The remote monitoring market for custom integrators is gaining traction, according to companies like Panamax/Furman, Nuage Nine and ihiji, which are hoping to build a high-margin service category for integrators increasingly slammed by product discounting. At CEDIA, ihiji, which began its monitoring product in March, unveiled a two-way service said to provide real-time remote systems restart, reboot and repair, and the company expects the market for IP-based remote monitoring to break open in 2011. “There are enough devices out there now that are intelligent and more are coming online every day,” President Stuart Rench told Consumer Electronics Daily.

MAKUHARI, Japan -- Wait times averaged two hours or more Tuesday on the opening morning of the CEATEC Japan show for those seeking a peek at Toshiba’s newly introduced “glasses-less” 3D LCD TVs, which go on sale late December in the Japanese market (CED Oct 5 p1). Toshiba officials at the company’s CEATEC stand remained steadfast in their insistence that there are no plans to sell the technology in the U.S. or Europe.

DALLAS -- The “smaller footprint” of the new South Miami store that BrandsMart USA is opening Sunday allowed the retailer to enter the Dadeland area of South Miami for the first time, President Michael Perlman told Consumer Electronics Daily at the NATM Buying Corp. conference last week. The approximately 44,000-square-foot store is its first small-format location, he said.

MAKUHARI, Japan -- Toshiba made headlines Monday on the even of the CEATEC Japan show when it became the first CE maker to announce plans to deliver two models of glasses-free 3D LCD TVs in Japan in December. Still, the screen sizes are small, and analysts said the company faces stiff hurdles in adapting the glasses-free technology to larger sets, as the U.S. and other overseas markets will demand.

Harman International is launching a series of in-store displays to capitalize on retailers’ renewed interest in audio, said Dave Rogers, vice president and general manager of Harman’s Americas consumer division. The marketing push behind the Harman Kardon, AKG and JBL brands comes as dealers struggle with sharp declines in TV pricing and narrowing profit margins. Harman opened a store-within-a-store format at Nebraska Furniture Mart stores in Omaha and Kansas City, Kan., to test smaller concepts that could move this year to parts of Best Buy, InMotion and Ultimate Electronics, Rogers said.

Set-top box makers and service providers will be subject to different requirements to qualify for incentives proposed for “deep sleep” feature in the boxes (CED Sept 29 p9), the EPA clarified Monday. The feature is offered as an option and not a requirement as the agency revises the Energy Star set-top box specification. Service providers need only deploy boxes with deep sleep capability to qualify for incentives, whereas box makers will have to also ensure that the feature is enabled by default, an EPA consultant said on a conference call with stakeholders.

The EPA last week put out for comment the contours of a “Super Star” program designed to identify the top-tier of energy efficiency products that qualify for Energy Star. The goal is to “drive more energy efficient products into the market more quickly,” the agency said. Products targeted for the program are TVs, clothes washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, central air conditioners and heating gear.

DALLAS -- A growing number of NATM Buying Corp. retailers are expanding their product offerings in videogames. But a few at the association’s conference last week told us they have no plans to expand their small assortments in the category, no interest in carrying videogame products or no interest in carrying videogame software, at least in their stores.

The Z-Wave Alliance will host a summit in Chiba, Japan, this week, as part of an effort to expand into the Japanese market at CEATEC, Marketing Director Mary Miller told Consumer Electronics Daily. The move into Japan follows an announcement by the alliance at CEDIA last month that it had certified its 400th product, the Vera gateway from Mi Casa Verde. Certification ensures that products bearing the Z-Wave logo “will work with every other one” in a connected home and will remain compatible with future products, she said.

Streaming radio stations’ music to Apple’s iPhone, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, cellphones using Google’s Android operating system and other smartphones and wireless devices is a start for broadcasters to enter the mobile sector, executives said. To make money there and keep terrestrial listeners when they're not at a traditional receiver, the industry must also develop applications, radio executives from Canada, the U.K. and U.S. said Thursday. Some of the panelists at the NAB Radio Show in Washington said offering paid apps is an area that may bear fruit -- both financially and in keeping the attention of some of the biggest listeners.