Moviebeam -- Engadget

moviebeam posts

MovieBeam sold, plans three market return tour this year

by Richard Lawler posted Jul 12th 2008 at 10:08PM

Looks like Movie Gallery finally got something for the assortment of PBS bandwidth and spare parts remaining from the now-defunct MovieBeam service. The new owner is Indian conglomerate The Valuable Group, headed by Sanjay Gaikwad who apparently thinks serving up a remarkably limited assortment of heavily compressed HD and SD movies on demand is an idea that deserves to fail all over the world, instead of just in the U.S. Since $100 million burned up by Disney and others wasn't enough to make things work, he plans to invest a similar amount over the next two years to relaunch the service in North America, the U.K. and "other overseas markets". Variety notes The Valuable Group already delivers movies digitally to India and South Asian theaters via satellite so maybe they know something we don't about this business model, and with plans to roll out service in three markets with "new, cutting edge features" by year end we'll get to find out soon.

MovieBeam to have one last go at it?

by Darren Murph posted May 6th 2008 at 4:43PM

When MovieBeam shut down operations last December, we had a feeling we wouldn't be mourning for long, but we definitely didn't see it playing out like this. Reportedly, Movie Gallery is asking for bankruptcy court approval to sell its VOD service to one Dar Capital Limited for a cool $2.25 million. Should the deal go down, the firm would technically pick up 1,800 customers who had once shelled out for the dedicated set-top-box -- but really, why on Earth would any halfway sane investor exhume this thoroughly decomposed corpse and attempt to breathe new life into it?

MovieBeam hardware gets hacked for shell access

by Nilay Patel posted Jan 25th 2008 at 8:04PM

Judging from the fairly consistent stream of comments on our "MovieBeam is dead" post, there are quite a few of you out there looking to hack your now-defunct MovieBeam hardware -- which strikes us as a somewhat quixotic effort, but then again, so was the entire MovieBeam enterprise. Anyway, it looks like some solid progress is starting to be made, with a dev wiki up and running, and instructions for getting into the hard drive, netbooting, gaining shell access, and even running custom code posted up. It's all at the read link, for those of you still chasing the dream.

MovieBeam shutting down operations on December 15th

by Nilay Patel posted Dec 5th 2007 at 6:52PM

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]

Movie Gallery picks up the pieces of MovieBeam

by Donald Melanson posted Mar 9th 2007 at 11:36AM

MovieBeam's short, sordid history hasn't exactly come to a close, but it's certainly a far cry from the service's once lofty goals. First it was spun off from Disney, with Intel and Cisco investing an extra $50 million in the newly separated company to further develop the service, now that company has been sold to Movie Gallery for a fraction of the amount that's been spent on the service over the past few years. According to paidContent.org, Movie Gallery plans to spend less $10 million on the service in 2007, including all acquisition costs and development expenses. In the short term, it appears that Movie Gallery plans to continue to operate the MovieBeam service in the 31 metropolitan areas in the U.S. it's currently available in, and it'll also begin to market the service in its Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery stores, as well as on its website. The company also appears to have some longer-term plans for the service, including downloading or streaming movies over the Internet, although it's not providing any more specific details just yet.

Read - Movie Gallery Press Release
Read - paidContent.org

[Via Techdirt]

Movie downloading kiosks may be coming soon

by Evan Blass posted Jun 4th 2006 at 3:15PM

In what could turn into a preemptive strike against the further decline of DVD sales in the face of competition from digital downloads as well as Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs, major retailers may soon be installing kiosks in their stores that give customers access to on-demand, feature-length films on DVD or their portable devices. According to Reuters, the major movie studios are reportedly in talks with retail heavyweights like Wal-mart to theoretically offer their complete archives for downloading to in-store terminals with high-speed connections, where they would either be burned onto DVD or transferred to unspecified devices, a la that proposed DVD Station service we saw awhile back (which seemingly never materialized). While the prospect of having immediate access to almost every movie ever made is admittedly appealing, we're not really sure that we want to drive all the way over to Best Buy just to stand around waiting uncomfortably with our fellow patrons as we all clutch our iPods, nervously tap our feet, and wish we'd all just stayed at home and settled for whatever was on Moviebeam.

[Via Slashdot]

Take home MovieBeam for $80 less

by Ryan Block posted May 8th 2006 at 2:21AM

Just as we were kind of wondering to ourselves if there would be enough (realistic) price cuts in the world to legitimize Disney's mildly maligned MovieBeam, they went and did what most device makers do when they've got a big launch followed by a lukewarm consumer response (and generally despondent product reviews). They shaved off $80 from the take-home price -- $50 from the MSRP down to $200 for the box, and also killed the $30 activation fee. The $2-3.00 SD movie prices and $3-4.00 HD movie prices are still pretty reasonable, truth be told, but you've still got to deal with their closed-platform DRMed rentals of questionable quality in watchability via datacasts offering a limited selection of content. Believe us, we want to like MovieBeam, but we're not sure falling prices can save a product that doesn't live up to expectations.