MovieBeam shutting down operations on December 15th

MovieBeam is calling customers today and telling them that the datacasting HD movie service is ceasing operations as of December 15th, with certain customers eligible for a refund on the hardware. It's been rocky going for the company since spinning off from Disney a couple years ago, with a series of investments and acquisitions along the way, but none of the owners ever really managed to make the limited-selection, high-DRM, wonky-quality movie rental business model really work. Although we're always sad to see another gadget fade into that sweet night, something tells us we're not going to mourn for long.

[Thanks, Dustin]

[Dex @ Jan 25th 2008 4:31PM]

I have posted details of my Linux shell prompt hack over at http://moviebeam.wikispaces.com. Check it out if you are interested in breathing a bit of life into your player and have some time on your hands.

[yardmaster @ Feb 26th 2008 2:39PM]

They never called me...i just went looking to see if they were using the USB port for online downloads yet...and i find this news instead...

[dfn_doe @ Dec 5th 2007 7:03PM]

Good times. Head to ebay right now to buy a lot of 200 of these boxes for about a dollar a piece... I wonder how hackable the hardware is.

[David @ Dec 5th 2007 7:53PM]

It is not hackable at all. Everything is encrypted down the the hard drive. It has a hardware encryption chip on the hard drive itself.

[Jamie @ Jan 10th 2008 10:30AM]

If MovieBeam enabled the ethernet port as another option for movie delivery, it would make the service accessible to almost every customer who has a broadband connection, not just the customers within OTA signal coverage. The OTA method was not good, even if they did stay around, they wouldn't of lasted past 2009 when the FCC ruling would require mandatory digital signal conversion. It would of required upgrading or adding a digital tuner on every MB box.

Not to mention, ethernet connectivity could of helped in billing (instead of a phone line) in addition to adding numerous interactive features. They could of been competing with digital cable services and streamed regular TV as well. They should of took me on to lead engineering and management. :-) (I'm available, [e-mail])

-Fred S.

[Adam @ Dec 5th 2007 7:20PM]

I won one of these units from their website about year ago. I plugged it in, turned it on, watched some trailers and then promptly forgot about it, I never watched a single movie on it. I suppose your business model is pretty screwed when a technofile won't even bother to use your free product.

[mushrooshi @ Dec 5th 2007 7:26PM]

Heh, the remotes were crap too.

Me and my firend were having a bet over when Moviebeam would shut down, he said June 2008, I said November 2007, I won...

5 [imaginary] dollars.

[mushrooshi @ Dec 5th 2007 7:26PM]

Heh, the remotes were crap too.

Me and my friend were having a bet over when Moviebeam would shut down, he said June 2008, I said November 2007, I won...

5 [imaginary] dollars.

[mushrooshi @ Dec 5th 2007 7:27PM]

Heh, the remotes were crap too.

Me and my friend were having a bet over when Moviebeam would shut down, he said June 2008, I said November 2007, I won...

5 [imaginary] dollars.

[kastonie @ Dec 5th 2007 7:31PM]

Heh, the remotes were crap too.

Me and my friend were having a bet over when Moviebeam would shut down, he said June 2008, I said November 2007, I won...

5 [imaginary] dollars.

[kastonie @ Dec 5th 2007 7:32PM]

hey wait a minute......

[spyder91 @ Dec 5th 2007 10:37PM]

I see what you did there...

[strider_mt2k @ Dec 6th 2007 9:59AM]

What?

[Joe @ Dec 5th 2007 7:42PM]

"Although we're always sad to see another gadget fade into that sweet night, something tells us we're not going to mourn for long."

Is that a subtle reference to Macworld?

[MickeyMoo @ Dec 5th 2007 7:53PM]

I'm thinking TivoBox @ CES...

[MickeyMoo @ Dec 5th 2007 7:56PM]

Brain Fart - sorry - meant to say NetFlixBox

[David @ Dec 5th 2007 7:52PM]

I actually have one of these. Got it for free. The standard def content was very good quality. Pricing was competitive as well. The delivery method was, however, horrendous.

