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Moviebeam pulled from test markets, going dark

After being announced about a year and a half ago (I got to chat with their PR folks soon after launch), it looks like Disney is taking MovieBeam offline, perhaps for good:

The company plans to close its experimental video-on-demand service this week in all three of its test cities. Disney spokeswoman Michelle Bergman said the shutdown was necessary to upgrade systems as the company seeks potential partners to explore MovieBeam's "next phase."

It is uncertain, however, when — or even if — the service will be relaunched.

I can't say I'm surprised to hear the news, the fees seemed way too high from the outset. It was $7 a month for the box, and $2.50-$4 for each movie you watched. You only got to view them in a 24 hour window before they deleted themselves and your selections were limited to a 100 or so movies. In the age of $3 DVD rentals at any corner store and Netflix to your door for $12-$20 a month, I don't think MovieBeam had a chance.

It was cool to see a company try wireless delivery of media, but they priced it higher than DVD, and it was compressed movie quality below that of a DVD. In the end, it's all about saving a few bucks for customers, and MovieBeam didn't offer that. It's surprising really, to think it was launched directly from a studio, no middle man at all, and didn't require anything beyond a settop box antenna to receive shows, but they priced it above simple DVD rentals.

Oh well, lots of lessons to learn here for others looking at the space. [thanks Mike]

by Matt Haughey April 27, 2005 in News

Comments

Moviebeam were not the first to try this. Cyberstar, iBlast, Geocast and others dabbled in the same space and failed. Obviously they didn't learn either, just like the rest.

Posted by: Kon at Apr 28, 2005 1:10:54 AM

1. Disney priced the service way to high (on purpose).

2. There is nothing that would make Disney happier than for the general perception to be that VOD "won't work." Never trust your banana deliveries to a Monkey's Uncle.

3. One of the big problems and hurdles for VOD to get over is the quality problem. It's probably still too expensive to offer HDTV VOD. The quality needs to be at least DVD quality in order to make the value proposition work. Either that, or you need to be offering me niche content that I quite simply can't get any other way. Mainstream content must be that good or else what I'm buying must be nichey and longtailish.

4. The reason that Disney priced this service for failure is that they make boatload and boatloads and boatloads of money on DVD sales. The only possible way they would ever let something threaten their DVD franchise would be if they could also make boatloads and boatloads and boatloads of money on it. People who eagerly shell out money on DVDs (only to have their kids scratch them and have to rebuy them later) will not shell out the same money on a "service."

5. With Netflix and Blockbuster in the DVD delivery game now, Moviebeam had about a zero chance of success in competing for the dollars of the hardcore movie aficionado.

6. People are not crazy about having yet another box in their already cluttered living room.

Hopefully somebody else will be able to make VOD work -- but it will most likely be somebody small and interesting with fire in their belly or somebody big and powerful that has no DVD business to cannibalize, not some bloated old company with a huge vested interest in keeping a legacy business (DVDs) alive.

As MCE builds traction in the market and if Movielink and Cinema Now can ever address the quality issue, then we may have something interesting on our hands.

Mark Cuban, Microsoft, Brightcove, CozmoTV, Cinema Now, Movielink, Netflix, Verizon-SBC-BellSouth, Akimbo, Rupert Murdoch, Marc Andreessen, Brewster Kahle, and yes even you tired old Comcast, your assignment, should you choose to accept it is to capture the enemy's flag. Spelling and grammar count, extra points for initiative, creativity and a willingness to take chances and burn bridges.

Let the games begin!

Posted by: Thomas Hawk at Apr 28, 2005 5:50:23 AM

MovieBeam was not strictly VOD. It was a walled garden or local VOD system, since data was continuously trickled to the local storage drive. All the movies are already on the drive before you view them. All the content is multicasted so there is no issue with scalability for content size. So most of your points as in VOD quality are moot. If Disney had built a better box they could easily have transmitted HD content. Its not like they didn't have the scalability or bandwidth to do so.

Disney idiotically shot themselves in the foot when they started supporting the online version of this service, Movielink. Thats when the troubles started.

MCE is a dead market because no CA vendor will touch a *PC*. Their only chance of succeeding is to download DRM'd flics using their own DRM, or hook into a service where someone is using their DRM.

Good set of buzzwords. :-)

Posted by: Kon at Apr 28, 2005 10:37:36 AM

Personally, I think Moviebeam was technically a very cool service and did a few things very well including the UI and the ease of setup out of the box, something they had to do to try to overcome the "another box" problem.

But it failed (if it is indeed shuttered) because it flies in the face of all the trends with media distribution and consumer selection today... it had a very limited selection of content that was exactly the same for everybody. April's collection of 100 movies was the same for every individual, so it had to get programmed to appeal to many demographics. No personalization, no great discovery algorithms, and no ability to get my 100 hours of storage to be 100% stuff I cared about.

