That’s according to the latest data from the NPD Group’s retail tracking service. Sales of 3-D TVs in the U.S. grew 74 percent in units over last year, with 3-D TVs accounting for 11 percent of all flat-panel sales in the first quarter of 2012, the report says.

But despite the growth in sales, and the fact that some consumers are wowed by 3-D demos, “just 14 percent of consumers … say 3D is a ‘must have’ feature while 68 percent say it’s a ‘nice feature to have they may use in the future.’”

The obstacles to greater 3-D penetration are the usual suspects, NPD analyst Ben Arnold says. The overwhelming majority of consumers consider 3-D glasses a drawback to the technology, with glasses-free 3-D still far from being perfected; 14 percent say the lack of 3-D content is a deterrent (though that reason is weakening, as more content creators put out 3-D programs).

Cost is also a factor when it comes to newer, souped-up TVs. NPD says the average prices of 3-D TVs in April were 33 percent lower compared to April 2010, but a recent report from IHS iSuppli says that average prices of 3-D LCD TVs actually crept up a teeny bit from December 2011 to April of this year, to $2,492.

So why buy a 3-D TV if you’re not going to use it for 3-D? Well, for one thing, as noted here, “3-D” has been shifting from the main selling point in TV marketing schemes to an add-on feature that happens to be included in high-tech TV sets, so some consumers are buying 3-D-equipped TVs even if they’ve not totally bought into the tech.

And the underutilization of fancy TVs isn’t really a new thing: Turns out that 3-D engagement levels might be in line with some of the data we’ve seen surrounding “smart” TVs, or Internet-connected TVs. Despite the fact that Internet connectivity is often cited as an important factor for consumers making TV purchases, TechNewsDaily reported earlier this year that only half of all people who own Internet-ready TVs have actually gone online through their TVs.

(Image courtesy of Salminari on Flickr; thought bubble courtesy of AllThingsD)

Amid mounting anger about the capability, at least two are resisting. Fox and NBC both said Wednesday they won’t accept ads promoting the satellite-TV operator’s new digital video recorder that contains the ad-skipping capability.

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The feature, dubbed “Auto Hop,” is an advance on existing ad-skipping features on digital video recorders, which have been widely available for several years from cable and satellite operators. For existing DVRs, consumers have to manually press a fast forward button to speed through the commercial breaks. Timing the fast forward can be difficult and viewers can still see scenes from ads.

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That’s according to the latest TV Tracker report from IHS iSuppli, which eyes the prices and specifications of TV sets in the U.S. market.

Prices of flat-panel TVs climbed an average of $78 between December and the end of April, the report says, from an average cost of $1,119 — the largest increase during any four-month period in the U.S. TV market over the past year.

Last month, average pricing for U.S. flat-panel televisions, including LCD and plasma sets, reached $1,248, and average prices of 3-D LCD TVs in April rose 3 percent to $2,492.

The price surge contradicts reports from late last year that suggested TV prices could drop in the first half of this year.

“LED-backlit LCD panel prices will likely continue falling in 2012, but at a much slower pace than in the second half of 2011, which will slow retail price erosion,” NPD DisplaySearch said.

Part of the reason for the price surge: Features. The report notes that high-end features like Internet connectivity in “smart” TVs and LED screens have contributed to an 11.4 percent climb in flat-panel prices since December 2011.

Even if consumers weren’t actively looking to buy a fancy TV with all the bells and whistles — because as I noted during the Consumer Electronics Show this past January, some features like 3-D are taking a backseat, and consumers have been somewhat slow to adopt this technology — they may have been persuaded to buy something more expensive.

Retailers have been shifting their strategies and looking to “upsell” customers, iSuppli says.

“Retailers are working to convince buyers to move up to either a larger-sized TV or to one using LED-backlit panels,” the report says, noting that the cost of upgrading to a bigger-screen TV has been greater than the upgrade cost of going with the same-sized screen, but in LED. “The larger price premium for upgrading to a bigger TV size indicates the market was aware that buyers were willing to shell out more money to obtain larger-sized sets over a similar-sized TV model with LED backlighting.”

For consumers that have held off but are still in the market for a new TV, it’s not all bad news: In the second quarter of the year, sellers are expected to close the price gap between certain features, to maybe a 10 percent premium per feature. Which means some buyers might be able to have their big-screen smart TV and eat their 3-D LED, too.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr/Best Buy CA)

The Philadelphia-based company continued to shed video subscribers but said the rate of subscriber defections slowed for the sixth consecutive quarter to 37,000, a 5 percent improvement.

