Netflix will stream “hundreds” of episodes from ABC, the Disney Channel and, “for the first time,” ABC Family over the Internet as part of a new, expanded licensing deal signed with the Disney-ABC Television Group, the companies said Wednesday. The deal, brokered by Disney-ABC Domestic Television, “will add significantly to the growing selection of movies and TV episodes that can be streamed from Netflix,” the companies said.

Sony will “very broadly” deploy Google’s Android-based software, including Google TV, across a range of CE products to help drive the company’s annual global sales of Internet-capable devices to 350 million units in the next two to three years, Sony America Chief Financial Officer Robert Wiesenthal told us Tuesday at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York. Sony’s global sales of Internet-capable devices will hit 50 million units during its fiscal year ending in March, Wiesenthal said. It had sold 41 million units through September, UBS analysts said.

Over-the-top video represents only a modest threat to pay-TV subscription rates, DirecTV Chief Financial Officer Pat Doyle said Tuesday at a UBS investors conference. Only a marginal group of “outliers” will give up subscription to watch programming online, he said. The company will “certainly monitor” developments in over-the-top content but doesn’t consider it an immediate threat, he said. Still, DirecTV foresees a TV market that relies on both conventional delivery and Internet connections, he said.

CENTURY CITY, Calif. -- Giving what he called a 3D “reality check,” David Poltrack, president of the CBS Vision research arm, thinks consumers have a “wait-and-see approach” toward 3D and are willing to endure “delayed gratification” to experience 3D at home, he told the Television 3.0 conference in a keynote Tuesday. It could be two, three or four years before consumers buy 3D TV, he said, due largely to “increased knowledge about how products come to market.”

The EPA should set the standard for TVs seeking to qualify for the proposed top-tier program at 20 percent more efficient than Energy Star 5.1 levels, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) said. In a joint filing with Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric, the alliance that represents 120 utilities in the region said the standard it’s recommending would meet the EPA’s goals for a top-tier program because it provides “consumers with a choice of brands and screen sizes while highlighting the next generation of efficient technologies.” The agency has proposed a top-tier program for TVs, clothes washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, central air conditioners and heating equipment.

Texas may move again to require mandatory manufacturer collection and recycling of used TVs, after the state enacted an e-waste law covering computers in 2007 that took effect the following year. Environmentalists cited the introduction of the TV bill (HB-88) by Rep. Byron Cook, the Republican chairman of the House Environmental Regulation Committee, as evidence that the e-waste issue is bipartisan and will maintain momentum in states despite heavy Democratic losses. A similar TV bill was vetoed by the Texas governor in 2009.

Despite interest from distributors in the U.S. and around the world, 3D’s future “is hard to tell,” David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications, said at the UBS conference in New York Monday. “It’s very expensive,” he said, adding that Discovery chose to work with Sony and Imax to minimize the costs of developing a 3D channel and to share information along the learning curve.

Best Buy will introduce Internet-ready Insignia LCD TVs with TiVo technology as it builds on a year-old alliance, TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said Monday at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York. Best Buy is expected to ship a broad array of TiVo-equipped private label Insignia TVs and has amended the companies’ pact to include non-DVR products like TVs that can’t record to hard drives (CED Sept 15 p1).

RadioShack is using a $50 discount on the 3G iPhone to lure customers into the store through Saturday. This is “the only discount we're aware of on the iPhone,” said Daniel Liberman, senior vice president of mobility for RadioShack. The company’s use of the wildly popular iPhone to raise awareness of “the extent of our wireless offerings” is a novel marketing strategy, he said.

The EPA will monitor service provider deployments of set-top boxes with the “deep sleep” advanced energy savings feature to gauge its impact, the agency said in written responses to stakeholder comments on drafts of revised box specifications. The agency has proposed incentives to box makers who include the capacity for deep sleep in their products and for service providers who deploy boxes with the feature. The advanced energy saving feature is not a requirement in the draft revised specifications, but the agency has indicated it’s open to including it as one in future specification updates.