Faced with slow sales and excess inventory, tier one brands are competing aggressively for Black Friday spot promotions that once were the province of secondary suppliers, industry executives said. Black Friday deals are cut between May and July, they said. While top tier brands used to be reluctant to tarnish their image by offering cut-rate prices during the annual post-Thanksgiving ritual, concerns waned as sales fell short of goals, industry officials said. Manufacturers are unleashing aggressive promotions in August. Samsung is expected to ship a 50-inch 3D 720p plasma TV at $989.

ESPN 3D will telecast its second round of homegrown 3D events this week with eight hours of X Games 16 sporting events from the Los Angeles Coliseum. 3D programming will run on Thursday 8-11 p.m. and on Saturday 7 p.m.-midnight. Events to be shown in 3D include men’s and women’s Super X racing, Moto X Freestyle, the Big Air skateboard competition, Rally Car, Super Rally Car and BMX Big Air, the cable programmer said.

NEWMARKET, N.H. -- Nearly a year after buying a home automation company, Colorado vNet, distributed audio company Russound is solidifying a two-tiered custom electronics strategy based on networked integration, retrofit solutions and cloud-based content and services, company executives told reporters last week. Russound’s position in the custom electronics market has been focused on multiroom distribution of audio and video, but limited growth potential in that segment has Russound looking to networked home automation for future growth.

The FCC and Food and Drug Administration signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at improving information exchange between the two and streamlining collaboration, the agencies said. The MOU was unveiled at the start of two days of discussions at the commission during a joint meeting with the FDA on mobile health (mhealth) issues. The two agencies also released a joint statement on wireless medical devices. The FCC National Broadband Plan, released in March, dedicated a chapter to healthcare issues. At its July meeting, the FCC began a rulemaking on a program that would provide up to $400 million per year on health connectivity.

The Senate may hotline a disabilities communications bill in a unanimous consent vote as soon as Tuesday, a Senate staffer told us. The House was expected to pass its own version Monday night, industry officials said. The House considered HR-3101 in the afternoon, but postponed votes until after our deadline. Monday was the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) will ship its first 3D-capable frame rate conversion ICs this fall, moving to expand its consumer business to compete with Broadcom, Trident and others, Ji Park, vice president and general manager of the video and display business, told us.

SEATTLE -- The Senate Commerce Committee spent the last year pursuing subscription clubs whose free-trial deals appeared in the e-commerce checkout process. Game developers have the opposite worry, that players are taking advantage of deals on “offer walls” to get in-game currency and then quickly canceling what they sign up for. They told the Casual Connect conference Thursday the onus is on game makers and advertisers to make their deals more relevant to gameplay and build trust with their audiences by providing real value.

The push by D&M’s Marantz into Best Buy’s Magnolia gives the brand a long-sought retail showroom presence and won’t replace its several hundred custom install and specialty AV dealers, Robert Weissburg, D&M president of North American sales and marketing, told us.

LONDON -- Colorful details of Rovi’s running technical battle to thwart movie rippers emerged from the Rovi road show last week as the former Macrovision rolled through London, after its stop in New York (CED July 21 p2). “It’s punch and counterpunch,” Gerald Hensley, Rovi vice president of entertainment, said of the battle against unauthorized copying. “Currently there is an upswing in Blu-ray ripping,” and indications are studios are falling behind the hackers in attempting to stop it, he said.

SEATTLE -- Game developers used to calling the shots may have a rough time adjusting to working with movie studios and other companies with vast intellectual property, but patience pays off, executives said at the Casual Connect conference. Disney, sports leagues and others are lending their IP to developers to build their own businesses, said Robert Tercek, who helped develop Sony’s early online games and until recently headed digital media for the Oprah Winfrey Network. Describing a “really intense” approval process for the rights to a set of Disney brands new at the time, Tercek said an executive told him to “'give it back to us in exactly the same condition or better.'"