Samsung may have been the first manufacturer to get its new 3D TVs to market in 2010, but Panasonic won’t be too far behind.  

The company today sent out invitations to the sales launch of its Full HD 3D TVs. You’ll be able to buy one starting March 10. Best Buy’s Magnolia Home Theater stores will carry the sets (and, likely, additional retailers as well down the road).

Expect the full-court press for these sets to really kick in when “Avatar” gets closer to its Blu-ray release, though. Panasonic and James Cameron are still riding high on the co-marketing relationship they struck last fall. 

The price? Well, that remains a mystery until a little closer to launch date.

When Wal-Mart announced plans to buy Vudu, one of the questions we posed here at Technotainment was “What’s going to happen to the porn?”  

We’re not pervs. It was a legitimate question. Vudu was the only streaming service to strike deals with major adult entertainment studios to rent and sell digital copies of their films. It was a small part of a relatively small company – but it was a potentially huge foot in the door for companies like Vivid and Digital Playground to get their content into living rooms in widespread fashion.

Turns out they won’t.

Wal-Mart, not surprisingly, is shutting down the “After Dark” section of Vudu – and they’re doing so in the “coming days”. TechCrunch has obtained a copy of the email being sent to adult studios announcing plans to discontinue the service. The move was pretty widely anticipated, given Wal-Mart’s family friendly stance – and its refusal to carry even some music CDs with explicit lyrics.

Vudu and Wal-Mart and asking the porn studios to voluntarily terminate the agreement and keep things amicable. We’ve called the top adult entertainment studios. None of them opted to comment on the relationship.

Oh, and as for customers who have already purchased movies via the service? They’re out of luck, too. They’ll be refunded the money, but won’t be able to access the content. Witness one of the dangers of buying things in the cloud. 

Update: The rumors are true. Vudu and Wal-Mart announced a definitive agreement for the retail giant to buy the streaming video service today after the close of Wall Street. The deal is expected to close in the next few weeks and - not surprisingly - no price was given. The full release is reprinted after the jump.

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Looks like those rumors that Wal-Mart was looking hard at the online movie business might be true. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the retailer has agreed to buy Vudu for an unknown amount.  

Technotainment reached out to a Vudu spokesperson who said he had no comment at this time. The Journal says the companies began informing studios and TV manufacturers of the deal today.

Vudu, for the unfamiliar, is a streaming media company that allows users to rent of purchase movies. In January at CES, it announced a number of deals with manufacturers – including LG Electronics, Mitsubishi, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Vizio - to have its service embedded in television and Blu-ray hardware.

We’ve written about Vudu previously here and have been very impressed with the service and its potential. It could become one of the biggest threats to Netflix’s dominance of the online video space, though it offers a dramatically different business model.

Netflix, of course, has been attracting the attention of the studios recently – and not in a way it had hoped. Warner Bros. has convinced the company to not rent any of its releases until they’ve been commercially available for 28 days.

Wal-Mart has a little more leverage than Netflix, though, and may be able to negotiate better terms for releases on Vudu. At the very least, it should be able to significantly increase the number of titles the service offers.

A less important question in the grander scheme of things, but an interesting one nonetheless is: If this report is accurate, what does the deal mean for Vudu’s relationship with porn companies?

Vudu allows people to rent or purchase films from adult film studios, including Vivid and Digital Playground. Wal-Mart guards its family friendly reputation ferociously. It’s questionable whether it will continue to offer adult films.

Panasonic’s proprietary technology has put it slightly behind the curve when it comes to Internet-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players. But the company had some exciting additions to its VieraCast service at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.  

For the large part, existing owners of Panny’s existing connected devices will be able to enjoy the new services – including Twitter, Pandora and Fox Sports. But they’re out of luck when it comes to Netflix and Skype.

We first mentioned Netflix wouldn’t be available to existing VieraCast devices in early January. In a press event held yesterday, Panasonic officials explained the service couldn’t be included in existing sets via a firmware upgrade because it requires software to be built into new circuitry in order for it to work. http://weblogs.variety.com/technotainment/2010/01/panasonicnetflix-partnership-has-a-hitch.html

That’s possible – but given how easily Microsoft was able to integrate the service, it’s not a reason that’s going to satisfy existing VieraCast owners.

Meanwhile, current users will also be unable to take advantage of the company’s new relationship with Skype. This one’s a bit more understandable, though, as the camera allowing video calls will require a USB port – something existing sets don’t have.

(Another note: Because the company is once again using proprietary technology, users who want to use Skype will need to buy the Panasonic camera, which will sell in the $200 range. No third party cameras will work with VieraCast.)

Not all the news was bad for existing owners, though. Panasonic officials say they expect to announce more VieraCast partners later this year.

And if you’ve been salivating over the 3D sets announced in January- Panasonic says those will be commercially available in May. 

