The number of people who watch broadcast TV programming on the Internet has doubled in the last year, said a recent survey conducted by Altman Vilandrie & Co. “More people are cutting the cord than ever,” said Jonathan Hurd, the firm’s research director and one of several analysts speaking at USTelecom’s Broadband Research Summit.

ATLANTA - In what Speakercraft hopes will be an urgent wake-up call to custom integrators, the company, which claims the largest portfolio of in-wall speakers for the custom installation market, has come to CEDIA with a line of iPod dock systems for specialists and mass-market retailers. “It’s a new market landscape,” said President Jeremy Burkhardt, saying more music than ever is being consumed, and mainly by people under 35. “This whole trade show has to cater to that generation,” he said at a news conference Wednesday. “If this industry doesn’t re-invent and make products available to the next round of homebuyers, custom isn’t going to last the way that it has.”

THQ expects the uDraw GameTablet accessory it will ship this holiday season for the Wii (CED Aug 18 p6) will make money, just like the games it will field for the device, CEO Brian Farrell told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York Wednesday. “I'm not interested in loss leadering at all,” he said, when asked if the game company just intends to use the accessory to help build an installed base for uDraw software. “The margins we expect on that hardware are very similar to our normal software margins,” he said.

ATLANTA -- Media-server company Kaleidescape is making a strong stand with product and rhetoric this week at CEDIA, in advance of the company’s Dec. 6 court date with the DVD Copy Control Association. The company is demoing a modular 100-disc vault designed to circumvent rigid and complex Blu-ray playback rules, Linus Wong, director of product marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Wong said what the vault does complies with an agreement between Kaleidescape and the Blu-ray Disc Association requiring that a disc be present for Blu-ray playback.

ATLANTA -- Toshiba will limit distribution of its Cinema Series LED edge-lit and 3D LCD TVs to regional chains and independent dealers this year after parting ways with Best Buy’s Magnolia Home Theater, National Training Manager Michael Danning told us at CEDIA.

"Everything is going to bend and blur,” Steven Chiang, president of studios at Zynga, said Tuesday at the NY Games Conference, when asked if console games will take on a growing role in the social gaming arena. Console and social games have already started to “blend,” he said, pointing to recent games including Madden NFL Superstars from Electronic Arts, the first entry in that publisher’s football franchise launched on Facebook.

XStreamHD, which first announced plans for a “pre-fetched” movie, music and game satellite delivery service at the 2008 CES, is demonstrating its technology at the AMX booth at CEDIA this week. AMX has developed customized controls for the service, which allows AMX home automation system owners to access and control movies from XStreamHD media servers for viewing on connected TVs in the house. The satellite-based service, which has experienced a series of delays since first announced in 2008, will automatically beam 1080p movies, based on consumers’ preferences, to a media server when titles become available on DVD, according to James Mahoney, vice president of marketing.

U.S. sales of EPEAT registered products in 2009 grew 10 percent over the previous year to 44.5 million units, the certification body said in a 2009 “benefits” report released Tuesday. Canada saw a 25 percent increase to more than 3 million products, it said. The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool program now covers desktops, laptops, integrated systems, displays, workstations and thin client devices. EPEAT is devising standards for TVs and imaging devices, including printers, faxes and copiers which it expects to publish in 2011.

LCoS technology is mounting a new push in the home theater market, this time as a key element in 3D-capable front projectors. At least three CE manufacturers -- Sony, Mitsubishi and LG Electronics -- are expected to demonstrate models at CEDIA this week using three 0.61-inch Sony 240 Hz LCoS panels with 1,920x1,080p resolution, industry officials said. JVC also is expected to show 3D-capable projectors using its D-ILA LCoS panels.

Finishing the DTV transition is a step closer with release of an FCC rulemaking notice on setting deadlines for low-power broadcasters, about half of which already are going all-digital, to end all analog operations. Commissioners on Friday approved an item that proposed 2012 as the transition deadline for all low-power TV (LPTV) stations not operating in the 700 MHz band, as expected (CED Sept 14 p2). The regulator proposed LPTV outlets on channels 52-69, vacated in last year’s full-power analog transition, go all-digital by Dec. 31, 2011, in other slots, and submit an application picking another channel by June 30 of that year.