Rebecca Day

Barnes & Noble has cut the prices of the Nook and Nook Color tablets in time for the back-to-school season. The company had been heavily discounting its e-readers over the past few months, bundling the devices with free software and gift cards. The new pricing, pitched in time for back-to-school shopping, has no end date, a company spokeswoman told us. Prices are now $179 for the 8GB Nook Tablet and $199 for the 16GB version, and the Nook Color now rings up at $149 across Barnes & Noble distribution including company-owned stores, online and at third-party retailers, the company said. Barnes & Noble wouldn’t address what prompted the price cuts at this time, although Google’s Nexus 7 is due in quantities soon. Google’s Asus-built Nexus 7-inch tablet, which was delayed, is expected to be available from B&H Photo, where the Nexus 7 is currently on backorder, on Sept. 1 for $249, according to the B&H website. Staples lists the Nexus 7 for $199 (8GB) and $249 (16GB) on its website, but noted the devices were “in store only on special order.” Engadget called the Nexus 7 “the best slate that $200 can buy.”

Our visit to a Best Buy store in Brentwood, Mo., Saturday exposed how much confusion still exists at retail when it comes to 3D TV, we found in a Consumer Electronics Daily mystery shopping trip. It also revealed some kinks in the store’s computer system, sales staff training and sly display tactics regarding plasma TV.

Building on growth in Harman’s infotainment division, the company signed its first deal with General Motors, a $900 million OEM contract for “scalable advanced technology,” Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal said on the company’s fiscal Q4 earnings call Friday. He wouldn’t say which GM models the contract covers. Harman is “well under way” on development, and the first GM vehicles with Harman technology are expected to hit dealerships “sometime in 2014,” he said. The contract follows earlier announcements during the year of contracts with Volkswagen Group, valued at $400 million, BMW for $2 billion for future-generation infotainment systems, and $500 million awards from emerging market companies Tata Motors in India and Geely, BAIC and Changan in China.

Media server company Mozaex is getting into the thriving headphone business with a two-piece, 10-transducer surround-sound product. Called BluWav, the system incorporates proprietary technology that decodes a standard 7.1-channel soundtrack at an “HD Audio-level” 27 Mbps bitrate, CEO Douglas Kihm told us Thursday. The $1,695 system, called BluWav, combines wired headphones with a “Blender Console” that houses patent-pending crossovers and equalizers that allow users to set up personalized audio profiles, Kihm said. Users can adjust volume as they're watching a movie for each transducer individually, and front transducers can be tweaked by a 15-band equalizer, he said. The system has two “vibration” subwoofers with bass-booster amplifiers that provide a tactile sensation. “You can feel the frequencies under 200 Hz, but it doesn’t hurt,” Kihm quipped, saying deep bass material such as thunder in a soundtrack propagates a sound wave that can be felt through the ear cup. Mozaex will launch the product at CEDIA next month and positions its first headphone system, with a component-size console, as a custom electronics product that will mount in a standard electronics rack. The console connects to a receiver either via HDMI or analog preamp output jacks, Kihm said. Mozaex is making the headphones at its factory in Salt Lake City, he said. Regarding whether the launch of a headphone line marks a shift away from the media server marker, Kihm said the high-end headphones follow the company’s basic mission to focus on “high-end luxury home entertainment. That’s our niche,” he said. The surround-sound headphones are targeted to the growing number of home entertainment enthusiasts living in multi-dwelling units where they “love movies but can’t listen to them at full volume,” he said. Mozaex will sell BluWavs through 20 distributors internationally and through 10 in the U.S. and Canada. “The growth in the headphone market is extraordinary,” he said, citing a U.S. market of $2 billion. CE sales in the U.K. are off “precipitously,” he said, but the headphone market has reached 137 million pounds compared with an overall CE market of 167 million pounds there, he said.

Beats Audio was “caught by surprise” over the Rule 40 International Olympic Committee controversy that exploded from the Olympic Games in London, a source told Consumer Electronics Daily. Beats went after the Olympics in the same way it targets “influencers” for other high-profile music and sports events, the source said, where rules over branding at events “aren’t as strict.” Beats offered, as it has before, a “safe house” in London where the brand could be visible and media and athletes could “hang out,” the source said. Beats, which “gifts” headphones to sports and music celebrities, doesn’t pay them for product endorsement, the source said. Beats officials weren’t available for comment. The IOC, meanwhile, referred us to the U.S. National Olympic Committee regarding information about specific athletes or teams when we asked if swimmer Michael Phelps was told to cover up the logo of his Sol Republic headphones before his final race (CED Aug. 7 p6). “As far as the IOC is aware,” there’s “been no breach by the athlete mentioned regarding promotion of specific products,” IOC spokesman Andrew Mitchell told us. Mitchell said the IOC is working with all of the NOCs to remind teams of the guidelines “related to commercial activity” during the Games and the Olympic Games’ “clean field of play” policy. When instances of “overt unauthorised branding” occur on the playing field, he said, “we will take action” to address the situation and “if necessary cover the branding.” He said the IOC’s first priority “is always the athletes, so in applying the guidelines we would take a pragmatic approach so as not to interfere with the athletes’ preparations.” The U.S. National Olympic Committee didn’t respond to questions by our deadline.

