Rebecca Day

Harman opened its first U.S. company store, a 9,000-square-foot showroom, interactive demo space and retail shop in a former Talbot’s location roughly a block from Sony’s Sony Wonder Technology Lab and PlayStation Lounge. At a private event at the store Thursday night, Sean Kapoor, Harman vice president-brand marketing, told us the store will open to the public Nov. 22 and be Harman’s “flagship” store, if not its first. Harman operates stores in Shanghai, Seoul and Dubai, and a Moscow store is due to open in February, followed by a store in New Delhi, Kapoor said. Beyond that, Harman will continue to look at options, he said, and “maybe a couple more in the U.S.” The midtown Manhattan store has a seven-year lease and will be open daily from 10 a.m.-7 p.m., he said.

Walmart projected lower than expected earnings for Q4 of $1.60-$1.70 per share, citing projected flat comps and “continued pressure on sales,” said Chief Financial Officer Charles Holley on the company’s Q3 earnings call Thursday. Analysts had been expecting Q4 guidance of $1.69-$1.70. Janney Capital Markets analyst David Strasser cited a “modest” cut in comps along with lower gross margins “as Walmart ratchets up the promotional engine with some pretty aggressive moves” in Black Friday sales plans.

Black Friday deals continued to trickle out Thursday with the Thanksgiving weekend now two weeks away. H.h. gregg unveiled its doorbuster deals that begin at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving and also include “mystery doorbusters” that will be unleashed at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. Nov. 29. The mystery doorbusters are “planned to be in-store only,” a company spokeswoman told us. But mystery deals will be posted on the h.h. gregg website two hours before each sale begins, according to the site.

The first products based on CSR’s VibeHub and VibePlayer multi-room audio platforms will start to roll out next year in time for the holiday season, Jonny McClintock, director-aptX marketing at chip maker CSR, told Consumer Electronics Daily on a press tour in New York. McClintock expects customers to make pre-product launch announcements at CES, where the company will demo the SoCs off-site along with its fledgling aptX Low Latency technology. CSR announced DLNA-based VibeHub and VibePlayer, based on the Sonata media processor, last year at CES. The platform uses Bluetooth for streaming and then distributes audio via Wi-Fi, McClintock said.

Prescient Audio premiered its ThinDriver technology in a 12-inch subwoofer at CES Unveiled Tuesday in New York. The light and thin technology has applications in the home, car and in pro audio, CEO Paul Niedermann told us. The company is initially targeting the home market, which has “the lowest barrier to entry,” Niedermann said, but it’s touting scalability overall. Beyond traditional speaker applications, the company is also eyeing implementation in smartphones, tablets and laptops, he said. “If some rock star wants an eight-foot-tall speaker, we can do that,” he said. ThinDriver technology, with patents pending in 15 countries, puts speaker components in the perimeter of the speaker frame rather than positioning them in a stacked configuration, Niedermann said. By eliminating the stack, Prescient can make speakers that are thinner and lighter and that run cooler, he said. The 1,000-watt, 12-inch TD-12 subwoofer the company showed at CES Unveiled measured 2-1/4-inch thick and weighed eight pounds, compared with a typical conventional subwoofer that measures 9-1/2 inches deep and weighs 50 pounds, he said. The sub has a cone area of a 14-inch driver, but requires only 6 inches of box volume, he said. Prescient expects speaker makers to adopt the technology for the form factor due to the design flexibility it offers, said Chief Operating Officer Karl Schmitt. “We're taking something that’s been clunky and big, and now you can put it into thin-line packages with curved boxes and all kinds of weird stuff,” Schmitt said. The TD-12 boasts the highest power-to-weight ratio of any speaker on the market, which could have applications in a vehicle or airplane where the goal is to keep weight to a minimum, Niedermann said. The technology can also enable different shapes of speakers, he said. Prescient will have a demo box showing several designs at CES, he said. A “good starting price” for the sub driver is $999, Schmitt said, which would translate to roughly $2,000 in a complete speaker. “We're not going for a $4,000 pair of MartinLogans, but maybe half that,” he said.

Netflix launched what it called a “radically new look” to its screens Wednesday that it said presents a “richer and more immersive” experience for viewing on the big screen. The new design shows multiple cinematic images for each title, a “snappy description” and more personalized detail on why Netflix suggests particular content for a user, it said. The new design was scheduled to be delivered Wednesday by a new Netflix software platform that runs on set-top boxes, “recent model” smart TVs and Blu-ray players and game consoles, Netflix said. Devices supporting the new experience include PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Roku 3 and recent Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, said a news release. A Netflix spokesman told us any “newly bought Smart TV or Blu-ray player this holiday season will definitely have” the new look. Older devices “may get it, depending on the update cycles of the manufacturer,” he said. Consumers who “just bought” a late model TV or Blu-ray player have a good chance of getting the new experience, “but we can’t guarantee it,” the spokesman said. Additional devices, including other Roku boxes, will be added at a later date, Netflix said. Netflix called the new design “the biggest change to the Netflix experience on televisions in our history, making it even easier” to find content to watch.

Ultra HD sales have gone “beyond expectations,” said manufacturers and retailers on an upbeat panel at the Ultra HD Conference, part of CES Unveiled in New York Tuesday. Tom Campbell, spokesman for Video and Audio Center, Santa Monica, Calif., said Ultra HD is largely responsible for the chain’s best Q2 and Q3 in history.

Walmart took the wraps off its Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day promotional plans Tuesday, including a 32-inch Funai LED-lit LCD TV doorbuster for $98. Last year, a 32-inch doorbuster at Walmart was $148. Walmart said its stores will offer 21 one-hour guaranteed items -- seven times the number last year -- due to last year’s success with the program that guaranteed special pricing for customers standing in line at a designated time. Customers in line between 6 and 7 p.m. or 8 and 9 p.m. local time on Thanksgiving this year are assured to receive select items either that night or before Christmas, Walmart promised.

Referring to DTS as “no longer just a codec company,” CEO Jon Kirchner said on its Q3 earnings call late Wednesday that the company is “laying the foundation for a transformative audio experience anytime, anywhere, on any device and on any platform.” The company’s Q3 results reflect progress in its effort to penetrate the network-connected market, while it is experiencing “some weakness” in the traditional CE market, Kirchner said.

Zagg cut financial guidance for Q4 based on lower sales of its high-margin invisibleShield screen protector products and “lack of sales execution,” said CEO Randall Hales on the company’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. Chief Financial Officer Brandon O'Brien cited “missed sales opportunities in the third quarter,” and said Q4 sales will fall below targeted levels, leading to a revenue guidance downgrade for the holiday quarter to $212 million-$218 million versus previous estimates of $245 million-$252 million.