A lawsuit filed against Walmart by California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and 12 state district attorneys alleges Walmart illegally disposed of hazardous waste, including e-waste and alkaline and lithium batteries, in the state for the past six years.
Rebecca Day
Rebecca Day, Senior editor, joined Warren Communications News in 2010. She’s a longtime CE industry veteran who has also written about consumer tech for Popular Mechanics, Residential Tech Today, CE Pro and others. You can follow Day on Instagram and Twitter: @rebday
Consolidation will be a major theme in the over-the-top video market next year, manifesting in the form of the bundle, said Vikrant Mathur, co-founder of video technology and distribution company Future Today, on Parks Associates' virtual Future of Video event last week.
Survivors in the crowded market of over-the-top video service providers won’t necessarily be the strongest, but they will be the ones “that adapt the best,” said Jose Kruyff, MPP Global senior vice president-Americas, on a panel on the shift to hybrid business models at Parks Associates’ virtual Future of Video event Tuesday.
Ad-supported and transactional VOD models are growing as a way for over-the-top video providers to differentiate in an “incredibly crowded” streaming market, said Parks Associates analyst Jennifer Kent, opening the company’s online Future of Video event Tuesday.
Port congestion and ground transportation continue to be major product fulfillment obstacles for Vizio, said Chief Financial Officer Adam Townsend on a Tuesday investor call. “The challenge continues to be port congestion, and then once it's off the ships, trucking, railing and then warehouse workers to unload and get it processed.”
Hisense’s 75-inch 8K Roku TV, introduced in May (see 2105050058), is finally due to ship soon, emailed Hisense, but it won’t be available in time for Christmas if purchased from Amazon. At Amazon Wednesday, the 75-inch U800GR, part of Hisense’s ULED series, was available for purchase for $2,399.99, with “free inside entryway delivery” as early as Dec. 30. Best Buy was the other retailer Hisense gave on its website as a purchase source for the TV, but bestbuy.com said the TV was “unavailable nearby." Best Buy listed the U800GR at $2,699 with a “price match guarantee”; Amazon was a qualifying online retailer for price matching. The 75-inch TV had two questions from shoppers at bestbuy.com. One customer asking about availability was referred by a Hisense product expert to Best Buy. In response to the other question, whether the TV has an ATSC 3.0 tuner, the Hisense product expert said “ATSC 3.0 will not be available until mid 2022,” and “no models currently support this tuner.” Best Buy showed a financing option of $112.50 for 24 months. Though there was no cart option for purchase, the e-tailer gave Best Buy’s extended holiday return period: “When purchased now through Jan. 2, you can return this item anytime until Jan. 16.” The U800GR series has Dolby Atmos and Vision, up to 1,000 nits peak brightness, an 8K upscaler, 180 local dimming zones and Hisense’s 480 Motion Rate, 120Hz panel and low-latency mode for gamers.
An Amazon Web Services outage midday Tuesday took out a swath of gaming logins, streaming video services and cloud-based events, including the Vizio investor presentation at a virtual UBS technology conference. Amazon reported “impact to multiple AWS APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region.” The outage affected some of Amazon’s monitoring and incident response tooling, “which is delaying our ability to provide updates,” said Amazon, saying it “identified the root cause and are actively working towards recovery.” The Verge reported outages for Disney+ streaming and games and some problems accessing Amazon.com, the Alexa voice assistant, Kindle ebooks, Amazon Music and Ring security cameras. “There are reports from network admins everywhere about errors connecting to Amazon’s instances and the AWS Management Console that controls their access to the servers,” said the Verge. The webpage for Vizio’s event said the presentation was being recorded and the replay “will be posted as soon as the AWS Network is back up.”
Global supply chain challenges will continue into next year, said Conn’s CEO Chandra Holt on an earnings call Tuesday for fiscal Q3 ended Oct. 31. Higher international freight costs dinged the cost of goods sold, which rose to $211 million from $160 million in the year-ago quarter, she said.
Sonos introduced support for Ultra HD audio and Dolby Atmos Music on the Amazon Music streaming platform, emailed the company Tuesday. Sonos customers with an Amazon Music Unlimited subscription can access the content by downloading the latest software on the Sonos app, it said. New badges on the Now Playing screen will indicate which audio experience they’re hearing: HD, a lossless 16-bit stereo stream; Ultra HD, a 24-bit stereo stream; and Dolby Atmos, a song mixed and available in Dolby Atmos. Sonos curated two playlists on Amazon Music to showcase Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos Music via the Sonos app; the company also has a beginner’s guide to hi-res audio. Customers can hear tracks in lossless audio up to 24-bit/48kHz on Sonos speakers, as well as Dolby Atmos Music, which is supported on the Arc and second-generation Beam sound bars, it said.
When Apple and Amazon wrapped hi-res music into their standard music subscription packages in the spring, a fifth of all music streaming subscribers had access to high-quality music, said a December Futuresource report. Though the music services helped enable a “mass-market migration” toward hi-res audio -- delivering to their music streaming subscribers hi-res tracks “almost overnight, at no extra cost” -- challenges are blocking widespread adoption, said Futuresource's Simon Forrest.