[Cleverboy @ Dec 6th 2007 4:58AM]

When they first came out, I think their prices sucked. I immediately stopped paying attention, but it looks like they got better. The addition of "Popular Pictures" for $1.99 is not bad at all. The other prices still suck though. It's amusing that a company like RedBox could rent DVDs for 99 cents a pop, per night, and MovieBeam couldn't figure out a way to hit that same price point with NO physical media involved. Really! Unbelievable. If someone told me I could rent the latest movies for 99 cents/night, and I didn't have to leave the house... and the box only cost $150, I think I wouldn't be alone in being all over that device like a rash. --Instead, they charge you up the wazoo for the average new release... even though there is NO disc being passed around.

Oh well. CYA MovieBeam.

~ CB

[eX @ Dec 6th 2007 11:35AM]

Indeed it does, the motherboard in it albeit using standard platform has proprietary chips that prevent any mods. I got myself a box for $1 at a closing CompUSA hoping to retool it for something or use the hdd out of it. I had zero luck and there's little to no info on it online. I don't care about the movies on the hdd but it cannot be reused apparently. I know the box runs some flavor of linux but company who makes for mobo for it wouldn't even reply to my email. I ended up gutting most of the stuff inside and retooled the front wires and portion of the original mobo connectors and hooked them up to my via mini itx board and the piece ended up being a media pc. The enclosure faired nicely for that purpose actually, although needed quite a bunch of mods done to it. Too bad they made it so proprietary that it cannot be given a second life as it is.

[ciscoguerrero @ Dec 5th 2007 8:15PM]

Sad to see them go. I met some of the senior management team for a position and they seemed cool if a bit too optimistic.

But they had a horrendous agreements with the studios for movies, dates to show movies, pricing, and limited customer input in the movie selection etc... and their HD content never quite made it.

All that made it nearly impossible to come up with good consumer promotions. They did have the equipment set up with network lines for the eventual online downloads to happen, but Vudu/Apple TV got them first. Plus, their boxes were non-hackable. if they were maybe some people would've gotten the service and added hacked features.

Their GUI was Tivo-simple and nice, weird remote and weird shaped boxes though. I guess Hollywood Video just wasted a cool $8MM bucks. In the end, glad I didn't end up working there.

[andy @ Dec 5th 2007 8:19PM]

@Engadget "MovieBeam is calling customers today and telling them that the datacasting HD movie service is ceasing operations as of December 15th"

Oh my god; do you know how long it would take to call 250 people!

[crow610 @ Dec 5th 2007 8:48PM]

I was thinking that the movie were downloaded via the customers Internet connection but it seems that the movies sent through some other medium. Can someone explain?

[MegaZone @ Dec 5th 2007 11:24PM]

The movies used OTA broadcast spectrum. They were trickled in spare bandwidth purchased from local broadcasters. A really inefficient way to do things - and it also meant incomplete coverage as not all areas had a broadcast partner.

It was a bad idea, really. It might've made sense 10 years ago, when most users were still on modems, or ISDN, and broadband was something to dream about.

[crow610 @ Dec 6th 2007 3:18AM]

Ahhh..thanks for the heads up. I just can't imagine a non cable/telecom company not taking advantage of broadband to deliver movies to users. The worst one would have to do is wait several hours while a movie dl which could occur pretty much any time of the day, even when you sleep or are watching another movie. But I think this is what Netflix and Blockbuster are doing..they just need to get a box for users to purchase then the movies can be watched on TVs easily.

[Dex @ Dec 5th 2007 8:46PM]

It would be nice if, now that they are ceasing operations, they would finally release the GPL code and toolchain for their system. Some things I know.... based on ARM uCLinux, busybox, modified version of ReiserFS, special kernel module to lock the hard disk. They use digital signatures to ensure legitimate code is executed. I'm wondering, now that they are gone, what that does to the user agreement that prohibits reverse engineering.

