MovieBeam: who wants it?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Feb 15th 2006 7:34PM
posted Feb 15th 2006 7:34PM
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.
The main problem I see for normal people is the upfront cost and the selection of movies. Most already have a DVD player or VOD available from their main content provider, so right out of the gate it's going to cost them at least $200. This for a box that has no other purpose than to rent movies, when their DVD player can do that and be used to play the movies they own. The Cable or Satellite box can be used for VOD or be used to watch normal TV.
Selection: The video store and the cable company have more than 100 movies available to choose from, so there is something for everyone. MovieBeam does have an advantage with the new movies that are in high demand. I believe MovieBeam would be more successful with a subscription based revenue stream; they should give the boxes away for free with a 1 year commitment and charge $30 a month to watch all the movies you want. I think this would entice people to try the new service and spend more. If you consider that at $4.00 a movie, most wouldn't accrue $30 a month in charges, which would be about 2 movies a week. This would however guarantee $360 a year per subscriber for at least the first year. This works for Netflix now and before I signed up with Netflix, I never spent $240 a year renting movies.
Now for the early adopters, there is a real opportunity here for HD considering current options for HD movies are slim to none. MovieBeam is not enticing as an HD option, because according to the MovieBeam site only 10% of their content is HD. So that means 10 movies are shipped on the box and you get one new movie per week in HD. This is no better than the HD VOD offering from most cable companies. On top of that, the land-line requirement is another sticking point; I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't had a land line in years, plus how hard would it be to support WiFi or Ethernet? I would try the service despite everything else, if it weren't for that requirement. I would bet that many other potential early adopters are in the same boat.
The last reason is picture quality. Although most people aren't hard to please, some (early adopters) demand high picture quality. I will admit that I haven't seen the box in action or read any accounts of it, but here's why I think the picture quality won't be that great. The STB is reported to have a 160GB hard drive. Current DVDs can hold ~8.5GB, at this rate the box could hold 20 to 30 movies. We can assume the box uses the latest and greatest codec and we know it comes with 100 movies pre-loaded. So if we pretend that all the movies take up the same amount of space, that is 1.56GB per movie and that is assuming you can use the entire 156GB. I have seen some good DivX rips, but never DVD quality at 1.56GB per movie, let alone any form of HD quality.
Only time will tell if this is the case, but I for one will not be the one to try it out.
That's a nice in-depth analysis of both the cost element and file size versus PQ, which I hadn't even stopped to consider. I can't recall how large the higher def MovieLink downloads are for comparison, though I never watched them on anything other than a small (7" - 12") laptop screen. Along with PQ, I wonder if they're including 5.1 sound in the file... They will save some space by not throwing in the extras and foreign language tracks that you find on DVD, but I think you're right to have quality concerns. I guess the phone line is similar to how PPV/VOD on DirecTV works (worked?) for accounting. You're right though... many of us bleeding edge early adopters might have have or want to use a land line.
STILL despite it all, I want to be the first on my block to try it out. I really can't help myself. Maybe the 360 will be back in stock soon so I can waste my money on that instead. :)
This is going to fail so bad. I can only hope (!) consumers are smart enough not to buy a $200 box that has the sole purpose of allowing you to rent movies at a "video store" that only has 100 movies to choose from with 10 of them being cycled out each week.
I am quite stunned that this idea even made it this far. Are there really people that think this has ANY chance of succeeding?
It's too bad MovieBeam is not publicly listed. I'd short their stock.
Hopefully someone will figure out a good use for all those dead MovieBeam boxes next year when the service is discontinued.
Dave, I look forward to reading your review! I hope I am wrong, but we will see.
I have another theory that I wasn't bold enough to put on the post. MovieBeam will be integrated into the rumored Apple media device, consumers will be able to watch their content, iTunes content and MovieBeam. This falls in line with last years rumors that Apple was working on a Video distribution network as well as the fact that Jobs has close ties with Disney. But it is too much of a stretch.
Okay, so I e-mailed the Moviebeam link to my wife. We have OTA HDTV. No cable. No satellite. No Netflix. No Aikimbo. No TiVo. We get DVDs from the library, not Blockbuster.
She was intrigued. The $230 cost was a barrier to her acceptance, but she liked that you pay by the movie. We don't have TiVo or Netflix because we don't like to pay per month (we've got enough monthly charged with phones and DSL, etc.).