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Here’s a new trailer for HBO’s upcoming series “The Newsroom,” by famed Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.

The series — by the man behind the hit television show “The West Wing” and the Facebook movie “The Social Network” — is set at a cable news channel under siege in the new-media age.

In other words, lots of hand-wringing over blogs and tweeting, along with the drama.

It looks tasty, and Walt Mossberg and I will be asking Sorkin about it at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference at the end of this month, where he will be appearing as a speaker.

Enjoy (I also included another trailer, that starts off the “Newsroom” series):

Like this inexplicable video:

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Early expectations are that TV networks will win an increase in total ad commitments for the fall season in the coming weeks of negotiations with advertisers known as the upfront. Yet, some big marketers, including General Motors Co. GM -2.71% and Samsung Electronic Co.’s mobile arm, say they are planning to shift some of their TV budgets to the Web.

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I meant to put this up last week — this is perhaps the most pleasing group of things that go boom, a collected group of slow-motion highlights from the Danish television show “Dumt & Farligt.”

At 2,500 frames per second, I think I like the “Egg + Baseball Bat” one the best.

The skewering is epic, especially since it is so spot-on.

Enjoy:

Market research firm IHS iSuppli said Tuesday that U.S.-bound shipments of flat-panel TVs will drop 5 percent in 2012, slipping to 37.1 million units from 39.1 million units in 2011. And that decline will likely continue for the next few years. By 2013, IHS figures shipments will drop to just below 35 million; by 2015, they’ll be hovering around 34.2 million.

That’s a precipitous drop for a market that has never seen a year-over-year decline, even during the lean years of 2008 and 2009. So what’s behind it? IHS believes two factors are at work here. First, the maturation of the U.S. television market. Second, the industry overestimated demand in early 2011 and flooded the channel with inventory it was forced to discount later in the year.

“The main factor behind the expected slowdown in the U.S. TV flat-panel market during 2012 can be attributed to the TV market reaching a state of maturity for this particular region,” IHS analyst Lisa Hatamiya told AllThingsD. “Flat-panel TVs experienced major uptake since their release because they offered a much slimmer form factor compared to CRT tube TVs and were also easier to place into secondary TV-viewing areas of the household. While 2011’s incredibly low price declines were aimed to boost flat-panel TV sales last year, consumers reacted very positively to this, and the flat-panel TV market reached nearly 39 million units.”

But the industry cannot afford to offer those same low prices this year, said Hatamiya. “So we expect that U.S. TV prices will not experience huge price declines this year, and as a result, shipments will fall 5 percent year over year.”

(Image courtesy of Andidas.com)

If you want a good laugh on a Friday, tune into this movie trailer for “Dark Shadows,” the remake of the popular television show from the 1970s that is being reborn by director Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp.

His Barnabas Collins is a pleasure, especially when compared to the broody vampires of “Twilight.” And it looks like everyone involved is having a very good time.

Case in point: The invisible fang-brushing part is obviously silly, but fantastic nonetheless.

Enjoy:

After parting company with Fox News last year, Mr. Beck took his message of outrage and self-reliance online. He launched an Internet video network called GBTV, where he is on air for two hours a day, alongside six more hours of shows, from “Liberty Treehouse,” a history and news program for children, to the reality program “Independence USA,” where a family explores life off the grid.

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The Silicon Valley company has for several months been pitching media companies on a plan to create a “virtual cable operator,” which would offer their U.S. TV channels nationwide over the Internet in a bundle similar to subscriptions sold by cable- and satellite-TV operators, according to people familiar with the effort. Intel wouldn’t provide Internet access, which subscribers would obtain separately.

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It needs no explanation except to say, apparently, email overload is a national disaster:

The kings are at it again in the second season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” — the hit cable show based on the famous series of books by George R.R. Martin.

Also, one queen, who has herself some dragons.

Someone’s definitely going to lose an eye. Also a limb, a head, a heart and, well, you get the idea of this fantastically gory television series.

Enjoy:

Largely relegated to obscurity decades ago, old-fashioned television broadcasts — over the airwaves and not via cable or satellite — are enjoying an unexpected revival in the digital era.

With an increased array of online-video programming now drawing viewers’ attention, companies are starting to pitch consumers on complementing online video streamed from the Web with broadcast-TV signals as a way to save money on cable subscriptions.

With an increased array of online-video programming now drawing viewers’ attention, companies are starting to pitch consumers on complementing online video streamed from the Web with broadcast-TV signals as a way to save money on cable subscriptions.

