Broadcom will ship a single decoder/processor chip capable of decoding two separate 3D 1080p streams simultaneously to set-top box and TV suppliers in second half 2011 as it seeks to build what so far has been a “small” 3D business for the company, John Dryden, senior manager of investor relations, told us at the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York.

A two-store survey of 3D U.S. Open action Saturday in northern New Jersey revealed polar opposites in retail awareness of the technology. We stepped into a Sony Style store at the Garden State Mall in Paramus mid-afternoon, looking for U.S. Open action broadcast by CBS Sports over DirecTV. The 55-inch Sony 3D TV on display was showing the same stock footage as other HDTVs in the store. The 3D World Created by Sony section was empty, so we asked a saleswoman to put on the U.S. Open. After saying, “I didn’t know it was on,” she brought up ESPN and we directed her to the DirecTV n3D channel instead.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Pay-TV operators and vendors are working on new on-screen guides to keep up with the pace of innovation of over-the-top services such as Netflix Watch Instantly and Apple TV, executives at the Set Top Box Conference said last week. But they diverged on how consumers will want to navigate all the programming choices after operators integrate DVR, VOD and online video options into a single user-interface.

SEATTLE -- Game companies looking to draw new audiences by melding features of different game categories should tread carefully, veteran developers told the Penny Arcade Expo over the weekend. It’s still too early to judge whether new “paradigms” can transform the industry, given the recent pedigree of popular category-defining games and Facebook’s wrenching of the game audience from MySpace, they said. Developers shouldn’t even think in terms of casual, social and massively multiplayer online (MMO) game categories, said James Ernest, senior game designer for The Amazing Society, which is developing a trading-card game within an MMO structure.

SEATTLE -- A Twitter feed has the power to sink the stock prices of game publishers, but bad games can make it through the pipeline if someone at a publisher doesn’t challenge the conventional wisdom. “Spokesgeeks” for big publishers, charged with giving voice to fans, described at the Penny Arcade Expo over the weekend how careful they've learned to be when speaking publicly about their companies. Often it’s better to act as a liaison than to make an off-the-cuff announcement, said Larry Hryb, director of programming for Xbox Live, better known to fans as Major Nelson. “I'm the guy who knows the guy."

While much of the custom market is heading to CEDIA Expo this month with iPad apps to integrate with the Apple ecosystem, Universal Remote Control is shifting gears and launching its Total Control whole-house control system with 14 new products. The IP-based system is said to manage lighting control, energy monitoring through the TED 5000 (The Energy Detective), multiple zones of audio and networked surveillance cameras, regardless of protocol.

SEATTLE -- The future of game distribution online could be imperiled if the Supreme Court reverses the tide of court decisions slapping down state laws restricting the sale of videogames to minors, speakers said at the Penny Arcade Expo over the weekend. It’s “a bit unsettling” that the nation’s highest court will hear EMA v. Schwarzenegger, a challenge to California’s videogame law, with no “circuit split” that would justify intervention, said attorney Tom Buscaglia, who’s writing a friend-of-the-court brief for the International Game Developers Association in support of the Entertainment Merchants Association.

Natural Resources Canada’s proposed energy limits on electronics are based on “inadequate and obsolete” data, said the CE industry, which seeks a “thorough and current” analysis of consumer electronics power use before the agency moves ahead with the regulations. NRCan has proposed “minimum energy performance” levels for a host of CE products, including TVs, video products, compact audio products, external power supplies and DTV adapters.

Slower-than-expected sales of LED-backlit LCD TVs and notebook PCs produced an oversupply of LED chips for those products that won’t clear until early 2011, Cree Chief Financial Officer John Kurtzwell said Tuesday at the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York.

BERLIN -- Sony’s top strategist for Blu-ray and 3D said at an IFA media briefing Friday that it’s doubtful his company would market a 3D consumer camcorder before work is finished on a 3D spec for the AVCHD format that Sony developed jointly with Panasonic. The executive, Akira Shimazu, senior general manager in charge of Sony’s Blu-ray and 3D strategy office, steered well clear of criticizing Panasonic’s new 3D camcorder introduction, which has won high praise at IFA for its ability to help consumers create their own 3D images, thus filling the content void left by the fact that so few Blu-ray 3D movies broadcast 3D programs are available.