Sales of Blu-ray disc players haven’t been helped by maker Toshiba’s capitulation over producing the rival HD DVD format, research firm NPD Group said Wednesday.

Toshiba announced on Feb. 19 that it would stop making HD DVD players, already doomed by Warner Bros. Entertainment’s announcement Jan. 4 that it was dropping HD DVD to focus on Blu-ray.

Sales of Blu-ray players, excluding PlayStation 3 game consoles, dropped 40 percent from January to February in the U.S., according to NPD. Sales grew only 2 percent from February to March. The firm didn’t release numbers of players sold.

“When we surveyed consumers late last year, an overwhelming number of them said they weren’t investing in a new next-generation player because their old DVD player worked well and next-generation players were too expensive,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD. “It’s clear from retail sales that those consumer sentiments are still holding true.”

While DVD players cost less than $100, Blu-ray players generally cost $400 or more.

It looks like Mark Hamburg, an Adobe Systems Photoshop and Lightroom programming guru, will be leading work to give Microsoft Windows a better user interface.

And given the dramatic user interface differences between earlier and later Adobe projects that Hamburg worked on, that raises some very intriguing possibilities.

Microsoft and Adobe Systems confirmed Hamburg’s move on Monday, but at the time, Microsoft wouldn’t share details beyond saying Hamburg would work on “user experience” for the company.

Adobe Systems Inc. says it will license its video-enabling Flash software for free for mobile devices to help developers make mobile Internet experiences more closely resemble the experience on computers.

The world’s fifth-largest software maker is launching what it calls the Open Screen Project with support from phone makers Motorola Inc., Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba Corp., from chip makers Intel and Qualcomm, and from content providers including NBC Universal, MTV Networks and the BBC, among other companies.

Adobe, which also makes Acrobat publishing software and Photoshop, planned to announce the move Thursday.

A federal court on Wednesday established a formula for determining the Internet royalties owed to thousands of music composers, writers and publishers by three major online services - Yahoo Inc., AOL and RealNetworks Inc.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers hailed the decision, estimating the guidelines could yield as much as $100 million in payments covering a seven-year period ending in 2009.

The trade group, known as ASCAP, had contended that its 320,000 members weren’t being properly compensated for musical works that helped drive traffic and increase revenue for Yahoo, Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and RealNetworks.

Wednesday’s ruling, issued by a federal judge in New York, doesn’t affect the royalties owed to record companies.

A representative for the Digital Media Association, a trade group representing the Internet services, declined to comment on the ruling late Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge William Conner’s 153-page decision didn’t specify the total amount owed to the ASCAP members, but he provided an example on how the formula would apply to the music royalties owed by AOL and Yahoo for 2006. Under the formula endorsed by Conner, AOL owed 2006 fees of $5.95 million and Yahoo owed $6.76 million.

That’s far more than AOL and Yahoo envisioned. New York-based AOL had proposed paying just $632,879 in 2006 royalties while Sunnyvale-based Yahoo had proposed paying $889,402 in 2006 licensing fees, according to court documents.

A startup is betting that people are tired enough of their cable and satellite bills to take a look at an alternative pay TV system that combines a number of different technologies to deliver programming.

Silicon Valley-based Sezmi Corp. is revealing a system Thursday that amounts to a way for phone companies and local TV broadcasters to team up for an end run around satellite and cable. Technical trials are starting shortly, with full-blown commercial trials in some markets, yet unnamed, later this year.

The carrot for consumers: monthly fees that are about half those of cable or satellite, according to Sezmi founder Buno Pati.

Sezmi’s system takes some explaining. At its heart is a TV set-top box that receives video content in three different ways. Two are available through other means: digital over-the-air local broadcasts, the kind that are available to anyone with a digital TV and a rabbit-ear antenna; and Internet downloads through the home’s broadband connection.

The third delivery method would be unique to Sezmi. It plans to have local TV stations use vacant portions of their airwaves to transmit basic cable channels like Nickelodeon and Discovery. Given the limited spectrum available, the stations won’t be able to transmit a full lineup, and only some of it will be in high definition. Sezmi plans to mitigate that by having stations send out the most-watched shows and have the set-top boxes save them on their hard drives, making them available for viewing on demand.