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On another level, however, I understand the motivation. When it comes to delivering audio-visual content to a wide audience, the Internet has lowered the barriers to entry so far that anyone with even the dinkiest camera can become a major broadcaster. The television industry may face a crisis of overhead when a large number of scrappy upstarts deliver comparable value with almost no fixed costs. Also, there are some aspects of the television business that the Internet simply does better, specifically when it comes to reaching an audience.

So there is the scent of blood in the water, and out of the resulting frenzy a few lessons have appeared. Here are four of them.

There doesn’t have to be a difference between a “channel” and a “show.”

You probably have a clear understanding about what a television channel is. Comedy Central is a channel. Your local CBS affiliate is a channel. A channel is the thing you tune in to at a specific time to watch a particular show. A channel runs a lot of shows on it. Time Warner Cable offers 900 channels. This seems like too many. Bruce Springsteen wrote “57 channels and nothing on.” That sounds so quaint now.

But if you have a conversation about YouTube channels with this concept of a “channel” in your head you may experience some cognitive dissonance. There are “tens of millions” of channels on YouTube. One company, Machinima, operates 3,380 of them. That’s literally 100 times as many channels as are owned by NBC Universal, and it’s not enough. YouTube just launched 100 more channels with premium content. YouTube must be using the word “channel” differently. Except they’re not.

Both a YouTube channel and a television channel deliver a stream of content from a transmitting device to a receiving one. Viewers tune in to a television channel by selecting its number; they reach a YouTube channel via its URL. The main difference is that the cost of creating a television channel from scratch is incredibly high, while on YouTube it’s pretty close to zero. Unlike television, a YouTube channel can turn a profit with very little programming. The comedian Ray William Johnson, for example, has one of the most lucrative channels on YouTube. It plays one show. That show adds 12 minutes of new programming per week.

If a channel online costs next to nothing, and you can build one around a single show, then why do television shows need television channels at all? Every once in a while there’s a lot of fuss about getting cable channels à la carte. But who cares about that when you can have à la carte programming?

I like to think about this in the context of “The Daily Show.” On cable, you’re limited to 30 minutes of “The Daily Show” per day, and you have to tune in at 11 pm or set your DVR to watch it. There could easily just be a “Daily Show” channel, with all the extra programming that Comedy Central now reserves for the Web site, plus spinoffs for the various “Daily Show” correspondents. More content means more places to sell advertising, which means more profit. One challenge, of course, would be getting the audience to modify its behavior, but new technology seems to be inspiring this already.

Programming can now be delivered to your television set through a remote control.

Let’s define “remote control” as a handheld piece of electronics that tells your television set what to do while you’re sitting on the couch. Smartphones and tablets fit into this category, and before you argue that this definition is too broad, I submit that an iPhone is no less a remote control than it is a camera. It commands your television set far more profoundly than your traditional remote control. At least, if you have an Apple TV. Which you should.

The Apple TV comes with a technology called AirPlay, which allows you to throw videos wirelessly from your phone or tablet to your television set. Got a movie sitting in iTunes on your computer? You can watch it on TV via AirPlay. Find a video you want to watch embedded on a Web site you read? If AirPlay is available, a little button will pop up and you can stream the video to your TV. Need some good recommendations? Try one of the many “discovery” apps out there, like Shelby.tv or ShowYou or VHX. They skim your Twitter and Facebook feeds looking for videos your friends have posted. And you can throw those to your TV.

There are apps for ESPN and Discovery Channel and PBS and other traditional channels that allow you watch their shows, on demand, on your TV, via AirPlay. There are also a growing number of apps for channels that have never been included in a traditional cable provider’s lineup. The Wall Street Journal’s news channel, WSJ Live, is one of them. Time Warner Cable doesn’t carry it, but my iPad does.

I should note that WSJ Live is also available in the main Apple TV library, so you don’t actually need to use AirPlay to watch it. But the fact that you can illustrates my point. The remote control has become a very personal device, one that you carry around with you all day long, one that you use to store and index your favorite media. A viewer is just as likely to watch a channel she’s added to her home screen as anything available in the cable menu. The programming of her choice routes through her remote control.

Marketing and distribution are often the same thing.

Last month, IFC released the entire first episode of the second season of “Portlandia” online a week before its airdate. They used an embeddable video player, so that any online publication could feature the episode on its Web site. Individual sketches from the show were also made available in the same way. IFC didn’t just tease the show or talk it up, they let people actually see it for themselves. The result was an 81 percent increase in viewership among 18-49 year olds when the show returned to the network.