It was the anti-iPod... everyone's device is the same rather than letting everyone fill the box with his preferred type of content or recommendations unique to him.

So while it had 100 movies at a time, any one individual might find only a few that were right for them.

I completely agree that the right model is a combination of network-stored content and locally-cached content, but that local cache better contain highly selective stuff I've picked or is targeted well for me if it's to be of value.

Tivos and iPods get this right. Moviebeam had it wrong, clever as it was.

That said, I don't agree with the poster above who said Disney wanted this to fail or that it's the end of Disney's efforts in the space. I commend them on their early experimentation in this field... it was a bold experiment with many lessons learned. The people behind it were smart people who were lucky to be at a company that encouraged this type of experimentation in order to learn what consumers want and how this technology works.

--Josh Goldman
Akimbo Systems, Inc.

Posted by: Josh Goldman at Apr 28, 2005 3:51:17 PM

Disney doomed MovieBeam to failure when they based it on the Dotcast data delivery system, which puts digital data in an analog NTSC television signal.

NTSC is slated to be turned off as soon as December 31, 2006, and probably no later than 2010, so they built a business model on an obsolete transmission system.

If they do retool, they will have to design a new box that receives its data via ATSC.

Posted by: John S at Apr 29, 2005 10:19:50 AM

Dotcast 'supposedly' supports ATSC delivery as well as plain NTSC (if they partnered with someone, who knows). Heck its just a different modulation scheme, I would assume their content transmission system can be easily retooled at the output. MovieBeam were looking at doing a new box design last year for ATSC support (as well as new features). Then they went silent.

Posted by: Kon at Apr 30, 2005 12:24:16 PM

Many of the postings for Moviebeam seem to be from people who have theories but no practical experience. After all, if you don't live in Spokane, Jacksonville or Salt Lake City you can't really make learned judgements.

I live in Salt Lake City and was a moviebeam subscriber up until April 28, 2005 when they pulled the plug.

The feature that stood out, in my mind and family viewing habits, is that the movie was on the local hard drive and you could rent it for a 24 hour period. Not the phoney "All-Day" rental of cable providers and satellite providers where the "All Day" rental ends at around midnight. I will never get out of bed at 3AM just to say I rented a movie "All Day". With Moviebeam the 24 hour period was whenever you wanted it to be.

Once Moviebeam was in place, we had no reason for the high price of HBO, Starz, etc. from our satellite provider. Our viewing habits fit Moviebeam perfectly.

I hope it comes back and better than ever. It's concept worked perfectly for those of us who wanted instant entertainment. For those of you who need to complain about things or think they know more about the business, you missed a great entertainment package.

Posted by: Phil at May 22, 2005 9:10:16 PM

If you're going to rag on the sat/cable companies, at least do it on an even playing ground. You're comparing a device with onboard storage to a standard STB with no storage.

In the no storage model you *have* to do an all-day viewing mechanism, since you can't record/store the content.

DirecTivos and the like that have onboard storage allow you to record and store PPV movies for a heck of a lot longer than 24 hours.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've been working on these systems for 10+ years now. I think that qualifies as enough 'practical experience'. :P

Posted by: Kon at May 25, 2005 12:07:02 PM

Moviebeam is not dead. In fact, it's expanding. It will be arriving in 40+ major cities in the next few months.

Posted by: Dave at Jul 6, 2005 10:04:26 AM

I miss Moviebeam. The quality wasn't the greatest (I didn't really notice but my husband did) but the convenience was great. I also enjoyed seeing the previews to help decide which movie I wanted to see. The only complaint I had was the approximately 2 weeks it took to get new releases on the system. The box was thin and stackable, it didn't take much space at all. I can't wait for it to come back!!!

Posted by: Eileen at Jul 20, 2005 1:05:51 PM

Movielink works now and will develop it's set top box. on demand, WeDid.com

Posted by: Rob at Nov 23, 2005 9:06:01 AM

I am interested in buying old moviebeam boxset top boxes . If anyone wants to selllet me know please

Posted by: brian bomsztyk at Dec 1, 2005 7:38:05 AM

As a subscriber in Jacksonville, Fla I thought Moviebeam was a great product. I do feel, however, Disney would have done better, if they would have had not only a per movie charge but also the option of a monthly/yearly all you can watch charge. And, after reading some of the other comments, I think what people overlook, is that Disney wants to take Blockbuster and Netflix entirely out of the loop of making money on Disney's and other production companie's movies. The last I read, Samsung has now started production on the new High Definition MovieBeam product which will have the new MPEG-4 compression scheme. I truly believe this product along with Microsoft's MPEG-4 system for the computer will have the eyes of Blockbuster and Netflix's CEOs turning.

