Rebecca Day

Panasonic’s “Experience Amazing” road show, which kicked off Monday at Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, is funded by a part of a $100 million 2011 marketing budget the company allocated to continue an effort to boost awareness of the Viera TV and Lumix camera brands in the U.S., company executives said.

Sparing few superlatives, an IHS iSuppli analyst on Friday declared that the record quake and tsunami that struck northern Japan March 11 was “the most the significant event to hit the electronic supply chain in the history of the semiconductor industry.” Citing previous quakes that struck semiconductor production centers the past several decades, “none were as broad in scope or impacted as many suppliers as this disaster has,” Dale Ford, senior vice president of market intelligence at IHS iSuppli, said on a webcast.

Sherbourn Technologies, purchased late last year by ODM/OEM Jade Designs, is coming to market “in the May-June timeframe” with a new lineup of Control4-enabled AV products, the company said Tuesday. Sherbourn hopes to grab a piece of the custom installation market and “fill a hole” not currently served by other suppliers, President Dan Laufman told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Xpand launched a $199 3D plug-in for Microsoft PowerPoint at CinemaCon in Las Vegas Tuesday that allows users to add 3D images and graphics to presentations. With the plug-in, users can embed 3D movies, pictures and graphics in PowerPoint files, the company said. The 3D content can be viewed on a computer, compatible 3D TV or a video projector that supports HDMI 1.4 3D formats, using Xpand Universal 3D glasses, the company said. The plug-in, available as a player only or a converter with player, is compatible with 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Microsoft Office 2010, the company said. According to Ami Dror, chief strategy officer for Xpand, case studies have shown that 3D content improves viewer retention by more than 30 percent over 2D.

Panasonic and XpanD are developing a standard for 3D active-shutter eyewear that’s designed to “bring about compatibility among 3D TVs, computers, home projectors and cinema projection,” the companies said Monday. Makoto Morise, manager of the standards group at the Panasonic Hollywood Lab in Universal City, Calif., told us Panasonic this year will bring glasses to market conforming to the so-called M-3DI standard. Although the first-generation standard is based on infrared technology, the group is “considering” an RF-based solution for active-shutter glasses, the companies said. Licensing of the protocol, called M-3DI, will be handled by Panasonic and will begin next month, Morise told us.

Barnes & Noble didn’t respond by our deadline to questions about a report from Digitimes that the company has taken delivery of nearly three million Nook Color devices from its Taiwan-based production source, Inventec, since the e-reader was introduced last fall. Sales of Nook Color, the report said, topped one million units in Q4 2010 and reached between 600,000 and 700,000 units during the first two months of 2011. The report said Nook Color has assumed more than half of “iPad-like market” in the U.S.

Barnes & Noble is planning an April launch for the long-awaited apps for the Nook Color, PC World reported Friday, after spotting a notice on HSN’s website promoting April as the debut month for Nook Color apps. At the launch last fall, Barnes & Noble execs touted Android compatibility, although apps and e-mail functionality weren’t part of the initial product rollout, other than the eight pre-loaded apps bundled with the device. The additional functionality will bring the Nook Color closer to tablet functionality just as several Android tablets from Dell, HP, Samsung and Toshiba are about to hit the market.

After a stutter start in the tablet business last fall, Staples is taking the nascent category head-on with an online section dedicated to tablet technology, and plans to field a lineup of half a dozen models “over the next few months,” the company said Thursday. Staples launched its tablet business in November with a 10-inch Viewsonic model (CED Nov 22 p8) then it pulled a month later citing a “manufacturing defect” that it attributed to a glitch in the Android software.

More than 30 million passive TVs will be in the market by 2016 around the world, exceeding the number of active-shutter models, Insight Media President Chris Chinnock said Wednesday on a 3D@Home Consortium webinar. The “clear debate in the industry” is whether active-shutter or passive TVs will prevail, but “it won’t be a matter of one versus the other,” he said. Both will “well-received in the market and both are valid,” Chinnock said.

The 3D era collided with the wireless world this week at CTIA in Orlando. LG Mobile Phones announced the Thrill 3D 4G smartphone, due in AT&T company-owned stores in the coming months, along with a 3D tablet that will ship this spring and run on T-Mobile’s network. The tablet requires glasses to view 3D content but the smartphone doesn’t. Consumers can capture, share and play 3D video in 720p on both devices, LG said.