There are few examples of this sort of thing happening before the Internet. A movie poster hanging in a theater where that movie is playing, perhaps, or a DVD insert in a magazine ad. But this is something the Internet does really well. A single sentence can promote a film and deliver it to your computer at the same time. Allow me to demonstrate: “This video is amazing.”

That, of course, is the lifeblood of online publishing. Here’s something that resonated with me, I’m recommending it to you, my audience. They call it “curating” now. Somehow that word got separated from “blogging” recently, and I’m not entirely sure how or why. I think Tumblr and Pinterest had something to do with it. But curating, which is a thing bloggers do, is a distinct talent. It’s highly respected in other manifestations, such as museum curators or fashion buyers or television programmers. It was curators who spread that “Portlandia” preview around. And when you factor in the marketing power they brought to that show, and you consider how much a network pays to advertise a program in general, there’s only one conclusion to draw. Online curators are the most undervalued talent in the television industry.

A few of those new YouTube channels seem to recognize the power of the curatorial voice. Vice, Pitchfork, SB Nation and the Bleacher Report all received funding to create new YouTube programming. Presumably their editors will create shows that they’d want to watch themselves, and with that level of personal investment, they’d vouch for those shows to their readers.

Television is no longer that different from publishing.

Just last week, the Gawker Media site Kotaku announced a programming schedule similar to that of a television network. This strategy was conceived well over a year ago, and is designed to sell audience size to advertisers, the way television does, rather than pageviews, which have been dropping in value for years.

This is only the latest example of conceptual overlap. Video embedding took off after the launch of YouTube, turning online publications into versions of The Daily Prophet, that newspaper from Harry Potter with the magical moving pictures on the front page. Some Internet video hosting and streaming services are built on content management systems designed for online publishing. When you upload a video to Blip, the last thing you click to make it go live is “publish.” Awl Music, the music video channel launched by The Awl in January, is run entirely on Tumblr. You can watch it on a television set connected to Google TV.

Both traditional and online publishers are producing original video series with increasing frequency. Reuters, Slate and The Wall Street Journal all have news and documentary programming on the new YouTube channel lineup. The New York Times and New York Magazine have been doing their own video programming for years. It’s only a matter of time before some of these compete with the cable news channels.

Eric Spiegelman produces the Web series “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” which is about to launch its fifth season. He helped bring the hit Japanese television show “Retro Game Master” to Kotaku.com, and he helped launch AwlMusic.tv in partnership with TheAwl.com.

That seems to be the standard TV industry response to rumors of an Apple HDTV. Back in December, Sharp’s Kozo Takahashi dismissed the potential threat Apple might pose to the TV market, saying consumers are far more focused on price, picture quality and size than on any advanced technology and design innovation Cupertino might bring to bear on its rumored television.

Today, it’s Samsung’s AV product manager Chris Moseley who doesn’t think Apple has the R&D chops to field a formidable TV.

“We’ve not seen what they’ve done, but what we can say is that they don’t have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category,” Moseley told Pocket Lint. “They don’t have the best scaling engine in the world and they don’t have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else. … There is no way that anyone, new or old, can come along this year or next year and beat us on picture quality.”

Perhaps. Samsung’s clearly got a lot of expertise in display picture quality. But presumably Apple’s got some applicable experience here, too, thanks to its own desktop display offerings and the Retina display. And as Brian Ford notes, it’s rarely wise to bet against Apple, even if you are an incumbent. Just ask former Palm CEO Ed Colligan, who famously dismissed Apple’s chances in the smartphone market back in 2006:

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” Colligan said at the time. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

Of course, that’s exactly what happened. And Colligan’s career at Palm didn’t even last long enough for him to eat those words.

I removed the tweet at the request of Nielsen. I intended no harm and apologize for the reference.

– Oprah Winfrey, in a statement to the New York Times, referring to a tweet she published Sunday night encouraging Nielsen viewers to tune in to OWN, in violation of Nielsen’s policy

Here’s the trailer for Hulu’s latest original content offering about a very unusual matchmaker.

That’s irksome “Paul, the Male Matchmaker,” a 10-episode spoof series from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Studio 2.0, which will debut on the premium video service on Feb. 13.

Get it? The day before Valentine’s Day.

It’s got the same tone as Lisa Kudrow’s successful (and now on cable television’s Showtime) “Web Therapy,” with lots of well-known guest stars.

I kind of like it from the teaser here, but we’ll see:

“We are relentless in serving our customers where they need us, where they want us,” Stewart said, appearing alongside Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia CEO Lisa Gersh at the D: Dive Into Media conference.

