The North American market for silicon TV tuners will reach 3 million units in 2011 as the chips start replacing can tuners, Microtune Chief Financial Officer Justin Chapman said Friday at the Sidoti & Co. investor conference in New York. Microtune is banking on its MT3141 analog demodulator/silicon tuner, which is expected to start production late this year, grabbing a large share of the growing market, Chapman said.

Sonic Solutions is on an aggressive path to a holistic approach to 3D, the company told Consumer Electronics Daily last week. Sonic division Roxio announced its Video Lab 3D software for OEMs, which the company described as the first personal video editing suite for capturing, editing and sharing personal 3D content. According to Matt DiMaria, executive vice president and general manager of Roxio, a consumer 3D video editing program will be in the market by the holiday season, completing a full-scale 3D strategy ranging from the professional 3D tool on the authoring side to consumer editing software.

Fox Mobile Group’s Bitbop mobile entertainment service for smartphones_launched this week with 66 TV series from major networks such as Fox, CBS, NBC, A&E, Food Network, Bravo, USA, National Geographic, MTV, Nickelodeon, History Channel and FX. The $9.99 per month “all-you-can-eat” service, available from BlackBerry App World, will be available initially for the BlackBerry Bold series, Curve 8900 and Tour 9630 smartphones and will roll out to other platforms and phones over the next few “weeks and months,” Joe Bilman, executive vice president, global products, at Fox Mobile Group, told Consumer Electronics Daily. BlackBerry was chosen as the first platform for the service because of its technical challenges and because BlackBerry users have fewer entertainment choices than other smartphone users, he said.

Blockbuster fell short in a bid to refinance $930 million in debt and raise cash by Thursday’s annual meeting, but is “actively negotiating term sheets” with bondholders and potential strategic partners, CEO Jim Keyes said. Blockbuster had postponed its shareholders meeting 30 days hoping to complete the refinancing in time for the meeting, executives said.

Savant is replacing its line of touchscreen controllers for its Apple OS-based home automation system with the iPad, CEO Bob Madonna told dealers Thursday at the 2010 Savant Dealer Conference in New York. Previous five-, seven-, nine- and 12-inch touchscreens had been made by Savant, but shifting to the iPad gives dealers a simpler sell to a widely recognized product, a lower cost hardware solution to dealers and a secure, reliable environment for touchpanel control, Madonna said. “The industry is changing,” he said. “We're going to discontinue the touchpanel line over the next few months realizing that the iPad greatly exceeds the capability in our existing line.”

LONDON -- Arqiva, the private company that runs much of the U.K.’s TV and radio transmission infrastructure, has been secretly testing a bandwidth-efficient technology it calls “Difference 3D” for terrestrial 3D broadcasting, executives told us at a briefing Thursday. Instead of using two channels to simulcast 2D and 3D versions of the same programs, as favored by pay-TV broadcasters such as Sky, Arqiva wants to transmit a single terrestrial 2D channel that can be received by existing equipment, plus a reduced-bandwidth channel that would let a new receiver accommodate a 3D signal for a 3D TV, the executives said.

LOS ANGELES -- There are some promising 3D game trends though the technology’s entry into the living room is still in its early stages, THQ Creative Director Luis Gigliotti told us at E3 last week. THQ is “excited about 3D in general,” said Gigliotti. For the technology to become fully accepted by gamers, two things need to happen and they seem to be happening already, he said: The 3D TV installed base needs to grow and the technology needs to start being used for more than just an “aesthetic” effect in games.

LOS ANGELES -- Majesco Entertainment is still weighing its plans for stereoscopic 3D console videogames after releasing Attack of the Movies 3D in the spring for the Wii, Director of Marketing Liz Buckley told Consumer Electronics Daily at E3 last week. For now, the third-party game maker is focusing its 3D efforts on games for the coming Nintendo 3DS, she said.

Moving aggressively in 3D, Mitsubishi is spreading the technology across its eight DLP-based active-shutter rear-projection TVs starting with a 60-inch 3D-ready model at $1,199 and moving to an integrated version for $200 more, Product Development Director David Naranjo said Wednesday at a company line show in New York.

Viacom said it will appeal a federal judge’s order granting Google’s motion for summary judgment in their long-running YouTube copyright litigation. “We believe that the ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress and the views of the Supreme Court expressed in its most recent decisions,” Viacom said. “After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis."