred yards of one of the Sony buildings, but there was no severe damage, Clancy said. He and his family evacuated their North Poway home early Monday for a hotel near the ocean, he told us. They planned to return home Wednesday, he said. Clancy thinks all his Sony colleagues are safe, “but some may have experienced home loss or damage,” he said. Late Wednesday, Sony decided to keep its offices closed until Monday, a spokeswoman said.
“There is tremendous interest in Pioneer’s business strategy as a result of both the recent mutual investment with Sharp and the visibility around the new Kuro display and marketing campaign.”
Zoran thinks the coupon-eligible converter box market will top out at 20 to 25 million units, CEO Levy Gerzberg told analysts in a quarterly earnings call Monday. That would be well below the maximum 33.5 million for which NTIA has coupon funding. The company hopes “many of those boxes will have the Zoran chip in them,” Gerzberg said. “We have a number of customers who are ready to start deploying those boxes.” Deployment “took longer than we expected,” and power consumption “was the key issue,” he said. But “we nailed it all,” Gerzberg said. Zoran thinks its chips will be built into 25 to 30 percent of the boxes deployed, Gerzberg said. Demand for the chips will start this quarter, rising rapidly the first half of 2008, he said.
Version 2.5 of the Sonos software, released Tuesday (CED Oct 19 p8), is compatible with Best Buy’s Digital Music Store, which is powered by the Rhapsody Online Music Service, a Sonos spokesman said. Sonos also has added support for Microsoft’s Windows Home Media Server software, the spokesman said. The new Sonos BR100 ZoneBridge ($99)has two Ethernet ports and is designed to attach to a router for setting up the Sonos music system, he said. Previously, a ZonePlayer had to be tethered to a router to create the proprietary Sonos 802.11g wireless network, he said. Sonos has not cut prices on the ZonePlayer 100 or ZonePlayer 80, the spokesman said. In May, the company “adjusted the SKU” of the Sonos Digital Music System, he said. It previously offered a zp100 bundle (including two zp100s and a controller) for $1,199 and a zp80 bundle (two zp80s and a Controller) for $999, he said. “There has been no price drop,” he said.
The DTV consumer education order circulating at the FCC (CED Oct 17 p1) “might purport to regulate the in- store practices of retailers in advising and serving customers,” and the CE Retailers Coalition fears “the potential effect such a measure might have on attracting retail participation” in the voluntary NTIA coupon program, CERC representatives told the Commission’s Media Bureau in meetings Thursday, according to an parte filing.
Las Vegas hotel rooms are in historically short supply and rates are higher, but CES 2008 registrants aren’t being gouged, CEA President Gary Shapiro told reporters this week at the CEA Industry Forum in Coronado, Calif. “It’s supply and demand,” he said. There will be only 132,000 hotel rooms to house 2008 CES’s 140,000- 150,000 showgoers, Shapiro said. The room tally is down about 2,000 from 2007 because older hotels have been demolished, said Karen Chupka, CES senior vice president for events and conferences. The room squeeze will run until 2010, by which time several new hotels, mostly high- end, will have opened, Chupka said. She and her team meet next week with Las Vegas hotel authorities, she said, adding that she’s been told the event will include hotel executives ready to justify 2008’s higher room rates. CEA hopes hotels will release more rooms “within the block” reserved for CES at lower show rates, Chupka said. CES opening day, Monday, Jan. 7, will be DTV coupon day, Shapiro said. A noon panel will feature NTIA officials and representatives of the IBM vendor team running the program, CEA said. Plans are still fluid, but the panel is expected to include NTIA Administrator John Kneuer, Shapiro said. A briefing for retailers on the coupon program will follow the panel, he said. The 2009 CES show also will include: (1) A speech by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to kick off the Industry Insider series Monday, Jan. 7, 11 a.m., at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater. (2) CES is going green, and CEA will have details at its annual New York media briefing Nov. 13. (3) Pit Lane Park, a new CES attraction sponsored by BMW and Intel, will include live racing and stunt action along a 90-meter track, featuring the BMW Sauber F1 and Formula BMW race teams. It will be the only Formula One stop of its kind in the U.S., Chupka said. The attraction will be open to the public through the weekend preceding CES, but trade-only once the show opens Jan. 7. Pit Lane Park was the news involving “a major German company in a related industry” that Shapiro said he had hoped to announce at the Berlin IFA show in early September but could not when the official who needed to sign the contract wasn’t back from vacation, Shapiro said there (CED Sept 5 p2).
“Best Buy is excited to be all-digital in TV,” Senior Vice President Mike Vitelli told Consumer Electronics Daily of the chain’s Wednesday announcement that it’s the first CE retailer to go public about exiting the analog TV business (CED Oct 18 p1). Best Buy told its stores to stop selling analog TV products Oct. 1, the chain said. Asked why it took Best Buy longer to go all- digital than a May 1 target he gave the House Telecom Subcommittee (CED March 29 p1), Vitelli said “the original projections took into account sales trends at that time with some projected slowdown.” He said that “after stepping up our efforts in labeling and DTV transition messaging in our stores and on our website, the sales slowed more dramatically than we projected, thus accounting for the additional time.”
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has circulated notices of apparent liability proposing $3.5 million in fines against 14 retailers accused of violating the commission’s May 25 analog-only labeling order, Martin told a House Telecom Subcommittee DTV oversight hearing Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Commission released notices proposing fines totaling $96,000 against six retailers for violating the labeling order (CED Oct 17 p6).
CORONADO, Calif. -- China remains public enemy No. 1 in product counterfeiting, but its government is making the transition to an “innovator” from a producer economy, which may bode well for future enforcement, a copyright and trademark attorney told the CEA Industry Forum in a panel Tuesday. But “don’t hold your breath,” because there’s little likelihood of change anytime soon, said Philip Zender of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in San Francisco.