Posted by: DLeMore at Dec 2, 2005 8:55:37 AM

...It's not dead - just wait :)

Posted by: Anon at Dec 2, 2005 4:28:27 PM

Has anyone experienced antenna problems with MovieBeam. I heard this was a big issue for them and I'm trying to get some verification of this.

Posted by: dan at Dec 8, 2005 4:38:59 PM

Does anyone knows when moviebeam will restart its commercial operations and where ?

Posted by: Denis at Jan 22, 2006 6:10:14 AM

Certain Sears stores will start carrying MovieBeam very soon. Our store is scheduled for install of the display next Friday - we're located in Washington state, in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

Posted by: anon at Feb 11, 2006 7:20:42 PM

Today is the first time that I heard of Moviebeam, as it was advertised in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There was no information as to how the program is delivered to your living room (over-the-air vs. via broadband connection).

After doing some searching on the internet and reading the comments here, I would flatly reject the system (not that I would go for it in the first place, as there aren't enough good movies coming out of Hollywood to justify the cost--about $200 for the system and two bucks a throw for the movies).

Posted by: Howard Getsman at Feb 23, 2006 6:44:46 AM

Just got my Moviebeam receiver today. Had quite a few issues getting the box, ordered it on the 14th and just got it today on the 24th. No one at the company seemed to know anything about anything when I called them regarding all sorts of things (where is my box, why won't it dial up, what is my access code, etc. etc). Everyone was very nice but you could here them reading off a script and even turning the pages! Got a couple of calls from the Cust. Service Manager when my box didn't show up as promised (twice) which was cool and he threw my first movie free. They are really trying, but it took customer service about 15 minutes to look up a simple dialing error code. After waiting on hold then having the guy fumble around for 15 mins all he could tell me was unplug the box for 60 seconds and try again. Anyway, finally got it hooked up and all my wife wants to do is watch a DVD we rented from BallBuster (the one near me in Downtown Brooklyn sux, long lines always out of everything, slackers... I mean workers that don't give a hoot about the customers). Ugh. Anyway, at least I got to play with all the menus, check out a bunch of previews, etc. Have it hooked up via HDMI (to my Panasonic EDTV) and optical (to my receiver) and let me tell you it looks AMAZING. Even the previews blow away DVD. Haven't even tried an HD movie yet (not too many of them to choose from unfortunately). The box itself has MANY cool connections- HDMI, composite, super, component (progressive and non-progressive switchable), optical, USB, Ethernet, RJ-11. I'm going to keep Netflix for the large library of source material they have and moviebeam is going to be my new 'movies-on-demand' and 'recent release' goto box from now on. Hope to NEVER set foot in BallBuster again. I can watch a decent array of movies at anytime, no going to the store, no doing returns, no waiting for the next Netflix to arrive, and then some movies in HD to boot? Definately a win for me.

Posted by: David at Feb 23, 2006 9:28:40 PM

Can anyone ever get it right? First, this is supposedly a LINKSYS box yet it requires a POTS line? They can’t be serious. The type of people that buy this box have a greater probability of not having conventional lines but cell phones or VoIP instead. Secondly, what’s with the Regional offering? If they want a idea like this to take off, offer the downloads to be via multiple paths including the broadband connection I have sitting idle 20 hours of the day. Third, this box should cost $50 tops. If the Tivo Death spiral hasn’t taught us anything we should at least learn one thing. Saturate the market with the hardware and make it cheap if not free. You can’t compete with the cable companies if people have to spend more money on hardware. The cable companies are blowing the opportunity with ON Demand Movies. If you want to beat them you have to out number them and charging $250 is a guaranteed way to ensure failure. Lastly, if you advertise the availability of your product via BESTBUY and SEARS, make sure that the SEARS web site product search actually pulls up a result when the consumer goes out on the web to get more info... one final note, if you advertise weekly release rate of 10 movies per week, then when you go to upcoming release link on the Moviebeam website, the 7 or 8 movies listed per week is not living up to what the consumer expects. If you say 10 movies per week then there darn well better be 10 movies a week! Tell the truth and deliver what you say! I have to think the earlier postings from last year are true that some of the partners want this idea to fail. They are working way too hard on these mistakes to be just innocent blunders...

I am so frustrated with Netflix and the cable company that I can't wait to see a product like this actually meet the consumer criteria on ease of use, price and consistent reliabilty. But my instict tells me this is another idea that will fail. After all if a branded product like TIVO is struggling how can this product actually succeed with this many mistakes out the gate?

Posted by: Tom at Mar 16, 2006 12:59:53 PM

I'm interested in trying this but I don't want to spend over $200 for it. Does anyone know of a discount/coupon code that I can use to buy it direct from MovieBeam online? I heard that the early adopters of this last year were given a coupon code to use to buy the new version.

Posted by: Ed at Mar 24, 2006 6:29:59 PM

please bring back voom

Posted by: allen at Mar 26, 2006 5:26:52 PM