As Best Buy's March Madness commercial states, "It's time for comebacks and miracles."

The big box retailer used to be able to count on such major sports events — along with the Super Bowl, NFL Kick-Off, MLB Opening Day — to drive sales of new TV sets and big-screen home theaters. But with HDTV penetration at about 63% in the U.S., and an estimated one in four American homes a Blu-ray disc player, the big box consumer electronics retailer is backing away from its big box model.

Today, the company (which recently closed its UK operations) announced as part of its dismal quarterly earnings report that it is closing 50 of its 1,100 U.S. stores this year, while testing smaller tech support-centric "connected stores" in San Antonio and Minneapolis.

As part of its restructuring, it will also lay off 400 corporate and support workers in order to slash $800 million in costs and turn around its struggling business model. In addition to shifting away from being a big box retailer, it's also looking to China for growth.Continue reading...

Men may defer to women on lots of purchases for the home, ranging from dinnerware to wallpaper. But when it comes to big-screen televisions, Sharp believes that men care in outsized ways what is purchased for their household.

And so as Sharp begins peddling the industry’s first 70-inch high-definition LCD TVs under the tagline “Big is too small a word,” the electronics brand is specifically targeting the preferences of men.

Sharp has concluded that while women influence and often conclude the purchase of TVs for the home, men have a lot to say about this particular outlay more than most others — meriting supersized new words.Continue reading...

Nokia just released a beta version of its Big Screen app, which connects its N8 smartphone to a high-definition TV set for easy sharing of content with friends and others. Its innovative feature set:Continue reading...

With or without the funky eyeglasses, television companies are hoping to capitalize on the emergence of 3D. The visual technology's popularity has risen dramatically in the past year, in part thanks to popular movies such as Avatar.

Both ESPN and Discovery Communications, owner of the Discovery Channel and TLC, are set to launch their own respective 3D networks.

ESPN will air more than 85 live games this year, the first being the FIFA World Cup on June 11 -- only the most revered sporting event on the planet.Continue reading...