Nascent lifestyle audio brand AudioXperts, begun by audio industry veteran Eli Harary (CED July 17 p1), has pegged the pool of qualified U.S. specialty dealers for its product line at 70, said President Eli Harary at the company’s launch event in New York Tuesday evening. Only a limited number of specialty dealers, including both brick-and-mortar and e-tailers, have the sales staff and expertise necessary to sell a luxury lifestyle-based audio brand, he said.

The transition from disc-based content to streaming media is occurring faster than expected, CEO Jon Kirchner said on DTS’s Q2 earnings call Monday. For the first time that quarter, connected devices accounted for a larger share of DTS revenue than did Blu-ray, he said. Connected device revenue is more than 30 percent of DTS Q2 sales, compared with 25-30 percent for Blu-ray, the company said. DTS experienced the typical seasonal declines for Blu-ray following Q1 revenue that benefited from holiday season sales, but the company also had 11 percent year-over-year declines in Blu-ray. DTS reported a loss of $755,000 for Q2 compared with profit of $2.6 million in Q2 2011.

Headphones were fodder for intense scrutiny in the social media world over the past week as viewers tried to discern which headphone brands athletes were promoting during warm-up sessions for the Olympics. Headphones were involved in some marketing politics within the International Olympic Committee (IOC), too, as officials became suspicious of the number of athletes from the U.K., China and other countries sporting Beats by Dr. Dre headphones in their national colors, according to a Reuters report.

Declines in DVD and Blu-ray sales caused a 19 percent revenue drop in Dolby’s CE category during fiscal Q3, the company said on an earnings call late Thursday. Those trends are expected to continue, said Dolby CFO Lewis Chew, who projected overall CE declines for fiscal 2012 in the “high single to low double-digits range” on lower optical disc sales.

Leviton bought Home Automation Inc., HAI president Jay McLellan confirmed to us Thursday after announcement of the deal was leaked by Worthington Distribution in a blog post on its website. Terms of the stock deal were not disclosed. “It’s true and it leaked out not according to plan, which is what happens when you notify too many dealers,” McLellan told Consumer Electronics Daily. HAI will operate as the fifth business unit of Leviton and the deal is the evolution of a “synergistic” relationship between the companies that goes back two decades, he said. McLellan, HAI’s CEO and one of three HAI founders in 1985, cited current “tough” market conditions for a company that has gotten along by its “bootstraps” amid a competitive environment that includes higher end companies, low-end rivals and others funded by venture capital. HAI was initially financed by “friends and family,” and the company has grown without any additional capital since 1995, he said. HAI has the technology, the “smarts” and the track record in the industry, he said, and now it’s time for the company to have the resources of a larger organization like Leviton, he said. Calling it a “perfect fit,” McLellan said HAI systems have been going into Leviton structured wiring enclosures and controlling Leviton lighting control devices “since we started the business,” he said. Leviton has moved into advanced meters, car chargers, solar power and small commercial business and has an international division “that’s unbelievable,” McClellan said. Initial efforts out of the acquisition will focus on building HAI’s global business and the small commercial market, McLellan said. Leviton’s 13 international offices provide a “springboard” for HAI to sell products like its recently launched Omnibus international lighting control system, he said. Small commercial opportunities have reached a “tipping point” in the home automation industry, McLellan said. Traditionally landlords didn’t want to put in control systems because the tenant pays the electric bill, and tenants didn’t want to invest because “it’s not his property,” but with energy prices continuing to rise, control has become a selling point for a landlord, he said. Initially HAI products will be branded HAI by Leviton to maintain brand familiarity, before eventually becoming Leviton Automation “or something like that” over a multi-year process, he said. McLellan said that after bottoming out, the residential market is growing again along with international business and the smart grid category that “comes in spurts.” HAI’s 47 employees in New Orleans and its field sales team will remain in place, he said, while McClellan’s title will change to president of Home Automation, Inc., a business unit of Leviton Manufacturing Co., Inc.