Hauppauge, N.Y. - Acoustic Research said it has begun shipping its PW1000 Home Theater Power Station with SpeedPass, along with a new line of power solutions for home-theater and home-office users.

The AR PW1000 Home Theater Power Station with SpeedPass features the company's PureCurrent power conditioning and surge protection, and its SpeedPass front-panel connectivity. It also has a five-port Ethernet switch. Suggested retail is $249.

San Francisco -Dolby has developed a way to improve the sound quality of lossless Blu-ray soundtracks played back through home theater systems.

The company is incorporating Meridian-developed 96kHz upsampling technology into Dolby Media Producer, a post-production product that encodes Dolby TrueHD bitstreams for use on Blu-ray discs. The technology creates 96kHz Dolby TrueHD soundtracks from the 48kHz-PCM mixes that the movie industry creates for movie theaters, which use 48kHz playback equipment.

Washington - To borrow from T.S. Eliot, April was the second cruelest month for major appliances this year.

Following a solid start to 2012 with consecutive 4.7 percent and 5.1 percent gains in January and February, factory shipments fell off the cliff in March, stumbling nearly 16 percent.

The free-fall subsided somewhat in April, data from the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) show, as wholesale volume decreased 7.6 percent, to just under 4.9 million units.

Bentonville, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores reported higher net sales and net income in its fiscal first quarter ended April 30.

Net sales for the first quarter were $112.3 billion, an increase of 8.6 percent from $103.4 billion in the first quarter last year.

Consolidated net income for the quarter was $3.7 billion, up 9.2 percent from the first quarter last year.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. - Sears Holdings turned a profit during its fiscal first quarter based on sales of stores, but revenue was lower with major appliances and CE sharing the blame.

Net income in the first quarter, ended April 28, was $189 million, compared with a net loss of $165 million during the prior year's first quarter.

Anaheim, Calif. - Home Entertainment Source (HES) has added nine more manufacturers to its vendor roster.

The additions include Savant, Planar/Runco, TK Living, SIM2, Lutron, Vutec, Salez Toolz, Cinemacoustic Solutions and Zvox.

The specialty A/V buying group, a division of the $14 billion BrandSource organization, said the new additions provide more options for its independent dealer members and demonstrate the group's growth.

Taoyuan, Taiwan - U.S. customs officials have blocked imports of HTC's One X 4G phone for the AT&T network and the Evo 4G LTE for the Sprint network to determine whether they infringe on an Apple patent.

Although HTC did not say how long it expects the customs review to take, the company said, "We believe we are in compliance with the ruling, and HTC is working closely with customs to secure approval."

Forecasts Third Year In Black

Newmarket, N.H. - Russound, the multi-room audio supplier,  has hired consulting company OAC Group to step up marketing, product development, and dealer and customer relations.

The OAC Group is led by Oscar Ciornei, who worked with Russound multiple times over a 20-year period and at one point assumed the role of Russound COO while consulting. The group also includes partners and industry veterans Joshua Cooper and Mark Donnigan, and their expertise includes product design, marketing, public relations and business strategy.