The FCC should look closely at receiver standards as part of its notice of inquiry investigating dynamic spectrum access technologies, NTIA said in a letter to FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp. The letter was sent to the FCC in early March and was published by the commission Friday.

Dawson “Tack” Nail, 82, who spent more than 50 years as one of the most prominent reporters covering broadcasting and telecommunications in Washington, died Friday from injuries he sustained in a fall a day earlier at his Virginia home. He was the longtime executive editor of Warren Communications News’s Television Digest with Consumer Electronics and Communications Daily.

Nintendo and retailers reported strong initial turnout in the U.K. for the 3DS launch there Friday. But a Nintendo U.K. spokesman declined to say how many units the company shipped for the European launch, and told us late in the day Friday that it was “still too early to discuss” initial sales. He said the company will discuss initial European sales early this week. Nintendo had said that of the 4 million 3DS systems it will ship this fiscal year, through March 31, 1.5 million will be in Japan and the other 2.5 million will be split between Europe and the Americas (CED Jan 20 p2), where the 3DS was to launch on Sunday.

Electronics makers can expect little state legislative activity concerning efficiency standards for their products this year. Environmental groups said they aren’t pursuing state regulation, because the federal government has stepped in. A Department of Energy proposal to take up standards for TVs and other electronics has led to a “pared down focus on the states this year” for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP), said David Lis, the group’s appliance standards project manager.

Best Buy is expanding the assortment of products it carries online while reducing the size of brick-and-mortar stores in the face of growing Internet competition, company officials told analysts in a conference call.

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.

GameStop is seeing “very strong demand for the 3DS” ahead of its launch, said Tony Bartel, the chain’s president, in a Thursday earnings call. Nintendo’s device launches Friday in Europe and Sunday in the U.S. GameStop started taking 3DS preorders in January.

The FCC is considering a new approach to AllVid, potentially setting aside a plan that would have required pay-TV distributors to make available a video home gateway device capable of interacting with a wide array of consumer electronics products, industry officials said. They said the new approach being weighed by the Media Bureau would give pay-TV operators more flexibility in meeting the requirements of any AllVid rules, potentially allowing operators that deliver video in Internet Protocol to be compliant. Bureau staffers have been meeting with representatives from all sides of the issue to gather input on the new approach, industry officials said.

Efficiency advocates and utilities urged the California Energy Commission (CEC) to press ahead with standards for battery chargers regardless of efforts under way to set federal efficiency standards for the devices. But appliance makers said in comments that California would be squandering money and resources on a regulation that will soon be “superseded” by the Department of Energy’s standards.

An Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) “planning team” published a request for information on new 3D TV technologies that could be available to terrestrial broadcasters within five years, the organization said Wednesday. The team published an “interim report” on the “benefits and limitations” of known 3D TV transmission technologies and wants information by April 20 about technologies not mentioned in the report, including those under development, so its final report will be as complete as possible, ATSC said.