[Mike Bentley @ Dec 5th 2007 9:42PM]

It was an interesting work experience that for me ended at the beginning of '07. When I started, I didn't know what kept the shop going, but I figured that they had some cash in the bank and could figure out how to move forward on the basis of their ability to get contracts for the various titles, a big part of their business. THEN I heard what the burn rate was, an astonishingly large number.

I think the only thing I remember being novel was the modified ReiserFS, and that was to obfuscate the disk content. That work, to my knowledge, was done by Reiser and wasn't GPL.

The build scripts were nothing to write home about. The Generation 2 desktop units used a Sigma Designs processor; a very powerful IC that they developed; and a painfully expensive chip that looks like a GSM SIMM card, for decryption.

A few who worked there moved on to Cisco Linksys.

[JonO @ Dec 6th 2007 12:22AM]

VUDU! VUDU! VUDU!

[Adventuring1 @ Dec 7th 2007 3:03PM]

The next casualty....

[RonV @ Dec 6th 2007 10:20AM]

Yes OTA video on demand just wont cut it into today's instant access generation. Out of a bad business model at least they kept a viewing model for VOD on our TV's instead of the PC. I hope the VUDU is successful since they do have a instant delivery model. Also a better selection of titles, high definition support, surround sound, thus instant gratification.

[Joe @ Dec 6th 2007 12:26PM]

Wow, I thought they went out of business two years ago.

[KevinL @ Dec 6th 2007 8:47PM]

Based on the posts to this story, most people don't understand what the service was. It was digital content delivery over the air. You could have video on demand if you did NOT have a broadband connection. Do you understand? It was not meant to compete with cable VOD. I know it sounds tragic but there are a lot of places that can not get cable or DSL. The technology behind this service was actually a groundbreaking effort by a company called Dotcast. The various owners of moviebeam are the ones that screwed up with the bad pricing model. It goes back to the content providers though. They wanted it limited to a 24hr period per rental. I got a deal on one and used it mostly for the previews. I'm hoping I will be able to watch some of the movies already on the box?

[May @ Dec 11th 2007 12:59PM]

I agree, using the OTA DTV broadcast bandwidth for data delivery is efficient, and it has the reach to users that don't have broadband options. There is still a heavy skew of more data coming into the home/business than goes out, so using a narrower pipe (telco modem) for "upstream" data works.

Interesting that there is a national OTA DTV network (PBS broadcasters) that has been built with federal and state dollars and has pretty complete geographical coverage. It's too bad, from a technologist perspective, concerned with efficient use of publicly built facilities, that the DTV signal probably won't be used for data delivery to a large market, even though it could easily be the most economical system to service now that the transmitters and towers have been put into place. And the reason? because it Would BE a successful competitor to existing telco and cable provided broadband service!

[May @ Dec 11th 2007 1:57PM]

A point of clarification, Moviebeam used the analog OTA TV signal, not the OTA DTV, using just a separate sideband -- not much bandwidth at all (in comparison to what might be available on the DTV signal).

[Dex @ Dec 7th 2007 4:29PM]

While still trying to figure out any legal issues associated with this I figure I'll see if anyone is interested. I was thinking it might be good to start a Wiki page with any and all hacking information on the Moviebeam. I've been able to find little chinks in the armor and would love to share with others who have done the same all in the name of avoiding these boxes heading to landfills. Anyone interested in exchanging info can reach me at dexter.reilly at gmail.

[SeanW @ Dec 10th 2007 1:10PM]

I'm so sad. My wife and I absolutely loved this service. We do not have cable or satellite (over the air only), and we only watch movies. So this service was perfect for us. I was really impressed with the entire service.

Some other poster mentioned Dotcast as the underlying technology. I did quite a bit of work for them many years ago, and I can say that the underlying data delivery technology was pretty cool. But their burn rate was too high in my opinion.

Thanks Dotcast and Thanks MovieBeam for the great ride. Enjoyed the work and enjoyed the service that ultimately resulted.

