mSpot has been streaming full-length movies to cellphones
for a few years now, but not until this week has the company had a potential customer base of 40 million. As of right now, mobile phone users on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile (yes, that includes the G1, Pre, iPhone and every other smartphone with a half-decent browser) can surf over to m.mspot.com in order to stream major motion pictures, and being that the service is on-demand, you can also pause and restart 'em whenever you darn well please. Deals have been inked with Paramount Studios, Universal Pictures and the Weinstein Company, and we're told that more agreements are in the works. Movie rentals will cost $4.99 per title, and can be viewed from 24 hours to 5 days after they're rented. Naturally, mSpot recommends paying for an "unlimited" data plan, and if you're smart, you won't utilize the service
whilst traveling abroad.
posted Sep 30th 2009 11:34AM
Could only see this being used on long car/bus/plane rides...and cell service isn't exactly top notch there
Sounds cool but $4.99 for what will likely be a suboptimal movie experience sounds a little much to me.
Yea if I can BUY a DVD for $12 and it's 480P watch anytime, why would I pay $5 to watch a lower than VHS resolution movie for 24 hours?
They need to either do a Netflix / Zune Marketplace subscription model (i.e. $10/mo gets you unlimited movies) or do 99 cent rentals and $10 or less purchases.
Because not everyone wants to spend $12 to own everything. If you spent $12 to buy everything when you have no desire to own a movie, only to view it, but only do so because it's "only $7 difference to own it" than you're spending over double. For things you never plan to buy again.
The "only difference is $7 to own it!" adds up, especially when you don't care to own anything.
plan to watch* again, not buy.
Probably have more luck selling on your DVD on ebay than you will your expired movie rental however!
I am not paying $4.99 to watch The Golden Child. I could not be PAID $4.99 to watch The Golden Child.
Wow! it actually is working on my pre, very nice
why don't they have an app?
because companies like Apple make money selling movies not streaming them.
It should be mentioned that in addition to $4.99 per movie they also have a monthly subscriptions for real addicts.
Ahhh...Save 50% or more in Club. So 4.99 is just for the unwashed non-members.
Club members receive 20 ($9.99), 30 ($12.99), or 40 ($15.99) credits a month which entitles you to approximately 4, 6, or 8 movies respectively.
Remember kids, pay-per streaming movies are A-OK, but streaming TV you're already paying for from your home for free via sling player is ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY EVIL AND WILL DESTROY AT&T'S NETWORK IF THEY'RE UNABLE TO STOP IT.
PSHHH ... who needs to watch TV? I hear Apple's inventing this great new system that will actually let you send PICTURES to other phones via a TEXT MESSAGE!
Excellent point got to love the hypocrisy I am sure they have a carrier profit share deal worked out. Heck once everyone gets their cut mspot probably just has a few scraps left.
This doesn't work over 3G either, but of course you get upvoted because bashing is fun! Who cares about facts?
Q: Can I watch movies on WiFi?
A: Because of our obligation to protect movie content from piracy, only iPhone users can watch movies on WiFi networks.
Q: Is this service available worldwide?
A: No, only in the United States.
Um WTF? Not going to use the service anyway but wifi on iphone only somebody is going to have to explain that one to me. Also when will the studios get a clue the restrictions of countries and titles just means its back to torrents for everyone. I feel like they are trying at least a little but are still way off.
It's not so much "we hate everyone but the United States" as it is "there are legal blockades to worldwide licensing."
It's different for every movie, of course.
Given that a 1.5 hour movie is 550mb at 480x320 compressed for web streaming this is going to kill their network if they get a few people doing this at the same time.
It is not streaming at nearly this quality I would describe it as sorta watchable to unwatchable.
It won't be 550MB- Netflix streams at about 700Kb/sec which for a 90 min movie is 460MB- and that's for watching on a PCs 15-22" screen, if you're going to a 3" mobile screen you can get away with something like 150Kb/sec easy or about 100MB for a 90 min movie.
(I ran the calculations on this a few months ago- users could do about 15-20 hours of Netflix streaming a month and still easily be under the 5GB cap).
You could finish off your 5GB-capped "unlimited" monthly limits pretty quickly with something like this.
Not really (at least not as fast as you probably think)- See my comment to Templarian.
Mrphl. It doesn't work with my phone, and they won't tell me what phones it does work with. From their FAQ: "Q: How do I know if my phone is supported? A: mSpot encourages you to watch a movie preview before you rent a movie. If you can see the preview, then your phone is supported.".
Admittedly, I'm stuck using a featurephone at the moment (Nokia 6555), so I didn't have high hopes; but it'd be nice if they gave actual information.
I wish we had an application similar to this in europe. Being able to connect through wi fi and watch movies without an iphone.
Belinda
Just what we need, another bandwidth hog on an already strained cellular network. Things like this are a complete waste, if you can't go a few hours or days without watching a movie on your phone of all things then maybe you need to get some professional help. Let the networks focus on actual voice and meaningful data traffic.
If they start streaming porn, AT&T's network is as good as dead. Since it's browser-based and streaming in Quicktime format, I don't see how AT&T or Apple could stop it.
spank wire dot com
bust a nut and the network at the same time.
5 bucks plus its a tiny screen. Not interested. who must watch a movie so bad that they must have it right now? can't you wait till you get home and see it on a normal screen?
so this is kosher on AT&T's network, but MMS, SlingPlayer, and the like are not. weaksauce.
then again, the mSpot people are probably paying a sizable portion of their proceeds to AT&T.
it's not an app it's through the browser
$4.99 a movie? All I can say to that is LOL good luck.
Just tried with my Omnia and got "your phone is not supported". Can't say I'm disappointed.
VERY COOL! THIS is a useful app. lets say i have two hours or so to kill in between lay overs. If i have the charger, grab this up over 3g [or if there's free wifi] and you're good to go
so you can pay $4 or $5 to rent a full HD movie at home or you can pay $5 for a choppy, low res, battery draining movie on the go? well sign me up!!! I'll just be over here tossing hundred dollar bills into the fire while this bad boy gets buffered!
How much per movie? Don't they know Redbox is pretty much ubiquitous?