Consumer Electronics Daily News

Volvo Adding HD Radio Across Entire Line

Volvo announced plans this week to add factory-installed HD Radio receivers to nearly every one of vehicles, starting in mid-2008. The receivers will be available as standard or optional equipment on most models, Radio Ink reports.

"We believe Volvo will have the largest standard equipped HD Radio technology fleet in the world," says Dirk Bott, Vice President of Brand, Business and Product for Volvo cars of North America. "Adding HD Radio capability to our S40 T5, V50 T5, C30, C70, S80, V70, XC70 and XC90 models truly makes our audio systems state of the art, giving Volvo drivers an even more enjoyable driving experience."

The move comes less than two months after parent company Ford Motor Company announced similar widespread adoption of factory-installed HD radios for a variety of 2009 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles, trucks and SUVs.

For more information, click here.

3G iPhone Coming in 2008?

While Apple is keeping quiet about plans to follow up the iPhone with a 3G-capable device sometime next year, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has confirmed the rumored device, saying the newer, faster iPhone will make its debut in 2008.

Stephenson told a group of reporters at a meeting in California this week that the 3G iPhone will be available in 2008, though he provided no other pricing or availability details.

The current iPhone, at $399, runs on the slower EDGE cellular data network, which has been criticized by many iPhone users as too slow to handle the next-generation, web-enabled capabilities of the iPhone including Visual Voice Mail and Web surfing.

Representatives for Apple not yet commented on Stephenson's remarks and have previously refused to comment on the future incarnations of the iPhone line.

For more information, click here.

Best Buy Launches Holiday Shopping Programs of Online, In-Store Shoppers

Best Buy reports that nearly three in five (58 percent) of Americans will purchase consumer electronics this holiday season for their children, significant others or parents, among other people, and in order to make the process easier than ever, the company is launching a series of programs that will take the pressure off holiday shopping and make the process easier for customers, including an extended return policy, the addition of Customer Assistants, an improved Web site, an increased selection of gift cards, shortened transaction times and targeted Hispanic initiatives.

"We start holiday planning 11 months in advance so we can provide the very best experience possible," says Brian Dunn, President and COO at Best Buy. "Our holiday approach is focused on bringing our customers complete gift solutions by offering a wide range of products, knowledgeable sales associates, and premium service to customers whether it's in store, online or through our phone channel."

Customer Assistants -- To improve the shopping experience, Best Buy has reassigned approximately 30 percent of its sales floor labor to a new cross-trained Customer Assistant position. Based on test scenarios, Best Buy found this new position would allow for deeper personal interaction with customers during peak times, a critical component to creating the best holiday experience. The new Customer Assistants are trained to help customers across all categories in the store from home theater to music to gaming, while being supported by more specialized BlueShirts who have deep knowledge in specific customer electronics categories.

Extended Return Policy -- The company is extending the deadline on all products to January 31. A product purchased as a gift as early as Nov 4 can now be returned at any point up until Jan 31. The new policy even includes computers and digital cameras as well as other products such as GPS devices which were previously limited to 14 days.

Spanish Website -- www.bestbuy.com/espanol, launched in November, is a Spanish-language version of the English BestBuy.com site and offers bilingual content on more than 12,000 products, including service plans and gift cards.

Other program initiatives includes enhanced phone support, additional online and in-store educational materials on purchasing HDTVs and related products, shortened transaction times and a Give the Complete Gift program that gives shoppers complete accessory lists for given products so they can provide a complete holiday gift that can be enjoyed moments after its unwrapped.

For more information about the expanded holiday initiatives, visit www.bestbuy.com.

SRS Wins 2 CES Innovations Awards

SRS Labs, Inc., a provider of surround sound, audio enhancement and voice processing technologies, has received two nods from CEA for their audio signal processing solutions – SRS WOW HD™ and SRS Headphone 360™ ­– as recipients of the 2008 Innovations Design and Engineering Awards.

“SRS Labs is honored for this recognition by the CEA,” says Tom Yuen, Chairman and CEO of SRS Labs. “We are proud of these innovative solutions. Our objective at SRS is to provide the most compelling audio entertainment experience possible from any source in any playback environment. We strongly believe that we have achieved that objective with these products.

SRS WOW HD greatly improves the quality of compressed and uncompressed audio by expanding the image size, creating the perception of powerful bass, providing realistic clarity to high frequencies, and improving dialog clarity. SRS Headphone 360 delivers an immersive surround sound experience over headphones used with mobile devices, providing 5.1 to 7.1 channel surround sound complete with dialog clarity, optimized bass response and extraordinary high frequency detail. 

For more information about the Innovations awards, visit www.cesweb.org/innovations . For more from SRS Labs, visit www.srslabs.com.

GPS Handsets Fuels Strong Mobile Phone Growth

Shipments of GPS-enabled mobile phones will generate more than $50 billion in revenues in 2008, rising to $100 billion in 2012, according to a new report from ABI Research. The market for these handsets is expected to grow from around 240 million units in 2008 to more than 550 million handset shipments in 2012.

At present, most current GPS-enabled handsets are CDMA devices, but increasing numbers of GPS-enabled handsets for 3G/WCDMA networks will start to appear in the market from 2008 onwards.

"The ongoing consolidation in the mobile industry -- including Nokia's acquisition of NAVTEQ, Broadcom's acquisition of Global Locate, CSR's acquisition of NordNav Technologies and Cambridge Positioning Systems, and the tussle between TomTom and Garmin to acquire Tele Atlas -- gives a clear indication of the plans and commitment of industry players to address the GPS-enabled handset market," says ABI Research Analyst Shailendra Pandey.

