Rebecca Day

Panasonic is reviving the Technics brand in a line of over-ear headphones designed to compete with the Beats brand, the company said Tuesday at its 2012 home entertainment press briefing. Suggested retail price of the Technics DJ 1200 headphones will be $199, and Panasonic noise-canceling headphones will also retail for $199, the company said. The company last used the Technics brand in a line of turntables for the DJ market, which it discontinued about two years ago, a company spokesman said. The Technics brand still carries “caché,” he said, noting that hip clothes chain Urban Outfitters has carried a t-shirt bearing the Technics name. It wasn’t clear whether the brand would be extended to other audio products in the future.

The Santa Clara County Superior Court of California has denied Kaleidescape’s request for a stay of a permanent injunction on the company’s DVD server that was issued earlier this month (CED March 13 p1). Judge William Monahan ordered the injunction on March 8, asserting that the DVD Movie Server breached Kaleidescape’s contract with the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) by selling a product that makes a copy of protected DVD content on a server and allows it to be played back without the presence of the disc. The court had issued a tentative judgment in January in support of DVD CCA claims that Kaleidescape’s DVD servers violated the agreement (CED Feb 1 p4).

Windows 8 tablets will initially be positioned as premium devices, said Jeff Orr, group director of consumer research for ABI Research, on the company’s webcast on connected devices Thursday. “They won’t necessarily be as affordable as media tablets today,” he said, because they'll most likely build in data and application capability for communication between Windows 8 devices in the enterprise world along with feature sets and functionality that will cater more to business and productivity, Orr said. The tablet market will continue to segment as different needs emerge for mobile technology, Orr said, saying consumers won’t likely be the driving audience for the needs, but will play into the mix as Windows users look to transfer functionality to tablets.

HP’s cost structure “is not sustainable,” CEO Meg Whitman said during the company’s annual meeting Wednesday. For the last few quarters, operating expenses have been growing “faster than revenues,” she said. In Q1, revenue slid 7 percent while operating expenses grew by 6 percent, she said. While the company needs to invest in its businesses to drive meaningful innovation in what have become “very fast product cycles,” she said, “that’s pretty tough right now.” First, she said, “we need to create the capacity to invest through cost savings."

HP’s announcement Tuesday that it was combining its printing and PC businesses into the new Printing and Personal Systems Group is the first major shakeup following CEO Meg Whitman’s edict in the company’s Q1 earnings call for the Imaging and Printing Group to “think hard” about how to drive new business growth. A decline in home printing and loss of ink sales contributed to a revenue decline of 7 percent in the Imaging and Printing business in Q1, which Whitman at the time called “the lifeblood” of the company. Revenue for the Personal Systems Group, meanwhile, tumbled 15 percent for the quarter.

Seeing “no ceilings” to its continued growth and “tremendous opportunities ahead,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said Monday in a webcast that the company will implement a share repurchase and dividend program that will make it one of the biggest dividend payers in the U.S. The company will distribute $2.5 billion to shareholders, or $2.65 per share, in Q3, subject to a board declaration in July, he said. Apple last paid a dividend in 1995.

Thiel Audio’s announcement to dealers last week that it was raising the price of its CS2.4 speakers by 17 percent April 1 is testament to several industry issues plaguing the high-end speaker market, dealers told us Friday. Costs are going up on everything from raw materials to shipping, forcing manufacturers including Klipsch and Thiel to raise prices, and market demand has dwindled for traditional floorstanding speakers.

Black Friday pricing or not, CE discounts are holding up as some of the best deals around, according to a price check from The People History website, which features the average cost of everyday products over the years. In 1960, the average cost of a new house was $12,700 and a new car cost an average $2,600. But a “modern, Danish-style” 23-inch black-and-white TV listed for $219.95, equivalent to $1,691.71 today, according to the inflation calendar from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today a Haier Chinese-style 24-inch LCD flat-panel 1080p TV costs $215. A new Polaroid Land Camera cost $93.45 the year JFK was elected, or $718.75 in 2012 currency, while a ‘60s-era Polaroid 250 Auto Land camera listed for $49 last week on eBay. That $94 camera budget from 1960 would today buy a 14-megapixel, 4x optical zoon Canon point-and-shoot model at B&H Photo with money left over for a 2GB “film” card that can hold 1900 5MB pics. A $49.95 adding machine in 1960 would cost $384.57 in 2012 dollars. Today, you can buy a handheld Aurora calculator from Amazon for under $5, or save your money altogether and use the calculator app on your iPad. Gasoline hasn’t fared so well. The 25-cent-per-gallon price in 1960 would be $1.92 on the debit card today, but the median price for a gallon of regular in the New York area Friday was $3.69, according to GasBuddy.com.

Sonomax, a Canadian firm with roots in ear protection for industrial applications, is one of the latest companies hoping to ride the wave of the surging consumer headphone market, CEO Nick Laperle told Consumer Electronics Daily. Amid a market dominated by celebrity-endorsed brands, style, color and the traditional audiophile segment, Sonomax is targeting fit as the most important element of the headphone experience, and the company introduced its Eers custom-fit product to the market last week.

After six years of growth, worldwide TV shipments dipped 0.3 percent in 2011 to 247.7 million units, according to a report released Wednesday by NPD DisplaySearch. LCD TV shipments rose 7 percent to more than 205 million units in 2011, a “substantial slowdown” from the double-digit growth in previous years, DisplaySearch said. Plasma TV shipments fell nearly 7 percent for the year to 17.2 million units, their largest drop yet, it said, and CRT shipments plunged 34 percent.