Rebecca Day

The Fourth of July held over to July 5 at CE retailers such as Best Buy, Conn’s Home Plus and h.h. gregg, which slashed prices on select items for the mid-summer sales event that deals site BFA Ads called one of the biggest weekends of the year for PC and laptop buys. Featured laptop deals at Best Buy were the HP 15.6-inch touchscreen Envy with 8GB memory, a 750 GB hard drive and an Intel Core i5 processor for $699 and a Toshiba 15.6-inch C55-B5200 laptop for $379 with 6 GB memory, a 750 GB hard drive and an Intel Core i3 processor.

Google stepped up its streaming music prowess Wednesday with the purchase of the Songza music service that organizes music by mood, time of day and other themes designed to help listeners discover music in different ways. No “immediate” changes to Songza are planned, Songza said on its website. Users should see in the near term that Songza becomes “faster, smarter, and even more fun to use,” it said.

Dealers reacted with resignation Wednesday to the news that Samsung is exiting the plasma TV business (CED July 2 p5). Samsung confirmed Wednesday it will end production of plasma TVs at the end of the year “due to changes in market demands.” The company is “committed to providing consumers with products that meet their needs, and will increase our focus on growth opportunities in UHD TV’s and Curved TV’s,” Samsung said.

Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia, responding to subscribers’ “overwhelming and touching” support, sent them an email Tuesday urging them to “raise your hands and make your voices heard.” Tweets, emails and Facebook posts “have made it clear how important it is for so many Americans to have access to a cloud-based antenna” for viewing live broadcast TV, he said (http://bit.ly/V8gpUW). He asked subscribers to tell Congress “how disappointed you are that the nation’s highest court issued a decision that could deny you the right to use the antenna of your choice to access live over-the-air broadcast television.” He urged them to tell their stories of why having a cloud-based antenna is important to their families and to “show them you care about this issue.” He asked subscribers to “stand together for innovation, progress, and technology” and directed them to ProtectMyAntenna.org. A company spokeswoman said the email “will be the only statement from Aereo at this time.” The company shut down its streaming video service Saturday (CED July 1 p3).

The mainstream home control market continued to heat up Tuesday as Home Depot and Quirky demoed Quirky’s Wink app-enabled smart home platform at a loft in New York’s SoHo district. Some 18 Wink-enabled products from 15 vendors will be displayed on end caps in all Home Depot stores beginning this month, Jeff Epstein, merchandising vice president, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Many of the connected products are available now at the Home Depot website and will be integrated with the Wink app on July 7, the companies said.

Staples announced the expansion of its Staples Connect home control platform from a 32-store trial that began in November (CED Sept 25 p1) to a 500-store rollout, effective July 15. At a news conference in New York Monday, Staples Vice President-Business Development Brian Coupland said Staples is committed to Connect, which targets both small-business owners and consumers, and has expanded the platform to include more wireless protocols, a Windows 8 app and wearable devices.

Aereo subscribers had little time Saturday morning to access content from their personal DVRs, after being told in an email (we received ours at 10:15 a.m.) from CEO Chet Kanojia that the service would shut down at 11:30 a.m. EDT. Subscribers will be refunded their last paid month of service, he said.

It has become harder for customers to price-shop high-end Panasonic TVs under the company’s 2014 distribution model. Panasonic notified customers by email Friday of a “flash sale” on 4K Ultra HD TVs, good through Saturday, that took $500 off both the 65-inch TC-65AZ800U (to $3,999) and the 58-inch TC-58AX800U (to $3,299). No other e-tailers appeared after our Google search for the models or on the CNET PriceFinder, we found. Panasonic sweetened the sale on its own e-commerce site by tossing in, for free, a 4K upscaling DMP-BDT460 Blu-ray player that was selling for $179 on Best Buy Friday. Best Buy’s Magnolia, meanwhile, which has its own exclusives for Panasonic 2014 TVs, listed only the 65-inch TC-L65WT600 Friday with a minimum advertised price of $3,499, down from $4,999. Best Buy didn’t offer the Blu-ray bundle.

High-end multi-room audio company Autonomic Controls has gotten “more aggressive" with pricing by packaging amplifiers and servers together in an effort to be more competitive with Sonos, CEO Michael de Nigris told Consumer Electronics Daily at a CE Week event at Stereo Exchange in New York. Autonomic is maintaining a focus on the custom integrator channel, where it can justify higher prices for a wired audio system, but de Nigris conceded “some pressure from Sonos.” As Autonomic has adjusted its product line, packages are priced at 60-65 percent of individually priced gear, de Nigris said, when customers buy an eight-room system. Autonomic gear starts at $4,000, but can leverage to a close-to Sonos price of $500 per room with a 16-room system, he said.

While the audio industry settled on a broad collection of “descriptors” earlier this month (CED June 13 p7) to define hi-res music files for digital retailers, translating the benefits of high-resolution music to a consumer base accustomed to MP3 recordings won’t come quickly or easily, panelists said during a CE Week hi-res audio session.