Rebecca Day

Pay-per-view TV is not on Netflix’s radar screen, CEO Reed Hastings said on an earnings call. “It would confuse the brand,” Hastings said, saying the company has built a “precise” model on $7.99 a month subscriptions, and that the market is well-stocked with other pay-per-view models from Amazon, Blockbuster, iTunes and more. He compared Netflix’s strategy with that of Dolby Digital -- “to be in every platform and get along with everyone.” The market is large enough at an $8 monthly subscription rate “to have us grow very large,” he said.

Automotive Wi-Fi provider Autonet Mobile has partnered with Bosch’s Car Multimedia Division to integrate its IP-based application and connectivity platform into a telematics control unit (TCU) that will connect to a car’s CAN (controller area network) bus, the companies said Monday. Autonet, whose Wi-Fi platform powers Chrysler’s U-Connect system, Chevy Wi-Fi and the Mercedes-Benz In-Vehicle Hot Spot, is transitioning to a new app-based platform that will debut in July as a factory-installed option from a car maker.

Price declines from oversupply and lower-than-expected demand for mobile memory cards from OEM customers led to a $110 million drop in profit for SanDisk in Q1, COO Sanjay Mehrotra said in the company’s earnings call Thursday. Net income dropped to $114 million from $224 million for the 2011 quarter, and operating income sank to $192 million from $349 million in Q2 2011, SanDisk said. Revenue fell 7 percent to $1.21 billion from the prior year and plummeted 24 percent sequentially, the company said. Industry demand has been “weaker than expected,” leading to unexpected supply increases, and the supply-demand imbalance is likely to continue through Q2, Mehrotra said.

T-Mobile has given customers another reason to leave cameras and music players at home with the introduction Thursday night of the HTC One S at the Catch Roof dance lounge in New York. The lightweight 7.95mm phone, with a 4.3-inch qXD Super AMOLED display, is due in stores Wednesday, company officials said. Product managers demoed the sound of the Beats audio, which allows users to match the equalization of the phone’s audio to specific Beats headphones. DSP modes on the phone customize the sound to music genres such as jazz, they said. The phone doesn’t ship with earbuds, product manager Matt Bybee said, which helped the company meet the $199.99 price point with two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate. The 8-megapixel camera offers continuous shooting in camera mode owing to a 0.2-second autofocus and 0.7-second shot time, and features panorama mode, 1080p HD video and simultaneous video and still capture. Bybee scrolled through 16 camera modes that rival the latest ones from standalone cameras including sepia, poster, negative and other “art” filters. T-Mobile also introduced a new look for spokeswoman Carly, who has shifted from feminine magenta dresses in the company’s latest ads to edgier “motorcycle leathers” and a 1000 cc Ducati superbike that are supposed to symbolize the “speed and capabilities” of Sprint’s 4G network. Bybee said T-Mobile’s HPSA+ network is available to more than 215 million Americans in 225 markets.

CE makers and retailers are ramping up a range of green programs, recycling efforts and environmental awareness efforts around Earth Day, Consumer Electronics Daily found in a scan of online and social media promotions.

Seagate shipped 61 million disk drives in the March quarter, up 29 percent over the previous quarter, against the “backdrop of the “continued recovery of the hard disk industry,” CEO Steve Luczo said in the company’s fiscal 2012 Q3 earnings call late Tuesday. The notebook market has almost fully recovered from supply shortages resulting from flooding in Thailand last October, along with the enterprise mission critical market, but the desktop market will see shortages at least through the fall, Luczo said. The company reported profit of $1.1 billion on $4.4 billion revenue for the quarter, along with gross margin of 37 percent and earnings per share of $2.48.

DTS’ proposed $148 million acquisition of SRS Labs would expand DTS’ portfolio of audio-based intellectual property to more than 1,000 registered and pending patents and trademarks, as the company looks to expand in mobile and connected technologies, DTS CEO Jon Kirchner said Tuesday on a webcast. Bringing on board SRS and its audio processing technologies will enable DTS to offer customers a “comprehensive integrated suite of audio solutions ranging from voice processing to audio rendering and from low bit-rate applications to high-quality lossless audio delivery,” he said. The complete package will cover pre-processing, codec delivery and post-processing “in an integrated intelligent suite,” he said.

SAN DIEGO -- Lenbrook America is hoping to open 50-60 of its digital music experience centers in specialty AV dealers’ stores over the next 2-3 years, CEO Dean Miller told us at the Home Technology Specialists of America conference last week. Lenbrook invested “quite heavily” in the first beta site at The Little Guys store in Mokena, Ill., and two more are in the works, he said, citing test centers at Listen Up in Denver and Gramophone in Timonium, Md.

SAN DIEGO -- After they launched home theater and branched out into security, home automation, lighting control and intercom systems, it’s time for specialty AV dealers to come full circle and take ownership of the specialty audio retail market again, panelists said Wednesday at the Home Technology Specialists of America spring meeting. HTSA Managing Director Bob Hana and a handful of audio vendors said they see the computer audio retail market opportunity as a “tremendous” one that’s going largely untapped.

SAN DIEGO -- The Home Technology Specialists of America group kicked off its first member meeting under CEO Bob Hana, who joined the group last October, with a major push toward marketing and outreach. Hana told Consumer Electronics Daily that the goal of the spring meeting is “about making it practical” and giving its 63 dealer members “usable, executable information” to help grow business. “We need to walk the talk that we really are a cohesive group,” Hana said.