ABI Research believes that the mobile industry has reached the stage where we can expect to see rapid growth in the GPS-enabled handset market. From cost and technology perspectives, chipset manufacturers now have solutions in place that will allow the integration of GPS in handsets at low cost and provide significant improvements in terms of accuracy, time-to-first-fix and reception in indoor environments. On the services side, mobile operators and navigation application developers are coming up with attractive location-based service offerings to entice new consumers.

For more information, check out ABI's GPS-Enabled Mobile Devices or visit www.abiresearch.com.

Corel Increases Focus on Digital Media Market

Company Closing Digital Imaging Facility in Minneapolis

Corel Corporation, a leading developer of graphics, productivity and digital media software, today announced that it is increasing its focus on the Digital Media market by concentrating its Digital Media operations in Greater China and Silicon Valley. According to Corel, "these actions will enable the company to fully maximize its broad portfolio of digital media software and technology assets in order to deliver an enhanced user experience to consumers worldwide." Centralizing Corel's Digital Media operations will also enable the Company to further accelerate the development process and increase speed-to-market for new and upgraded products.

"Corel's Digital Media portfolio is the broadest in the industry, covering all of the major digital media segments including imaging, video editing, and DVD authoring," says Jeff Hastings, President and General Manager of Corel Digital Media. "By concentrating our Digital Media operations in Greater China and Silicon Valley, we will be able to better leverage our global resources and talent while further improving the operational efficiency between our software development, product management, and marketing teams. We believe these actions will ultimately result in an even more exciting product range and a richer user experience for our customers."

As a result of these changes, Corel will be closing its existing Digital Imaging facility in Minneapolis. For more information, visit www.corel.com.

Wide-Ranging Mobile Video Services, Content Attract More Users in the U.S.

Compelling content, multiple application types, social networking, mobile advertising and mobile broadcasting services are some of the developments that influence the mobile video services market.
A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan, finds that premium revenues from mobile video content services estimates to reach $1.62 billion in 2011.

The U.S. is one of the few regions where competing multicasting technologies can be deployed. While QUALCOMM's MediaFLO USA's service is the sole commercial mobile video broadcasting service presently, mobile operators will partner with broadcasting service providers to surmount spectrum and network limitations.  As Sprint-Nextel offers one of the largest content catalog over CDMA2000 1xEVDO, other operators such as AT&T and Helio provide various content categories to set themselves apart.

"In the meantime, penetration of capable handsets is increasing at a rapid pace, and it is only a matter of time before consumers adopt some form of mobile video service," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Vikrant Gandhi. "The challenge then is to persuade the subscribers to try these services first - mobile operators are hopeful that the enhanced user experience will result in many subscribers continuing to use mobile video."

For more detail from the F&S report, visit www.frost.com.

Pinnacle Brings HDTV To Your PC

Pinnacle has refreshed its PCTV line of PCI tuner cards with the updated ATSC standard to provide over-the-air digital broadcasts to your computer screen.

The PCTV HD Card gives users the ability to tune both ATSC (digital up to 1090i, and SDTV), and NTSC (cable and over-the-air analog) broadcasts with the touch of a button, and includes software support for direct recording of shows to a HDD (via MPEG-2 or DivX recording) or even direct-to-DVD recording. The card is also ClearQAM-ready for easy access of unencrypted digital cable.

The card includes time-shifting and live-TV pause and rewind functionality, as well as a bundled software for users to edit recorded videos (Pinnacle Studio). Users can also tune and access FM radio stations with the built-in radio tuner. The PCTV HD Card also includes an RF remote control, FM radio antenna and A/V adapter cable for playback of video game consoles and capture of other video sources such as a DVD player or camcorder.

For more information, visit www.pinnaclesys.com.

Sony: PS3 Sales Jump Nearly 300%

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) is touting figures showing Playstation 3 sales up about 250 percent since Black Friday 2006, and up nearly 300 percent in the last few weeks alone, Game Daily reports. Since the company released a lower priced, $399 40GB PS3, along with a $499 80GB SKU in early November, the game consoles hardware sales have jumped 298 percent, Sony reports.

The surprisingly good sales figures are a welcome change for Sony, which has failed to have PS3 sales keep pace with rivals Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 throughout the majority of 2007. All signs point to a recovery for Sony's gaming division, which also reported that Playstation Portable hardware sales have jumped more than 100 percent in the past few weeks (including topping 1 million units sold of the newer PPS-2000 hardware refresh), and steady hardware and software sales for the Playstation 2.

For more information from Game Daily, click here.

Cinematic Mount Elevates Ceiling Lift for High End Installations

New to Chief Manufacturing's line of automated flat panel and projector mounting solutions, the CM2C40™ Automated Ceiling Lift allows users to raise and lower a flat panel from the ceiling at the press of button. The lift is an ideal solution to disguise flat panel TVs in high-end residential or business installations, providing quick and smooth screen movement with customizable stops.

Designed for flat panel TVs 61" and over or up to 190 lbs, the CM2C40 provides fast up/down travel at over 2" per second! The lift provides up to 40" of travel with a stored height of only 31" and the exclusive Auto Drive™ gliding system provides fast and quiet adjustment.

For more information, visit www.chiefmfg.com.