[Michael @ Dec 18th 2007 5:49AM]

I agree with SeanW about this Moviebeam service being a great source of entertainment. I too have no cable or broadband and can't afford it. I do have a turned off Dish Network box that gets many free digital but unscrambled channels such as the NASA-TV feed. I was slightly alarmed at seeing earlier in 2007 the Moviebeam boxes being abruptly yanked out of Best Buy and Radio Shack stores. Heck just about a week before Thanksgiving I thought it was really strange that the Moviebeam Demo display suddenly went pQQf ! and disappeared.
Personally, I thought the pricing structure $1.99 to $3.99 was fair and not having to waste time going to the video rental store was GREAT :) I bought 5 of these boxes on eBay complete in original boxes in the summer for under $20 dollars. It was apparent these had no street value and most people didn't have a clue what the Moviebeam Service was. I to like some was all excited to hack into these - yeah right ... that didn't get far. Hard drives were married to the motherboards and swapping drives I got no-video or boot-up period. Then I thought I would simply "Clone-then-watch the clone up to the 13 day $28 limits ... then re-clone a donor box that would never actually "rent" movies. I agree with an above post about the WDD 160 GB hard drives being "proprietary" as why my PC was so not impressed when I mounted it up as a slave HD drive.
Then I turned to thinking I could do a modem emulation and fake it out in thinking it called their billing modem and give the "account dial-in" green light. I mean heck the dial in was probably the easy way to hack this armour :)) I don't think it was even 2400 baud ? I don't see many mode data anylizers cable of reading higher baud rate than 2400, so it was 9600 or 14.4 I would have been out of luck anyway. But with "rural" customers in mind and great distances of their copper phone lines I was pretty confident that low baud rates were used like 1200 to 2400. I asked my local retail clerks about the vanished Moviebeam demo stations and the "VERY" confusing bankruptcy letters ( funny how I got on just today )and they flat out said that Hollywood Video would continue this service enen though the Movie Gallery side of the company was in bankruptcy. Also like another post said, these PBS stations have all the equipment in place in 38 major cities and could pick up Moviebeams customer base. It would have been nice to get an offial OTA Important Service Notice that their service was quitting 12/15/07 as I would have rented and DVD recorded my butt off :) Heck, I come home today plopped down on the couch and painfully disovered "movie count = MC=0" after peaking for me 2 months ago at 93 titles. Heck those meanies erased all titles including the one I rented late last night thatI planed on watching tonight. I so wished for a 48 hour period, 24 was not enough but everyone else does 24. I wish I would have performed an Account-Dial-in" and then "DISCONNECTED MY MovieBEam Antenna" so I could have racked up a $28 movie rental tab that I wouldn't have had to pay for. I have called the 1-866-865-1500 but a little crude red lettered message at the top of the MovieBeam.com homepage confirmed my demise theory. Funny how the "Coming Soon" and "Now Showing" in Theaters still had movie titles and trailers ... so I thought some idiot just goofed up and erroneosly sent our clear commands to our boxes. I'm sorry this post was long but I too am said and will very much miss this service that was VERY unique. Closing thoughts, I always wished that SONY pictures had signed on so as to have a better variety of movies. Also, user "request" would have been great as more classic older movies and their Sci-Fi category was Basically empty, maybe 1 ro 2. I would have like some older Space Movies, like Star-Wars, Star Trek, Mission to Mars type tittles. The documentaries category was a nice touch, I enjoyed the Imagine: John Lennon movie $1.99 and the Comedy selction was great with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour among the best $1.99 I have ever spent and was extremely funny to watch. I noticed when MovieBeam box owners were selling on "Fee-Bay" 2 or 3 said they swithed to using the TIVO/Amazon on demand service or Apple-TV. Hey does anybody know how many Moviebeam customers there were ? Lastly, any rumors of another company buying absorbing the Moviebeam service and it's customers ? My guess is proabably NOT as having no way to avoid the DEBT owed by Movie Gallery which is how much ? If anything, I wish the would convert this service to a minimum of a "Movie-Trailer" serice about what is at Theaters, Renting and for sale etc. Call it advertising but it might drive business ? What a bummer as I was planning on giving 2 NIB complete Moviebeam units as gifts to family members ... gee I would have been embarrased ... no it's back to the drawing boards for this bummed out Santa Claus ! "Sad In San Antonio" RIP Michael

