SAN DIEGO -- Describing his keynote at the DisplaySearch Flat-Panel Display Conference Wednesday as “fairly downbeat,” Goldman Sachs Managing Director Matthew Fassler said the future of CE retailing is “not an easy one.” Two walls are closing in on traditional CE retailers, Fassler said. Wal-Mart on one side is pressing for market share and is capitalizing on falling flat-panel TV prices that have entered “their price zone.” And Amazon, he said, “is working to capture market share at the high end.” The combination is creating “long-run pressure” on CE retailers reflected in plummeting stock prices, he said.

SAN FRANCISCO -- About 80 million HD consoles were sold to date by Microsoft and Sony, and about 8 million Kinects and 4 million PlayStation Moves sold for those consoles, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello told the Morgan Stanley conference Tuesday. “That’s meaningful,” he said, although the data he cited were somewhat dated.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Movies and other programming instantly streamed from Netflix will be available to subscribers through the Nintendo 3DS starting this summer, said Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime in a keynote Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The complexity of content licensing deals is among factors slowing the rollout of TV Everywhere services from the pay-TV operators, panelists said at the OTTCON Wednesday. “If you're an HBO customer in a house that you own in Connecticut, but you're a Qwest customer at your ski lodge in Vail, are you going to be entitled to have HBO to Go in Vail even though” the local pay-TV operator isn’t getting a portion of that subscription fee, asked David Price, vice president of cable vendor Harmonic. “We have a boundary issue, which is really causing some consternation around the business modeling,” he said at the conference on over-the-top video.

SAN DIEGO -- Changes in competition from technology advances, developing markets and maturing of existing markets are changing the landscape of the global flat-panel display industry, speakers at DisplaySearch’s Flat-Panel Display Conference said Tuesday. Future growth will shift to emerging markets “with different needs and characteristics,” said Paul Semenza, senior vice president of analyst services for DisplaySearch, leading to challenges for the supply chain.

Panasonic is spreading 2D/3D conversion across its TVs and Blu-ray players, the company said at a New York line showing Tuesday, capping a year in which it gradually softened its opposition to building conversion chips into its products.

SAN FRANCISCO -- There’s a huge potential to show online video viewers more ads when they watch professionally produced TV programs, said Gian Fulgoni, executive chairman and co-founder of comScore, during the OMMA Global conference Tuesday.

Provisions in the EPA’s recent greenhouse gas reporting rules will hit the U.S. semiconductor industry, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said in a petition for reconsideration filed with the agency. The association also filed a petition for review of the rules with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “The SIA supports GHG reporting for our industry and we stand ready to work constructively with the EPA to develop a revised rule that achieves our shared environmental goals in a more balanced, cost-effective and less burdensome manner,” said association President Brian Toohey.

A European Parliament member’s plans for releasing TV spectrum for mobile broadband services exceed the European Commission’s, said Public Affairs Head Nicola Frank of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), in an interview Monday. With the 800 MHz band expected to be freed for wireless uses by digital switchover by 2013 across Europe, Gunnar Hokmark of Sweden and the European People’s Party and others are already looking for a “second digital dividend” from the 700 MHz band, Frank said. That could spell “the end of terrestrial television” in some countries, she said. She was responding to a draft report by Hokmark on the EC proposal for a five-year spectrum policy roadmap, discussed Monday in the Industry, Research and Energy Committee.

Liberty Media is trying ease “the natural channel conflict” as cable operators and services like Netflix vie for distribution of Starz and Encore programming, Liberty Media executives said Monday on a conference call. Liberty signed a distribution pact in 2008 giving Netflix access to streaming titles in the pay TV window or at the same time they are viewable on the premium channel service. Starz is estimated to be making $25-$30 million a year on the deal, which expires in Q1 2012. A renegotiated streaming agreement could be worth more than $250 million a year and a new deal expected sooner than 2012, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield has said. Starz typically gets $2 a subscriber from cable and satellite distributors, analysts said.