MovieBeam
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MovieBeam sold, plans three market return tour this year
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?
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
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
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
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 ReleaseRead - paidContent.org[Via Techdirt]
TWIT and HD Beat
All the HD Beat readers and podcast listeners know we love the guys at This Week in Tech. We have enjoyed watching them on TechTV and listening to their podcast. We were very honored this week when Patrick referenced us on how Moviebeam works. It was a short quote after Leo questions the response, he says "Hey it's straight from HDBeat.com, those guys are alright, except when they talk trash about Robert." Sorry Robert we don't mean to talk trash, we just wish you read HD Beat as regularly as Patrick seems to. Thanks for the props guys!
MovieBeam gets a boost from Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures, friendly day-and-date releasers of such HD flicks as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Bubble, have announced support for the MovieBeam platform. According to VideoBusiness, despite already having support from the major studios, MovieBeam thinks they can find a niche delivering HD flicks to film buffs who want to avoid the messiness of finding an arthouse actually showing limited release movies. Combined with Magnolia's unorthodox release strategies, they seem to make a good match. Also of note, if you want to check out the service without laying down $199 for the box up front, our friend Dave Zatz mentioned a coupon code (PR49B) that drops the price to $49, although we don't know if that is still valid. Ben wasn't very impressed with the quality of the HD when he reviewed MovieBeam, while Dave had a better impression of its SD capabilities. If you get your HDTV OTA, this may be the VOD service for you.
Movie downloading kiosks may be coming soon
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]
MovieBeam Review: A second opinion
When MovieBeam was first announced we were really excited and as soon as we had an opportunity to check one out we took advantage of it. After spending a few days with one we wrote a review and as most of you know we were less than excited with it's HD performance.Jeremy Toeman of LIVEdigitally spent some time with the service and wrote a very comprehensive review that included many aspects that we at HD Beat left out, mostly because we have a one track mind. Of course when I read this I went straight to the good parts and was not surprised to see that Jeremy agreed with us in regards to PQ. He did cut them a little slack because he believes so many consumers can't tell when they don't have HD never the less judge different quality levels between sources. So if you are like us and can't get enough reviews of MovieBeam shoot over and check out his review.Thanks Jeremy
Take home MovieBeam for $80 less
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.
CNET reviews MovieBeam MB2160
MovieBeam is an amazing concept. It lets you view programs on-demand via an Internet connection antenna and best of all, it has high-def content in its library. But it is a bit ahead of its time. Ben had a chance to review the service early on and was not impressed. CNET now has their take on the MovieBeam and comes away with the same conclusion. The price is too high and they had problems with the hardware. For us high-def fans, the picture quality was very bad. i.e. think bit-starved cable signal with tons of digital artifacts.Check out their full review here.
MovieBeam Review
I recently got a chance to test MovieBeam without paying the activation fee. In the end MovieBeam foot the bill for shipping as well.I will admit that my expectations were not very high and I am sorry to say that I am very disappointed. I was very excited when the package arrived and I rushed home to connect it to my HDTV and run it through it's paces. The best news is that the box worked fine with my Vonage VOIP phone. The bad news is that the Picture Quality was the worst HD I have ever seen, well maybe not the worst, but it is in contention.
MovieBeam testing VOIP
When MovieBeam was announced I emailed them with concerns about the lack of VOIP support. This among other reasons is why I predicted their failure. Today I received an email indicating that they were testing VOIP with their STB and an invitation to test the box with no obligation. I had to buy the box, but they waived the activation fee. I ordered one which was shipped FedEx ground and I should receive it in 3 to 5 days. You can expect a full review to follow.
MovieBeam powered by IPTV technology
Huh is right! What is going on here? When I first started to read this press release for technical details it sounded exactly like a press release: boring. Then I started to get into the details of the technology. It turns out that a company named SkyStream owns the technology named zBand that powers the MovieBeam network; we aren't surprised that MovieBeam didn't devise the technology, but what we do find surprising is that they company touts support for many mediums including the Internet. Their VOD technology is built with high error correction and specifically built for low bandwidth, low throughput networks. Unfortunately, they also brag about their DRM, which is no surprise considering that HDMI is required for MovieBeam's HD movies. We'll be watching this closely to see who else licenses this technology to bring us HD movie rentals. It shouldn't be long till someone offers a similar service for our Windows Media Center PCs.