[Kevin LaCombe @ Dec 19th 2007 2:27AM]

You're half right about the harddrive. You can use it in you PC, you just have to reformat it. No way to view data though. The encription hardware is on the motherboard, not the drive so look at it as a free 160GB drive. Does anyone know for sure how much you can rack up on the box before it requires payment? I unhooked the antenna but still have the phone cord attached. I had credits available from a previous survey credit. Would like to view as much as possible until then.

[Michael @ Dec 20th 2007 3:39AM]

Kevin, your answers are the box MUST perform a dial-in every 13 days in order to keep letting your watch movies, heck even the "free Moviebeam extras selections". Also, the spending limit is $28 dollars max between account dial in periods.
So Mr Keven, that was brilliant of you to unplug your antenna ASAP, curious when and how did you get the heads up notice that Moviebeam was shutting down Dec 15th ? My beaf is that I got NO-Call, no "understandable-legal-ease-letter" to warm me as that my boxes movies were going to be totally erased by Dec 17th ! I would just like to know why and heck Moviebeam did not send an over the air "Important Service Bulletin" like they did a few months ago about a planned outage period where they were performing billing system maintenance. My best guess for not sending out a global service shut-down OTA bulletin notice was for legal/copywrite reasons ... no way too callect rental royalties and knowing that they would be scammed by folks running up max $28 tabs and unpluging their phone lines and for a "sweet-deal and cheap going away present" :)) Hey, Kevin .. I would NOT do a dial-in !!! I will instead because I have nothing to loose ... my movies are already erased ... except for my "coming soon" and "In Theaters" sections. I would love to see PBS sieze the chance and rescue as much of this customer base and use it to bolster their network revenue by offering all the nice thing they do on PBS but this way we could have a pay-per-view or on-demand way to troll their vast library of shows. I will try and call the my local PBS station engineer to get his take on this, however today I went under my Moviebeams "system-info" and noticed PBS turned off the "Beam" part of Moviebeam ... my signal strenght was a healthy 91 or 92 ... yeah now it only bounces between "0" and "8" and reports its trying to aquire a video carrier signal :( Another post guy had said that the actual WD160 GB HD unit had the encryption ... I would tend to agree with you as on the motherboard type encryption was used letting them just use off the shelf hard drives. Hey, go to your Moviebeams menu and drill down under system-info/copywrite and legal notices/ and note it mentions Microsoft OS more or less ... I saw where another post said that Moviebeam boxes used a form of LINUX ... don't think so ... as Redhat/Linux got no mention. Just Microsoft, Dotcast, Linksys, and Moviebeam, Inc. Hey anybody hooked up their Moviebeam's USB port or their Eithernet RJ-45 port to their PC ?
It would be great to be able to download Windows Media files and still use our Moviebeam units as players ... ok, now I'm dreaming ... goodnight :)
Michael - btw Big Cable companies did not want Moviebeam to make it anyway :( or Sony Studios !

[Dex @ Dec 21st 2007 1:39AM]

Just wanted to follow up... The MovieBeam player most definitely is based on ARM uClinux with a variant of ReiserFS for the hard drive. I have successfully pulled the firmware (in binary form) from the boot ROM and been able to browse the disk contents from my own custom ReiserFS build. The hard drive also appears to have either custom firmware or custom drive geometry which prevents it from just being used as-is in a PC. My experiments have all involved hot-swapping the drive after a successful boot of the MovieBeam player.

The challenge right now is that they did a pretty good job of securing the system. The boot ROM is encased in epoxy which practically requires destroying the board to get at. The boot ROM contains the custom uClinux kernel, hard drive locking code and ReiserFS code. The only application that can run from the hard drive is digitally signed... one would need to know the algorithm and signature encryption key to create applications that could run off the hard drive. If you did that, you might be able to reflash the ROM to run your own code. I have yet to see any indication of back-door code which would allow booting off the ethernet or USB ports on the box.

