LOS ANGELES -- Executives from 3D technology companies offered a decidedly mixed take at the L.A. Games Conference on the merits of Nintendo’s 3DS handheld game system. They also predicted that smartphones and other mobile devices boasting the same sort of autostereoscopic 3D technology, but more advanced, will soon ship.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has outlived its usefulness in regulating a dynamic and fast-changing music environment, RIAA President Cary Sherman told the Rethink Music conference in Boston Wednesday. That track record has left the major labels skeptical that further U.S. legislation, such as creating a graduated-response system for cracking down on copyright infringement online, as several countries have adopted, would be especially helpful, he said. But the RIAA still considers the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, soon to be reintroduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., “very reasonable” for dealing with offshore infringing websites, Sherman said.

Slack demand for LCD glass in Japan and Taiwan won’t last beyond Q2, as Sharp brings its 10th-generation panel plant back on line with “substantial production,” Corning Chief Financial Officer James Flaws said on an earnings call. Sharp reduced manufacturing at its 10G and 8G factories due partly to a tight supply of raw materials in the aftermath of the March 11 quake, Flaws said. Sharp, which dropped utilization to 65 to 70 percent from 80 percent, is expected to resume full production in May (CED April 12 p1).

PHOENIX -- As video margins slice into specialty AV dealers’ earnings, audio is looking better and better as a profit source, Home Technology Specialists Association members told us at their spring meeting. Although some sources said it was “like returning to their roots,” it’s new music sources that are driving the interest in high-performance audio. Streaming services such as Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster and Amazon’s cloud-based service are bringing customers to stores to learn more about the offerings and, in many cases, to get help in setting up systems for use around the home.

Systemax’s board will likely follow through with Technology Products CEO Gilbert Fiorentino’s firing next week, Chief Financial Officer Lawrence Reinhold said Tuesday at the Barclays Capital retail and restaurants conference in New York.

PHOENIX -- Home Technology Specialists of America (HTSA) dealers came to the buying group’s spring conference this week facing a variety of challenges from thin video margins to potential product shortages resulting from supply chain disruptions after the Japan quake, members told us Tuesday. Product availability is a major concern at Lee Hartman & Sons in Roanoke, Va., sales manager John Cosgrove told us, saying some vendors have said it will be “difficult to get product in consistently” over the course of the year. “They're telling us, ’so-and-so in Japan can’t get in a part for a board,’ and that’s throwing everything off,” he said. Cosgrove wouldn’t name suppliers but said bulletins are starting to come in about products being one of three things: “discontinued, highly constrained or forget-about-it,” he said.

Were Dish Network to start a streaming-video service under the Blockbuster brand it just bought out of bankruptcy, it would mark the newest competitor in a wide-open online video market that’s ripe with “opportunity,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on an earnings webcast late Monday. “A big market attracts a lot of competition,” said Hastings, who fielded emailed questions: “I think it’s pretty clear to everyone that online video is a big opportunity. There'll be a number of substantial competitors. If Dish launches something under the Blockbuster brand, that'll be the newest entrant."

Mexico’s mandating energy use labeling for products that use “extremely small amounts of electricity is not cost effective and is not particularly useful to consumers,” CEA wrote senior Mexico government officials. The country’s Ministry of Energy is targeting 186 categories of products and equipment for the labeling program, including CE products. The more than 20 CE products in the list include power strips, routers, calculators, landline phones, clocks and typewriters.

LOS ANGELES -- The U.S. game industry will grow in 2011, driven by an improved economy leading to more consumer spending, growing mobile device penetration, increased Wi-Fi access, continued digital channel growth including downloadable content and social networks, larger hard drive capacity on videogame consoles, growing adoption of the new PS3 and Xbox 360 motion-sensing control systems, and new revenue opportunities, said Michael Klotz, games business senior manager at NPD, at the L.A. Games Conference Tuesday.

Broadcasters jousted with wireless carriers and CEA as the FCC took in a last round of comments on its proposal to “repurpose” parts of the TV band. NAB filed a report, written by former FCC official Uzoma Onyeije, questioning whether there really is a spectrum “crisis.” CTIA and CEA fired back, arguing that all the evidence shows a growing need for more spectrum for wireless broadband. Five nonprofit groups said the commission needs to collect data on whether TV stations fully use their spectrum, with commenters “deeply divided on this question."