Rebecca Day

Texas Instruments introduced a USB 3.0 transceiver that’s said to complete data transfers from a 25-GB Blu-ray disc in as little as 90 seconds. At current USB 2.0 data transfer speeds, the same data would transfer at about 14 minutes, TI said. The USB 3.0 interface could be integrated into TVs, camcorders, personal media players and other video-based consumer devices by the end of 2011 or early 2012, said Dan Harmon, consumer and computing interface product marketing manager. “We see some of the first CE products with USB 3.0 being TVs because they tend to be host-controller based.” He envisioned consumers inserting a thumb drive into a TV’s USB 3.0 slot and watching a movie or a slide show of digital stills. USB 2.0 solutions now use DSP processors and controllers on a single chip with an external transceiver to complete the data transfer. “We think that six months to a year from now processors will start becoming available with the 3.0 core integrated on chip and they'll need an external transceiver to make the full USB 3.0 communication possible,” said Harmon. While speed is the primary advantage of USB 3.0, he said the technology is more power efficient as well, drawing one-third the current of USB 2.0. Although peak current is two times higher, the faster data transfer rates and bus efficiency protocol gains tip power advantages to USB 3.0. “With 900 milliamps supplied instead of 500 milliamps you also have the ability to do bus powering with external products that you can’t do with USB 2.0,” Harmon said. Examples might include multi-dongle input devices such as video switchers that allow simultaneous connection of several video sources that output to a display via USB or HDMI. “As you go to full HD resolution USB-to-HDMI switches, the higher power gives them the capability to have better throughput and processing power in the box,” Harmon said. He noted that the USB Device Working Group is working to define the USB video display interface which would enable a direct USB connection between video devices so that no conversion to a graphics format is required. “Today camcorders use USB for sending still images primarily,” Harmon said. “With a video display driver, you could start streaming live video.”

Sonic Solutions is on an aggressive path to a holistic approach to 3D, the company told Consumer Electronics Daily last week. Sonic division Roxio announced its Video Lab 3D software for OEMs, which the company described as the first personal video editing suite for capturing, editing and sharing personal 3D content. According to Matt DiMaria, executive vice president and general manager of Roxio, a consumer 3D video editing program will be in the market by the holiday season, completing a full-scale 3D strategy ranging from the professional 3D tool on the authoring side to consumer editing software.

Fox Mobile Group’s Bitbop mobile entertainment service for smartphones_launched this week with 66 TV series from major networks such as Fox, CBS, NBC, A&E, Food Network, Bravo, USA, National Geographic, MTV, Nickelodeon, History Channel and FX. The $9.99 per month “all-you-can-eat” service, available from BlackBerry App World, will be available initially for the BlackBerry Bold series, Curve 8900 and Tour 9630 smartphones and will roll out to other platforms and phones over the next few “weeks and months,” Joe Bilman, executive vice president, global products, at Fox Mobile Group, told Consumer Electronics Daily. BlackBerry was chosen as the first platform for the service because of its technical challenges and because BlackBerry users have fewer entertainment choices than other smartphone users, he said.

Texas Hold ‘Em, Google Maps and Facebook are the three top sellers at the Samsung App store, which launched in March, according to Olivier Manuel, director of content at Samsung Electronics. Manuel told us the fact that a card game has been one the top three apps since launch of the App store has surprised him, while noting that applications users are accustomed to seeing on a small screen present a “whole new experience” on a 50-inch screen. The current slate of apps available at the store is free, with premium apps coming online later this summer. When pressed for a date, Manuel told us, “soon,” declining to specify the date or the number of premium titles that will be available at launch. Citing premium apps currently available on other platforms, Manuel hinted at the types of content that might warrant a pay model. “You might have a regular weather app, and a premium version might have more features and customization,” he said. A basic sports app includes scores, he said, but a premium version might add video archives. In the educational area, a no-fee children’s book could have less generic content, while a premium version could be based on a famous movie character.

Savant is replacing its line of touchscreen controllers for its Apple OS-based home automation system with the iPad, CEO Bob Madonna told dealers Thursday at the 2010 Savant Dealer Conference in New York. Previous five-, seven-, nine- and 12-inch touchscreens had been made by Savant, but shifting to the iPad gives dealers a simpler sell to a widely recognized product, a lower cost hardware solution to dealers and a secure, reliable environment for touchpanel control, Madonna said. “The industry is changing,” he said. “We're going to discontinue the touchpanel line over the next few months realizing that the iPad greatly exceeds the capability in our existing line.”

The CE industry will face a “delicate handoff” in the third quarter when consumers’ spending dollars move from stimulus-based to private-sector-based, said Shaun DuBravac, CEA chief economist and director of research, at the CEA Line Shows conference in New York Tuesday.

Monster Cable used the CEA Line Shows conference in New York Tuesday to unveil a universal 3D glasses system that it said will work with any 3D TV. The $249 one-size-fits-all solution bundles a pair of glasses and an emitter and will ship to dealers in August, the company said.

Website marketing, search engine optimization and social media are the focus of a white paper titled Inbound Marketing that’s available to CEDIA members from the organization’s best practices team. The paper is part of a series of four white papers that will be available to CEDIA members in 2010 to support integrators in reversing the negative trends of the past few years and “help their businesses survive,” said Mark Komanecky, head of the CEDIA best practices team and president of simpleHome in Westborough, Mass. “The economy was certainly one of the drivers that led to the white paper,” Komanecky told Consumer Electronics Daily. “In 2009 and early 2010 a lot of companies saw decreased activity on referrals so they were looking for new ways to drive leads.” The team defines inbound marketing as “making information on companies, products, and services available and accessible to the interested and pursuant consumer with hope that they will become potential clients and/or share information with others.” The Internet is the backbone of inbound marketing strategies, which co-exist with outbound marketing strategies including media and print advertising and direct mail. The white paper covers four areas of inbound marketing including websites, blogs, social media and search engines. The second white paper in the series, Selling Strategies, is due in September. White papers are available for free to CEDIA members and for a nominal fee to non-members.

A Silicon Valley firm says it wants to eliminate the promotional paper trail in retailing. MoBeam, a new Cupertino, Calif.-based division of technology company Ecrio, is trying to stir interest in a keychain-based device that it dubs “the first practical digital wallet.” The company will demonstrate its “numi” key at the “CEA Line Shows” conference this week in New York with the hope that its LED-based technology will find interest among CE manufacturers and retailers.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee’s 3D planning team will meet for the first time next month as part of a process to determine the viability of developing a technical standard for terrestrial 3D broadcasts, ATSC President Mark Richer told us in an interview Thursday. The 3D planning team is one of three the organization has put together, along with those covering next-generation television broadcasting systems and Internet-connected TV technologies.