Simply put, unless a kind soul in the know can provide the encryption signature algorithm and key, these boxes are probably heading to the landfill. Ideally, I'd like to see the boot firmware and custom Linux module code to be released so an open source project can salvage these boxes.

Note, I have no interest in trying to pull the movies off the box (they are protected by DRM anyway) so please don't ask me how to do it. My interest is in making these boxes useful again.

dexter.reilly at gmail dawt com

[Michael @ Dec 28th 2007 2:52AM]

I think I'll ask my local PBS station if they could stand to gain a source of revenue by utilizing these boxes to their loyal viewers could enjoy past shows and view them around a schedule of their own. Let's face it they have all equipment in place and the can always use the funds to help propel their causes. I myself am kind of baffled after the extensive venture capitol pumped into Moviebeam by Cisco, Intel and others to the tune of $55+ Million dollars and Movie Gallery investing $10M in 2007 that they were so quick to pull the plug and not put out a plea that #1 ... that they even had any troubles !

Heck, I tried to do an "Account Dial-in" and there is an error message saying "No Carrier Detected".
So since my last acount dial-in was on Dec 9th and I watch $18 dollars worth of un-billed movies that I would have gladly paid for, the bankrupcy attn'ys
were stupid to give the order to ZAP all our boxes, I would have cut-off new movies and let everyone rent till they dropped and made every last dime I could have, even slipped into the Moviebeam config to require dial-ins before every movie if that was what they were affraid of ... get ripped off. Heck yesterday, I see where my Moviebeam boxes "In Theaters" listing is empty and my coming sQQn has got one lonely movie trailer to watch and when it's DRM tag expires I'll bet it's history too. Hey anyone want to chime in about a similiar market replacement like TIVO/Amazon-Unbox movie downloads or using an HTPC and Netflix downloads ? Penny for your thoughts ! Michael C

[Dex @ Dec 21st 2007 1:44AM]

I should add.... anyone that lives in the Los Angeles area that is interested in donating his/her box to the cause of making these boxes have a life beyond the grave, drop me a note and don't throw out your box. Having numerous examples of the box might help in testing of any system to reflash the firmware.

dexter.reilly at gmail dawt com

[James @ Dec 31st 2007 10:02PM]

I really liked the idea of renting/VOD without having cable or satellite and without having to make two trips to Blockbuster. I bought a box in June 2006 for $50 and rented between 30 and 40 movies. I received the notice in the mail on the 15th and I promptly unplugged the antenna and the phone line. I was unable to rent a movie until I did a dial in. I watched seven movies over the next few days. The antenna alert showed up on Monday but there was no signal by that time. MC dropped from 78 to 77 to 76.

I was always quite satisfied with the image quality with one exception - Virtually all the movies were Letterboxed and probably all letterboxed movies were Anamorphic like better DVDs. The problem was that the anamorphic movies were NEVER at any time properly displayed on a 4:3 tv screen. The first movie I watched was Everything Is Illuminated and the initial viewing was overly corrected making everything fat. Subsequent viewings were corrected too little leaving the image skinny but not quite as skinny as the original anamorphic image. The techs thought it might be my unit so a replacement was shipped. Same problem. They worked on a software fix which eliminated the overcorrection so all viewings were undercorrected for the anamorphic squeeze. The problem was never fixed but I worked around it when my best tv failed and I replaced it with a 4:3 SDTV with a 16:9 setting. I get the proper anamorphic correction in the tv with the box set for 16:9.

All movies had Macrovision applied but apparently at different strengths. I was able to record $2 Paramount movies to VHS but not $2 Ever After from Fox. An ADS Tech DVD Xpress capture device was able to capture ALL output to the computer hard drive and subsequently burned 16:9 movies look GREAT although I'm unable to flag the DVDs as anamorphic for the player to make its enhancements.