Roughly two weeks after giving its blessing to an unofficial Oscar-themed app, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is rolling out one of its own.  

The Academy has unveiled the official Oscar app will let iPhone users access the complete list of this year’s nominees as well as view trailers for Best Picture nominees and predict winners in each category. Those predictions can be shared via social networks and SMS texts.

In many ways, it’s a less robust application than The Oscars Guide, but it does carry the Academy’s full backing. And it could be a quick way to get up to speed on the plethora of Best Picture candidates before the awards on March 7.

Microsoft, which has always been something of an also-ran in the smart phone category, appears to finally be getting serious about the space. The company today unveiled its next generation operating system for smart phones at the ongoing Mobile World Congress.  

Windows Phone – previously called Windows Mobile 7 – looks to be a potential strong contender against the iPhone- and Android-based systems. It’s a completely new Windows experience that borrows heavily from the operating system used in the company’s Zune personal media player. (Not surprisingly, Zune will be included with every phone running the system.)

The mobile OS organizes data as hubs, which gather related content. Those hubs include:

People – blending Facebook feeds with texts and IM updates. (You can also update your social networks via this hub.)

Pictures – In addition to viewing your own shots, you’ll also be able to upload and download from social networks.

Games – Xbox Live finally makes it onto the cell phone - four years after Microsoft announced it was coming. You’ll be able to see your avatar, achievements and profile – and receive requests to join friends in a game. Microsoft stopped short of indicating if Windows Phone equipped devices would be able to contribute to gameplay in any form or fashion, though.

Music & Video – Since the OS includes Zune, you’ll be able to access HD Radio and subscribe to the Zune Pass all-you-can-eat monthly subscription model to download music. Video will also be available – presumably on the go.

Office – This was a gimme. The system will support all Office programs, such as Word, Outlook and PowerPoint – though, let’s be honest, that’s more for viewing. I doubt anyone plans to create a detailed PowerPoint presentation on their smart phone, no matter how good it is.

Phones using the system will be available this holiday season. It’s likely to be widely available also. Carriers that have signed on as partners include AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. Hardware partners include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm. 

Update: Want to see the system in action - and have a lot of time to spare? Microsoft has a 22-minute video available.

Phil Mickelson is the third best golfer in the world these days – and one of the hottest things on the PGA Tour. Your odds of getting on the greens with him are about as rare as getting a tee time at Augusta National. But he still has time to help you improve your game.  

Mickelson has teamed with Digital Broadcasting Group to produce and distribute a new golf instructional series that will be broadcast as an online episodic series.

Emmy-winner Terry Jastrow will helm the production, which will be called “Phil Mickelson: Secrets of the Short Game”.

The videos, which will be freely available, will air across the DBG Video Network, which reaches about 126 million monthly unique visitors. 

Mickelson will shoot 7-10 Webisodes for the series, which will begin in March. It will air on number of sites, according to DBG, including CBSsports.com, CNNSI.com, A&E and Yahoo.

Tivo, the name that’s synonymous with the DVR, has something new in the works.  

The company will take the wraps off of its newest product March 2 in New York, saying in the invite: “Inventing the DVR was just a warmup.”

That sets a high expectation for the company and could hurt it if the unveiling is underwhelming. The rumor mill (via CrunchGear) whispers that the update will revolve around full HD menus and improved search. The Series 2 software will also reportedly be phased out. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff...

We'll see how close that is to the truth in a little shy of three weeks.

No one ever thought the first wave of 3D HD TVs was going to be cheap. Turns out we were right.  

Panasonic, which ran circles around the competition at CES when it came to 3D picture quality, has given a price for its line of 3D sets for the first time. The 54-inch Viera TH-P54VT was detailed at a press conference today in Japan with a price tag of $5,900 (after conversion from the Japanese Yen).

A less expensive 50-inch model is in the works as well, with a $4,800 price tag.

Note that these prices may change when the sets hit U.S. shores – but they’re a good target for those early adopters to begin saving for.  

Given that Netflix could be facing semi-adversarial relationships with the studios, now that it has agreed to delay renting new releases from Warner Bros. you might expect it to keep a low profile on other fronts.  

Not hardly.

The video rental company – and, increasingly, Web streaming service – is asking the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules to protect viewers of streaming video. That, effectively, puts the company in a potential face-off with ISPs.

The Washington Post first noted the filing, which foreshadows a battle between Netflix and big internet providers - specifically Comcast.

“The recent announcement of the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal serves to exacerbate the growing concern that MVPDs (Multichannel Video Programming Distributors) will use their control over programming networks to stifle competition, including the growing competition from online video providers like Netflix,” it writes.

The debate, at its heart, is the ongoing one about Net Neutrality. Netflix is worried that large cable operators, who also run large Internet operations, will restrict bandwidth of competing services.