Broadcasters’ future with mobile DTV is “up in the air,” Gray TV CEO Bob Prather told investors Thursday. He said the formation at this year’s NAB show of Pearl Mobile DTV with just nine large station groups divided station owners. “There’s now a split between those guys and the rest of us out there,” he said. “It’s delayed us from coming up with a plan overall. At this point mobile DTV is in flux.” The technology works, and Prather remains optimistic about it, but “it may be delayed a little longer than I initially thought,” he said.

The U.S. must enact legislation banning e-waste exports to developing countries before ratifying the Basel Convention, environmental groups said. The Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) and the Basel Action Network (BAN) were reacting to a GAO report that urged the EPA to draw up a legislative proposal for Congress to ratify the Basel Convention, an international treaty that governs trade in toxic waste (GED Aug 12 p1). The CEA doesn’t have a position on U.S. ratification of the Basel Convention, said Walter Alcorn, CEA vice president of environmental affairs.

At the same time that Samsung scaled back industry projections for 2010 3D TV sales, the company ratcheted up its own commitment to 3D, bringing its 3D lineup to a total 35 products for the year, the company said Wednesday at a news conference at the Samsung Experience store at New York’s Time Warner Center.

Some of the earliest developers of e-readers are falling by the wayside as the U.S. market increasingly is dominated by more recent Kindles, Nooks and iPads. Plastic Logic, an early developer of plastic semiconductors and displays, shelved plans for the Que proReader (CED Jan 8 p2) after several delays as it works to develop a second-generation device, the company said.

Disney CEO Robert Iger defended his company’s recent decision to buy social game company Playdom for $563.2 million (CED July 28 p7) rather than just licensing in the social game space, in an earnings call. “The licensing business is obviously one that’s important to us,” but this was “one case where we felt that bringing” Playdom’s talent into Disney “and using that expertise to expand” Disney’s “awareness of, knowledge of, and business in social games -- in particular, social networking and digital media -- had real value,” he said.

Google will work as the sales representative for several channels offered by DirecTV, the companies said Wednesday. The partnership is a step forward for Google’s effort to gain recognition as an ad seller in traditional media in preparation for a possible flattening out of Internet ad sales, media industry analysts said.

Comcast and Blockbuster created a marketing partnership to allow Comcast subscribers to order DVDs by mail and to let Comcast market its triple-play services in Blockbuster stores, according to a blog post on the ComcastVoices website. The DVD-by-mail service will be integrated with Comcast’s movie offerings, and when consumers search for a movie title at www.comcast.com/dvd, they'll be given viewing choices including a disc by mail, on-demand, online and premium TV channels, the cable company said. Subscribers who choose the mailed DVD option can return discs by mail or to Blockbuster stores.

CE companies are looking at devising alternatives to the Energy Star program, and the immediate provocation for the move is the changes being made to the program’s product qualification and verification rules. Executives of several companies “in our industry will be coming together” this week to “talk about possible alternatives to the Energy Star program,” a senior executive familiar with the initiative told us. The EPA is unaware of the industry initiative, an agency official said.

THQ continues to plan strong support for the coming Nintendo 3DS handheld game system, and will make both core and casual titles, including licensed games, for it, THQ CEO Brian Farrell said in an earnings call. The 3DS, which Nintendo plans to ship by March 31, achieves stereoscopic 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

Universal Display Q2 sales were bolstered by its recording $2.1 million in previously deferred revenue from a former customer that halted OLED manufacturing plans, executives said on a conference call. Analysts believe that the unspecified customer was Sony, which in April 2001 signed a technology development agreement with Universal that expired four years later. Sony manufactured OLED panels, including one used in an 11-inch TV, but didn’t sign a commercial license agreement with Universal for its phosphorescent OLED materials. A commercial license typically signals the start of volume production, industry officials said.