The FCC has put an unrealistic amount of work on its agenda to complete in too short a time following release of the National Broadband Plan, Larry Darby, former FCC Common Carrier Bureau chief and chief economist, said during a New York Law School panel discussion late Monday. Some of the issues the FCC plans to tackle will likely elude easy resolution and Congress may have to step in, Darby warned.

Rising subscription-video rates accompanied by declining interest in linear channels and coming advancements in set-top box technology augur increased viewer interest in online video viewed on TV sets, said outgoing FCC broadband plan initiative head Blair Levin. “Over-the-top video will eventually emerge” as a competitor to multichannel video programming distributors and “everyone is both excited and scared” by that prospect, he said. Since the technology is “a big bandwidth hog,” those with more capacity will do better, Levin told an American Cable Association conference.

Philips signed a five-year “brand licensing agreement” under which Videocon will assume all responsibility for making and marketing Philips consumer TVs in India, Philips said Monday.

A deluge of cable encryption waiver requests at the FCC that some had anticipated never materialized. That doesn’t mean cable operators besides Cablevision, which won the first exemption (CED Jan 11 p6), won’t seek waivers in the future as more systems go all-digital so service can be turned on and off without sending trucks and technicians to people’s homes, industry lawyers and executives said. Potential waiver seekers seem busy for now with other technical and policy issues, such as the FCC’s examination of CableCARDs, said commission and industry officials.

Palm appears to have shifted gears, retreating from efforts to sell the company and instead is seeking to retain key management, analysts said. While Palm was said to have hired Goldman Sachs to shop the company to potential buyers, “interest is likely to be tepid at current levels,” UBS Securities analyst Maynard Um said in a research note. Among those said to have looked at Palm are Dell and Research in Motion, analysts have said.

The PS3 supply woes that may have hurt the console’s sales since just after Sony Computer Entertainment America’s late summer price cut on the console will continue for at least a few more months, the company indicated Thursday, after NPD’s March sales data was released. “Consumer demand remains incredibly high and PS3 supply will continue to be tight across our retail channels in the next few months,” said SCEA spokesman Patrick Seybold.

"We are continually monitoring and evaluating” the 3D home entertainment market, Avatar producer Jon Landau told Consumer Electronics Daily Thursday when we asked if the movie’s makers had ruled out including 3D in the “ultimate edition” that Fox plans to release in November. The initial Blu-ray that the studio will release April 22 won’t offer 3D, one of the most highly touted features of the movie in its theatrical release.

Intel’s “Wireless Display” (WiDi) technology will boost its content protection as it adds support for Blu-ray and other technologies, CEO Paul Otellini said in a conference call. Intel unveiled WiDi at CES as a technology built into Toshiba and Sony notebook PCs that when paired with a Netgear receiver can wirelessly port data and video to an HDTV. The Netgear Push2TV PVT1000 attaches to an HDTV via HDMI or RCA jacks. The notebook syncs to the Push2TV receiver via pre-installed WiDi software that can be activated via a button on the keyboard. Once a connect button is hit, a notebook PC environment is ported to a TV.

Best Buy will start rolling out new recycling kiosks at its U.S. stores next week that will be easier for customers to use than the current ones, Leo Raudys, senior director of environmental affairs at the retailer, told us Thursday. About 33 percent of Best Buy’s new locations this year will get the new kiosks, which will be located at the front of the stores, and additional stores will get them in 2011, he said.

As the EPA set new qualification rules for Energy Star (CED April 15 p2), the agency clarified that manufacturers need not remove labels from products or product literature for products made on or after March 30. But device makers must produce lab reports with “qualification information” to the EPA for approval, the agency said in a communication to Energy Star stakeholders Wednesday.