The movie assortment was mostly adequate. It was a hoot when they advertised that a movie was never out of stock compared to the video rental store. I've got news - if it isn't on the hard drive it's "out of stock."

It's too bad the ethernet wasn't enabled for movie delivery. Maybe there should have been a monthly minumum subscription; maybe two $4 movies/$8 a month minimum or four $2 movies. For sure the purchase price should have included credit for a significant number of movies. And the rental period should have been at least two days possibly a week. It was a great idea but not well executed. I'll miss it.

[amalfi @ Jan 5th 2008 12:51PM]

Anyone wonder if the people in charge see the pending shutdown of the analog broadcasting system as a possible reason for pulling the plug? I'm pretty sure the dotcast functionality (Brilliant) is meant for standard ntsc analog broadcast only, and if they're shutting down in one year, why bother trying to gain marketshare only to fail in 12+ months.

The other thing that happened to me recently. Tivo missed an episode of Dirty Money, and the wife was pi$$ed so I pulled up abc.com on the laptop and watched it the same night with the laptop on the coffee table, and it was fantastic, high def letterbox quality on my wireless laptop with a DSL connection. I was stunned. I'm a big believer in broadcast data, and how it could solve so many bandwidth issues with the internet, but this experience made me think twice.

How come no one has put an OTA DTV tuner in a phone yet? Didn't the SONY watchman come out in 1978? Gesh.

[Dex @ Jan 9th 2008 11:39AM]

If there is anyone out there still following these comments, I've been able to work an exploit on the MovieBeam player which gives me complete access to the system. While the player is running I can telnet to a shell prompt and inspect and modify the contents of the fileystem. I can also install and run my own code on the machine. This is a significant step in the direction of being able to repurpose these devices (for anyone so inclined).

In the next week or so I'll try an set up a web site with the exploit details.

-dex

[Chris Heer @ Jan 10th 2008 12:40PM]

Dex:

Yes, we're still following. Please let us know -- I would like to assist the effort.

You mention the filesystem is a modified ReiserFS. Is the partition table itself fairly standard? In other words...I have a virgin box (never even been powered up). I'd like to image off the drive before I start tinkering.

[Dex @ Jan 10th 2008 1:27PM]

Chris,

The partition table is a standard one and contains valid data. The problem with drive access is that they used a secure hard drive mechanism that requires software on the player to unlock the drive. You must then hot-swap the drive over to a standard Linux system to access the drive contents. The timeout on the lock is very short (about 3 minutes) so you would not be able to get much data off the drive before it locks again.

My current hack requires you to hot swap your drive once to install some software on it. You can subsequently reinstall the drive into the player, boot the device and have full shell access including access to the hard drive contents.

The movie files are locked with DRM and are unlikely to be easily playable so there is little information on the hard drive that is of interest. My primary interest is being able to reimage the device and use it as some form of internet appliance.

[Chris Heer @ Jan 12th 2008 3:51PM]

Makes sense. Is the entire root filesystem on the chip, or are parts of it on the hard drive? Is there anything that prevents permanent changes to the filesystem on the hard drive?

[Dex @ Jan 12th 2008 9:44PM]

The root filesystem is in firmware and two separate partitions are found on the hard drive (again, locked to work only with the moviebeam player). It is possible to make permanent changes to the contents of the hard drive. I'm investigating if it is possible to unlock the drive permanently. Now that I have root shell access to the running system many possibilities are out there.

I'm working on documenting the hack but have been very busy at work. Next week some time...

-dex

[Dex @ Jan 12th 2008 9:48PM]

One more thing... if you are interested in having early access to the hack details, contact me at my email dexter DAWT reilly AT gmail DAWT com. I'll probably beta test it with a few people before making the site public.

-dex

[John Ferguson @ Jan 14th 2008 8:35PM]

Dex,

Ww are very interested in your technical work on the MovieBeam box. Please contact me at [e-mail] so we can have a private conversation.

Regards,

John