Rebecca Day

"Significant headwinds” in CE and PCs contributed to a $21 million profit drop at Dolby Labs, said CEO Kevin Yeaman, on Dolby’s fiscal Q3 earnings call Thursday. Net income fell to $30.2 million, from $51.5 million in the year-ago quarter, while revenue dipped to $207.1 million from $210.3 million in fiscal Q3 2012, it said. Dolby now projects total revenue for fiscal year 2013 will be $900-910 million, down from earlier forecasts of $910-940 million, due to “current weakness in consumer spending” and the digital cinema adoption cycle, said Chief Financial Officer Lewis Chew.

Belkin previewed a Miracast adapter that enables mirroring of content from a smartphone or tablet to a TV, at a product showcase Thursday in New York. The $69 device is due in stores in September, a company spokesman said. The Belkin adapter is dual-band, which gives the device the low latency required for game play and smooth video, he said. The wired Belkin solution plugs into an HDMI port on a TV to send signals, while power is supplied via a TV’s USB port, he told us, saying most TVs built within the past five years can support the USB power feature. The Miracast adapter can be used with TVs that don’t have a USB port using a USB-AC adaptor, and is compatible with Android 4.2 or greater and Windows 8.1, he said. Users can control content on the device using the TV remote if the TV supports HDMI CEC. Belkin sees picture-sharing as a popular use model for the technology, he said, as consumers look to share photos on their phones on a bigger screen. Belkin also announced Android compatibility for its WeMo home control platform, which already supports iOS devices, and it launched a $49 WeMo light switch that can be controlled by a connected device or put on a timed schedule. The light switch can be be set to go on or off with sunrise or sunset based data from weather.com access via Wi-Fi connection, the company said.

Samsung put off an OLED TV shipment to Value Electronics slated for this week until late next week, Robert Zohn, president of the Scarsdale, N.Y., AV retail store, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Zohn said earlier this week that Samsung’s 55-inch curved OLED model KN55S9, priced at $14,999, was on its way to his store, but he revised the schedule Wednesday, calling the shipping change part of a “planned unified nationwide launch” next week to a “limited number of premium retailers.” Samsung didn’t respond to questions by our deadline. On how Value Electronics plans to position OLED versus this year’s other advanced TV technology, Ultra HD, Zohn told us he doesn’t see the two as direct competitors. “At the moment, OLED is Full HD,” he said, compared with 4K Ultra HD, which appeals to those who want higher resolution, he said. Because, for now, all Ultra HD displays are LED-lit LCD TVs -- and come in screen sizes from 39-85 inches -- versus first-generation 55-inch OLED TVs with curved screens, “the applications are different,” Zohn said. Zohn prefers OLED over Ultra HD due to its high brightness capability and “very low” minimum luminance level that produces “ultra deep blacks,” he said. Contrast ratio, especially black level, is the key attribute to render the best picture quality, and OLED is the display technology that delivers the best contrast ratio, he said.

Chinese TV manufacturer TCL said it will blast into the low end of the U.S. Ultra HD market in September with a 50-inch LED-edge-lit Ultra HD LCD TV priced at $999. TCL’s strategy is to establish the TCL brand in the U.S. with “advanced technologies” and “premium design” at an “aggressive price point,” the company said Thursday. TCL is “not looking to create high margins like their competitors,” said Jim Redner, a U.S.-based spokesman for TCL, in comments accompanying a news release he emailed us.

Pushing content from a mobile device to a TV screen -- a content-sharing feature that Samsung debuted in its AllShare technology at the Galaxy 4 launch last spring -- pushed further into the technology mainstream this week. Verizon and Motorola bowed a new family of Droid phones, including the Mini, Ultra and Maxx, with Wi-Fi Direct-based Miracast under the hood. And Google’s new Asus-built 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet -- announced Wednesday -- can be paired with a $35 device called Chromecast, which plugs into the USB port on an HDTV, enabling viewers to “cast” online content to the TV screen. Microsoft, meanwhile, announced embedded support for Miracast last spring in Windows 8.1.

Apple shares rose more than 5 percent Wednesday following its Tuesday fiscal Q3 earnings call, despite a drop in profit to $6.9 billion from $8.8 billion in the year-ago quarter. Apple surprised financial observers with a 20 percent jump in iPhone sales to 31.2 million for the quarter, compared with a year ago. Apple sold 14.6 million iPads during fiscal Q3, versus 17 million in the year-ago quarter.

Kaleidescape lowered the entry point for consumers to buy its server and video management system to $3,995, down from the $14,000 price of its multi-zone server system, the company said Tuesday. The $3,995 Cinema One server is a one-room solution for a home theater and will be sold through Best Buy’s Magnolia Design Centers and Kaleidescape’s network of 1,800 custom integrators worldwide. The product will also be sold through the Kaleidescape Store, marking the first time the company has sold hardware under an e-commerce model from the company-owned store, Tom Barnett, senior director-marketing, told us.

Reactions among specialty AV dealers ranged from frustration to resignation following LG’s announcement that it would sprinkle the initial rollout of its 55-inch OLED TV exclusively through Magnolia Design Center stores in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and San Antonio. Over the summer, the $14,999 LG Curved OLED TV will roll out to select Magnolia stores nationwide, the company said.

The arrival of Common File Format (CFF)-based content and players later this year will facilitate video downloads via the UltraViolet licensing system, Mark Teitell, general manager of its member organization, the Digital Content Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), told Consumer Electronics Daily. Downloads are a major part of the UltraViolet vision going forward, said Teitell, saying UltraViolet wants to be viewed as more than a cloud-based system available through Vudu and CinemaNow. He referred to what UltraViolet sees as a “not very strong” electronic sell-through rate of current streaming services, including iTunes, which he attributed to multiple incompatible formats that prevent consumers from watching purchased content on multiple devices.

Intel is predicting “sub-seasonal growth” for Q3, Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith said on the company’s Q2 earnings call Wednesday, as the company comes off an “OK Q2, but not a gangbuster Q2.” Revenue drivers for the company in Q3 will include Intel’s Haswell System on a Chip (SoC), which he called “a great product for Ultrabooks and two-in-ones,” and Bay Trail, part of the Atom processor family, which will allow Intel to hit price points in the touch-enabled PC segment “that we've never touched before.” Intel will reach consumer price points profitably, and the company will “start hitting share in tablets,” Smith said. An improving macroeconomic climate going into second-half of 2013 will also help drive sales in the second half, he said.