Washington - President-elect Barack Obama is urging key lawmakers to postpone the Feb. 17 transition to digital television broadcasting, as the federal program providing coupons to consumers for the purchase of necessary digital converter boxes has run out of funds, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - DVD sales were down 9% in 2008, a year that saw the entire home video market decline in value by 5.5% to $22.4 billion, Variety reported, citing data from market research firm Digital Entertainment Group.
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Boston - Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson has asked the judge hearing the copyright infringement trial of an alleged music file-swapper that he and his students are defending to allow the proceedings to be webcast live on the Internet, Ars Technica reports. [more..]

New York - Private equity fund-raising slowed to a crawl in the fourth quarter, with 99 funds raising just $43 billion, according to a new report by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst. [more..]

Foxboro, Mass. - Play Hard Sports, a developer of massively multiplayer online casual sports games, has raised $8 million in its second round of funding, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

New York - Major League Gaming, a professional video game league, announced on Thursday that it has received a $7.5 million follow-on investment from Oak Investment Partners. [more..]

Venice, Calif. - JibJab, a producer of digital parody cartoons, will continue to turn out its popular political spoofs after landing $7.5 million in its third round of funding. [more..]

London - Songkick, the developer of a local concert recommendation engine, has raised $4.65 million of an anticipated $7.17 million first round of venture capital financing, VentureWire reported. [more..]

Sunnyvale, Calif. - Evernote, the developer of a multi-platform tool designed to let users capture information in nearly any environment, said on Thursday that it has raised $4.5 million in a new round of funding from Troika Capital Partners. [more..]

The most compelling thing on display at Sony chairman Sir Howard Stringer's CES keynote this morning was a short clip from the upcoming Disney/Pixar movie "Up", blogs Paul Sweeting. [more..]

New York - Sirius XM Radio on Thursday introduced the MiRGE, its first radio that supports reception of both Sirius and XM programming. [more..]

Las Vegas - Consumer electronics firm Toshiba plans to introduce a TV set-top box that will be able to record up to six HD channels at the same time, as well as raise their apparent resolution, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Las Vegas - Microsoft on Thursday announced the release of Songsmith, an application that can generate musical accompaniment to match whatever a person sings. [more..]

Las Vegas - Korea's LG Electronics plans to ship a wristwatch mobile phone that also makes video calls later this year, a nod to the gadget worn by comic book character Dick Tracy, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Las Vegas - Gracenote, a provider of music identification technology, announced on Thursday that it has partnered with Omnifone, a provider of unlimited music download service, to develop a means of synchronizing a user's personal music collection with Omnifone's service across multiple devices. [more..]

Las Vegas - MOD Systems, a provider of digital media download kiosks to retailers, said on Thursday that it has signed agreements to distribute digital video content from Warner Brothers and Paramount Digital Entertainment via downloads to SD flash memory cards in retail stores. [more..]