Apple rumors are fun when they're about HDTV
Nothing we love more than rumor mongering analyst predictions at HDBeat, the latest of which has revived the high definition or HDTV-based video iPod rumor. No news on possible Intel Viiv-based plasmas or MovieBeam integration, but we wouldn't rule out a surprise appearance by Bigfoot at this point.The announcement, whatever it is, will be made at a just-announced press event February 28th, so check back here on Tuesday to see what is what. What do you think: is there anything video or high-def related coming out of Apple's closet next week?
MovieBeam doesn't include a DTV tuner
MovieBeam is the technology that I want to love so bad, but they make it so hard. We already knew some of its shortcomings, but now we learn another one. The MovieBeam distribution network runs over the analog PBS channels, which we all know will turn off in 3 years. MovieBeam says they will have a peripheral tuner, but no word on the cost. It seems a bit short-sighted to not use the DTV spectrum for this new service; one engineer said they were 5 years too late. It seems the the Microsoft Windows Media 9 CODEC compresses the movies enough that throughput is not a problem. It only takes 8 hours to transmit a 5GB HD movie and they only send one or two a week. Looks like I'm not the only one not impressed. Josh Bernoff, principal analyst with Forrester Research said he didn't think it has much potential as a stand-alone product. There is hope, as an Intel spokesman says they are working aggressively to develop a Viiv-based product. Lets hope it comes out before it is too late. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the rumored Apple Media Center has MovieBeam support.
Disney's MovieBeam first look - Designtechnica
We talk about the Disney MovieBeam in our HDBeat podcast and Designtechnica posted their first look as well. Spec-wise, the unit has a 160GB hard drive and 200 Mhz processor, which we generally knew. There's a complete list of the 29 cities where the service is available, but remember that roughly 10 of the movie choices are in high-def, plus each one costs an additional $1 over the standard $3.99 new release VOD charge: same content but a different resolution still commands a premium. One thought we have that nobody seems to have questioned: how long will it take to actually download an HD movie over the datacasting service? It might not be an issue, since the box is always updating, but we're curious. I'd ask for a demo, but neither of my two older HDTVs have HDMI with HDCP support, so I'm SOL and we're betting some of you are too.
MovieBeam: who wants it?
MovieBeam has been out for less than 2 days and at this point I'm going out on a limb and predicting its failure. When I first blogged about this yesterday morning I was pretty excited, but after further investigation I'm convinced it will fail and here is why.The biggest challenge with any new technology is adoption by the consumer. People are creatures of habit and often they don't use the best, but more likely what they know. This explains why so many people still go to the Video store or use the Windows "Classic Menu". Unless they can be convinced that the new technology is noticeably better than the old, they won't try it. There are early adopters that long to try new technology, but MovieBeam is not setting themselves up to please these people either.
Disney to release HD MovieBeam STB
It's a good thing we all have our OTA antennas ready because we're going to need them to enjoy the latest in HD entertainment: MovieBeam. Disney started testing this back in 2003 and now it looks like it's ready to go and in HD to boot. No firm release date yet It is availabe in some ares now and Cisco's Linksys division is going to make the STB and both Cisco and Intel are helping to foot the bill. If we're lucky there may even be Viiv support. MovieBeam will be available in 23 cities and come preloaded with 100 films from most of the major studios. Considering the price of $200 plus a monthly and per movie fee, I wonder how many people are going to take advantage of this, not to mention how this will effect our OTA HD that we love so much. They are distributing the content with datacasting and I can only imagine where they are getting the wireless bandwidth from. Now we just need one to test in the HDBeat labs. This should be interesting to watch develop.
