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.

Hammacher Schlemmer in July will be the first retailer to carry a 3D camcorder that DXG unveiled in New York Tuesday, Paul Goldberg, the manufacturer’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The DXG-321V -- believed to be the first consumer model in the U.S. from a major manufacturer to shoot 3D images -- will cost $599.99 and come bundled with a separate, 7-inch LCD “media player” monitor that uses parallax barrier autostereoscopic technology for viewing images in 3D without special glasses being required, DXG said. It didn’t identify the company supplying the display.

Mitsubishi’s LaserVue TV will make another run at the rear projection market, this time with a 3D-ready 75-inch model priced at $5,999, said dealers briefed on the plans. The set, part of the A91 series, will feature StreamTV that provides access to 100 streaming applications including Flickr, Facebook, Pandora and Twitter.

The EPA and the Department of Energy Wednesday formalized changes to qualification rules for the Energy Star program to ensure that “only products meeting the program requirements can receive an Energy Star label.” The EPA had informed stakeholders in a March 31 memo of the proposed changes (CED April 2 p6). It said it decided to “accelerate” efforts to strengthen qualification and verification rules following a GAO investigation that found the program vulnerable to fraud and abuse (CED March 29 p3).

Verizon is building a new Long-Term Evolution R&D center that will focus largely on CE devices, Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said in an interview. The carrier also has started looking beyond LTE trials, targeting year-end for some actual commercial launches, he said.

The EPA released draft Energy Star specifications for data center storage systems and computer servers. Many aspects remained unaddressed in the first draft of version 1.0 of the data center storage specification, the agency said, and the document reflects the agency’s “latest thinking” based on stakeholder input. The first draft of version 2.0 of the specification for computer servers represents EPA “intended” tier 2 requirements in version 1.0 of the specification. The deadline for comments on both the documents is May 21.

An investment by Wistron in light-guide supplier Global Lighting Technology (GLT) secures a key component for LED-based displays as the company expands LCD TV assembly, GLT Sales Director Brett Shriver told us. Wistron, which forecast its LCD TV shipments’ passing 10 million units by 2011, said it will pay up to $20 million for 17-19 percent of privately held GLT. GLT is building a light-guide assembly facility near a new Wistron manufacturing base in Guangdong, China, that’s scheduled to start production in 2011. The new factory will double Wistron’s capacity for LCD TVs, officials of the company have said. Wistron assembles LCD TVs for Sony and other CE manufacturers and will use GLT’s light guides for TVs 20 inches and larger, Wistron officials said.

LAS VEGAS -- Most people who viewed 3D telecasts or highlight reels of Masters golf came away so impressed that they think the jump to 3D from HD will “be a bigger transition than it was from SD to HD,” said Dan Holden, chief scientist at the Comcast Media Center in Centennial, Colo. At the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference on Saturday, he said Comcast plans to deliver 3D content in an “over-under” format at half the resolution per eye of full HD, which won’t require adding bandwidth. He thinks most other cable companies will do the same, he said.

A draft FCC rulemaking notice about CableCARDs probably will be changed before a vote scheduled for April 21 to deal with large cable systems’ use of HD-only set-top boxes, commission officials said Monday. The draft Media Bureau notice that’s circulating proposes exempting systems with 552 MHz or less activated capacity from a requirement that boxes use separate security and navigation functions for devices that can handle HD but not more advanced functions (CED April 6 p2). The NCTA and large cable operators sought a wider HD box exemption in recent ex parte meetings, filings in docket 97-80 show.