The U.S. is unlikely to have a government-required radio transition to digital from the analog broadcasts that still predominate -- or at least at no time in the foreseeable future, some FCC and industry-engineer panelists said Thursday. One reason there hasn’t been a rapid switch by stations to HD Radio and away from analog transmissions is that, unlike with last year’s digital transition for full-power TV stations, there’s never been a “date-certain” for radio to go digital-only, said Senior Vice President Glynn Walden of CBS Radio, with about 130 stations. “These things don’t happen overnight” as occurred for TV, he said at the NAB Radio Show in Washington.

Having deployed its SD-based video download service with InMotion, MOD Systems will expand its reach into CE with an array of external card readers targeting set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and portable devices, CEO Anthony Bay told us.

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.

DALLAS -- While waiting for the economy and consumer confidence to improve, P.C. Richard & Son will continue to open new stores, President Gregg Richard told Consumer Electronics Daily at the NATM Buying Corp. conference here. It has opened 13 in the last year and a half or so, and two more will soon open, he said. The company is “setting ourselves up” to be perfectly positioned once the economy rebounds, he said.

A new e-waste export control bill that would create a new category of “restricted electronic waste” which can’t be exported to developing countries received tepid support from the CE and recycling industries Thursday. But environmental groups, which opposed an e-waste export bill introduced in May by the new bill’s authors, strongly support the new measure, they said. The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (HR-6252) by Reps. Gene Green, D-Texas and Mike Thompson, D-Calif., is aimed at providing a framework for the EPA to monitor the export of used electronics, the lawmakers said.

When ESPN 3D televises its fifth college football game Saturday, it will be using a custom rig built by camera equipment company Chapman Leonard that places a robotic 3D camera on the first-down marker cart to give viewers a 25-foot-high perspective from the sidelines. Phil Orlins, coordinating producer of ESPN 3D, called the custom rig “the first major enhancement” in 3D coverage for the network in a constantly evolving effort to balance the “impactful visual experience” with “solid documentation” of a sports event. The camera moving along the line of scrimmage is high enough for an overview shot similar to the view from the press box, but with the proximity required for compelling 3D, Orlins told Consumer Electronics Daily in an interview Wednesday.

The European Commission Tuesday proposed energy use labels for TVs and upgraded the existing labeling program for refrigerators, dishwashers and washing machines. TV labeling is expected to result in yearly savings of 15 terawatt hours of electricity by 2020, the Commission said. The environmental impact of TVs in the European Union is significant, and it’s interest mainly stems from their electricity consumption in the on mode, the commission said. TV energy use makes up 10 percent of the average household’s electricity bill, it said.

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) 2.0 certification test will be completed in the next few months with goal of having the first gateway boxes available by late 2011, Francisco Toro, technical lead engineer at Entropic, told us.

DALLAS -- Retailer members of the NATM Buying Corp. are surviving, if not exactly thriving, in 2010, in a challenging business environment in which they face slow sales across most product categories, weakening margins, and what they deem to be an over-use of scan-down rebate offers and bundles by manufacturers, said NATM President and Executive Director Bill Trawick and several NATM members. It’s the first time in Trawick’s 13 years with NATM that he hasn’t been able to tell the conference how great business is, he said.

SEATTLE -- Applications will break the bounds of “stores” operated by Apple, Google and others as Web technology advances, a Motorola director told the TechNW conference. Other company representatives agreed apps aren’t simply a passing “fad,” but said mobile growth could be hampered by problems including bandwidth crunches, unproven monetization strategies and small screen sizes.