LG Electronics is pushing ahead with plans to start construction this fall of its new corporate headquarters atop the Palisades Cliffs in New Jersey, as a legal battle winds its way to a state appeals court, said John Taylor, LG vice president-government and public relations, Wednesday on WNYC Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer Show. Demolition at the 27-acre site in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., will be complete by August, setting the stage for construction to begin on a new 490,000-square-foot headquarters that will feature a 143-foot-high, eight-story central office tower that’s at the heart of LG’s battle with preservationists, who have opposed the project. LG bought the property in 2009, seeking to consolidate headquarters spread across three buildings in Englewood Cliffs. The new headquarters is expected to open in 2017. Several groups, including Scenic Hudson and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs, sued LG in New Jersey Superior Court, seeking to overturn a height variance for the building that was granted in 2012 by the Englewood Cliffs Zoning Board of Adjustment. The approval allowed LG’s building to exceed Englewood Cliffs’ 35-foot height limit. The groups have since filed an appeal and briefs with the Appellate Division of the Superior Court that’s expect have a hearing either late this year or early 2015, the LG spokesman said. Preservationists have urged LG to redesign the building and New York State Parks Commissioner Rose Harvey asked LG in a letter on behalf of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, to lower the tower’s height. New York City and New York State’s Westchester County are across the river from the Pallisades. “Would it be possible to build it shorter and fatter, yes, but it would take years to go down that path and redesign the buildings and go through the approval process,” Taylor told Lehrer. “That won’t meet our business needs and it will delay the economic benefits for the state of New Jersey.” LG has said the new headquarters will increase its workforce in the Englewood Cliffs area to 1,200 employees by 2017 from the current 500 and to 1,600 by 2020. “We are proud of the project and we have been a good corporate citizen of Englewood Cliffs for 25 years,” Taylor said. “The building is designed to blend into the environment and reflect the surroundings.” Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Whitman, a Republican and also former administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, countered on Lehrer’s show that LG didn’t have to build the central tower. While LG has been a “good corporate citizen, in this instance we hope they would reconsider and do what we think is the right thing for everyone involved and keep this area,” Whitman said. “They could lay the building on its side and create the same amount of space for employees."

The Commerce Department issued its quarterly list of (i) completed antidumping and countervailing duty scope rulings and (ii) anticircumvention determinations. The following list covers completed scope and anticircumvention rulings for the period July 1, 2013, through Sept. 30, 2013:

LAS VEGAS -- Eclipse is entering the U.S. and Canadian home audio market early this year with a line of high-end speakers it already introduced in Europe and Japan, it said at CES last week. DXG, Nyko Technologies and Rydeen, meanwhile, are all entering new product categories also in 2014.

DENVER -- JVC enhanced its 4K e-shift technology for the new line of home theater projectors it bowed at a CEDIA Expo news briefing Thursday. The new projectors are all equipped with the third-generation e-shift3, which has a 4K signal input (at 60p), said Gary Klasmeier, product engineering manager. As a result, 4K and 2K sources can be displayed as 3840 x 2160 images, said JVC.

Samsung turned heads Tuesday with the unveiling of its KN55S9C 55-inch Curved OLED TV that will be available Wednesday from Samsung.com at $8,999.99, some $6,000 less than LG’s curved OLED TV that began shipping last month. “I thought it was going to be $10,000,” said an enthusiastic Robert Zohn, owner of Value Electronics in Scarsdale, N.Y. For a retailer, “$9,000 is a million times better than $10,000,” he said.

Logitech will ship the Z600 Bluetooth speakers next month at $149.99 a pair, it said. The wireless speakers were designed to complement Mac and Ultrabook computers, and will stream music and other audio from those devices, smartphones and tablets, it said. Each speaker includes three drivers “engineered to provide superior acoustics for any space,” it said. The built-in Bluetooth connectivity is a “first for Logitech multimedia speakers,” said Charlotte Johs, global vice president-brand development, in a news release. Connecting the speakers via native Bluetooth “may be possible, but some computers may not permit audio streaming or smooth device switching,” the company said. The included USB Bluetooth transceiver will enable users to connect wirelessly to computers that don’t support Bluetooth, it said. The speakers can also be connected to any device with an audio output using the 3.5mm auxiliary input, it said.

Nortek’s SpeakerCraft brand, within the Core Brands group, had planned to launch a 2.4-GHz-based wireless audio system early this year, but those plans were scrapped and the product never delivered, Starkey said. Synergi, which was to follow the ill-fated Nirv multi-room system, was scheduled to come out at about the time the company was integrating SpeakerCraft with its other custom electronics brands including Niles Audio, Elan, Panamax/Furman and Gefen into Core Brands. The company halted Synergi development and “stopped for about 60 days to evaluate what we were going to in the wireless audio space,” Starkey said. The personal audio product that Core Brands will unveil next week is positioned as superior to Bluetooth, Sonos or Jambox because it’s based on the SKAA wireless music standard, which Starkey said was “beyond Bluetooth” in range, connectivity and multi-user capability.

As big-name players begin to stake out positions in the fledgling retail home automation market, work is under way to clarify the branding the various players and platforms use. IControl Networks is the software platform behind home automation offerings from cable companies such as Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable -- and for ADT Pulse. It’s working with cable providers on multiple-layer “seals” that will identify the cable provider brand along with an “umbrella mark” that indicates compatibility with the overall platform, Jason Domangue, vice president of ecosystem development at iControl, told Consumer Electronics Daily.

As big-name players begin to stake out positions in the fledgling retail home automation market, work is under way to clarify the branding those various players and platforms use. IControl Networks is the software platform behind home automation offerings from cable companies such as Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable -- and for ADT Pulse. It’s working with cable providers on multiple-layer “seals” that will identify the cable provider brand along with an “umbrella mark” that indicates compatibility with the overall platform, Jason Domangue, vice president of ecosystem development at iControl, told Consumer Electronics Daily.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini endorsed SoftBank’s buy of Sprint Nextel, which he sees as superior to a Dish Network buy of the carrier. Intel filed an email Otellini sent FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as an ex parte contact with the agency. Otellini said he was traveling in Asia where he met with SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son. “I simply wanted to add my name to the list of companies hoping that Softbank will be able to acquire Sprint, rather than Dish,” he said (http://bit.ly/154jAjS). “Son-san’s vision to build a high speed competitive third national network is very compelling. We need this competition in the wireless space as the ATT/Verizon model is not giving that to consumers at this time. I just wanted you to know where I and Intel stand on this important matter."