Stewart noted that Martha Stewart Living was an early mover into the apps world, and now both it and Everyday Food are digital, with Martha Stewart Weddings and Whole Living adding digital editions this spring.

“I’m very proud of our efforts in that arena,” Stewart said.

Her company, though older than Facebook and Twitter, is still fairly young at 20 years.

“We’re not old-fashioned,” Stewart said. She rejected the idea put forward by Bob Pittman earlier in the day that consumer habits change slowly, noting how quickly the iPad took off.

Stewart, a longtime D: All Things Digital attendee, was an early adopter of computers, getting her first IBM in 1982.

On the TV side, the company has a deal with Hallmark that ends at the end of the year and is evaluating what to do next, whether it is cable or broadcast.

“We’re looking at a number of different formats,” Stewart said.

In addition to traditional formats, Stewart said technologies like bar codes and tablets and phones create even deeper needs for the kinds of how-to content her company produces.

Some things have gone away, such as its “Martha By Mail” catalog business, though the company now has a new online store.

11:34 am: Gersh said that the company is trying to find new ways to make its monthly food magazine more relevant.

“We know our reader is making dinner every night and they want to hear from us,” Gersh said.

The magazine has a daily email newsletter that will be upgraded with video so subscribers can see someone making the recipe.

11:37 am: On the future of her doing a daily TV show:

It’s been a wonderful vehicle for a lot of things, Stewart said. There are a lot of products we have focused on in the show.

“Would you want to sit in make-up and hair for another 10 years?” Stewart said.

Walt: Me? No.

Stewart talked about a lot of other things she is doing, including her new relationship with J.C. Penney and its CEO, former Apple Store head Ron Johnson.

The position of the anti-SOPA activists is antithetical to the principle of protection — for authors, that is — mandated in the Constitution of the United States. Our nation’s founders recognized that furthering the rights of creators is in the national interest, to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by “securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Over the centuries, copyright protection has been codified in an expanding body of federal law in an attempt to implement the protection outlined in the Constitution.

The SOPA debate is emblematic of the growing tension between the copyright creator — the authors, composers, lyricists and artists who have contributed so much to the socio-economic fabric of American life — and the “interests” of the public in having free access to the works of others. However, the creator/public dichotomy is a false paradigm. What is truly at stake are the competing interests of the creators and the corporations who have acquired and are exploiting their works.

It is the rare creator who has the luxury to create simply for the sake of creating. As history has shown (every Renaissance artist worth his canvas had a patron), in order for creators to enjoy the benefits of their creations, it is necessary for them to cross over into the world of commerce, and to seek the patronage of publishers, record labels, and film and television producers. Sadly, the relationship between creator and corporate sponsor is seldom equal, as evidenced by the scores of documents executed by authors, songwriters and other creators, granting the rights in their works to corporate entities in perpetuity, often in exchange for modest compensation.

Congress attempted to include in the Copyright Act a series of provisions to give the creator (or the heirs of a deceased creator) the opportunity to terminate even perpetual grants of copyright, and “recapture” rights to their works in the U.S. These provisions, known as the “termination provisions,” were first introduced as part of the Copyright Act of 1976, and later modified as part of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998.

The intent of Congress in enacting the termination provisions was clear: To give creators, or their heirs, the opportunity to escape inequitable deals, or simply to revise the terms of their deals in order to share proportionately in the success of their creations. And, indeed, the opportunity to recapture rights is a potentially valuable asset for creators and their statutory successors. Yet, outside the music industry, the termination right is significantly underutilized, while even songwriters and recording artists are often thwarted in their attempts to recapture rights in a process made unduly complicated in response to pressure from corporate lobbyists.

Like the termination provisions, the real value of SOPA and other copyright enforcement legislation is its role in safeguarding the interests of the intended beneficiaries of copyright protection. Whether or not SOPA is the most effective means of curbing piracy in the online arena is a matter that should be thoroughly examined. However, the SOPA debate should not be commandeered as a vehicle for furthering the position of those who seek to write authors out of the copyright law and the Constitution.

Lisa A. Alter is a partner in the firm of Alter & Kendrick, LLP, in New York City. Her practice is focused primarily in the area of copyright law, with a particular emphasis on domestic and international music copyright issues. Ms. Alter has lectured frequently at law schools and professional meetings on copyright matters, and has represented clients on legislative matters impacting their copyright interests. She is the author of “Protecting Your Musical Copyrights,” which has recently been released in its second edition.