So, Moviebeam is appealing to cheap OTA HD lovers. How big is that market?
The only saving grace is that Moviebeam is going to go the way of Aikimbo, i.e. integrate their software with MCE so you don't have to buy any additional hardware. While I don't have a MCE box, I will be building one in the future, when some of the component costs come down (when I can build a HD box in the $500 range). At that time, both Aikimbo and Moviebeam software will be on my box.
Buzzcut, thanks for the interesting perspective.
As an HD lover do you think you will be satisfied with only 10% of the movies being in HD?
I agree that this would work better in combination with another product.
If you order it let me know, I would love to hear your impressions.
I actually wrote to the MovieBeam people about the phone line. Here's my letter to them and their response.
My Letter
--------
Question: You have a new toy. This new toy will be first bought by early
adopters, those techie of kind of people who first bought Tivo and
DirecTV and digital cable and whatever else. These same people are also
the people who have given up their landline and just have a cellphone
because why pay for that extra line you never need? They do have a cable
modem for Internet, but no landline.
So why make your device require a landline? Why not put an RJ45 jack in
and use DHCP and just connect over the Internet? Tivo's forums are full
of people who have had to manually modify their boxes to use the
Internet instead of a landline.
I'd love to get your product, but since the only two people in my house
have cell phones and we have no landline, we can't use your product. If
it had WiFi or RJ-45, no problem... but I'm not going to get a landline
installed and pay another 26 bucks a month just to have it available for
a once-a-month phone call from your product.
-----
Their Response
-------------
Your specific question was as follows:
Why does it require a phone line and not any other forms of dialing in?
The MovieBeam player was designed to hookup to your landline only.
During the setup process, the player must call out in order to
initialize your account. Thereafter, it connects to MovieBeam by phone
in order to keep your account current. If you leave your player
connected to a phone line at all times, you will not have to bother with
it -- it will call in as necessary without interrupting your telephone
service or your movie-viewing. At the very least, your player must
connect with MovieBeam by phone at least once every 2 weeks or $28 of
movie-viewing charges, whichever comes first. You do not have to give us
any landline number; you can have your player dial in anywhere. I hope
this information has helped you. If you'd like we can add you to a
contact list to keep you updated on the latest developments.
You will notice that the player has a variety of hookups that are not
currently in use but are there for when the software has been developed;
Ethernet is one of these connections.
Thank you again for taking time to let us know how you feel about
MovieBeam. We welcome further comments and hope that you will always
feel free to contact us, either by email -- as you've done -- or by
calling us at 1-866-865-1500.
It's more important at this time that it has HD capability than the fact that only 10% of the movies are actually in HD.
As the service move forward and morphs into just another software package for MCE, I can see them offering more and more HD movies. Hard drives just keep getting cheaper and cheaper, and capacities keep going up and up. You can get a terabyte for $600.
I'm not getting anything until I build the MCE box. I can't seem to price one out for less than $800, which is just too expensive for me.
I emailed movebeam to find out about hdtv output via component video. Not good for us early adopter with out HDCP. I will definitely not be buying this service. This is the response I got:
Thank you for inquiring about MovieBeam. I'm happy to answer your
questions.
The MovieBeam Player will work with virtually any television, whether
HD-capable or not. If you have an HD television, you'll be able to enjoy
a selection of up to 10 movies in HD at any given time - as long as you
have the necessary HDMI cable. Like all movies on the player, several of
the HD selections will rotate regularly. We acknowledge that HD can be
transmitted through component video cables but due to our licensing with
movie studios we can only use the HDMI because of its enhanced security
capabilities.
You can purchase an HDMI cable from an electronics store in your area,
or you can order one through MovieBeam Customer Care by calling us at
1-866-865-1500
Hi there -
I've had the opportunity to be a product tester for MovieBeam's newest box, and stopped in here while i was scoping people's reaction... them's some fiery words you used, and I wanted to offer my 2 cents.
Just wanted to address your video quality paragraph (the last one) -- the math you use is a sound deduction with the info you had, but the conclusion about quality is off, in my humblest of opinions. I'm told MB uses Windows Media Player Codecs with variable compression, so different movies get different treatment. But I have to say, I've spent a considerable amount of time sitting in front of both HD and SD MovieBeam movies on huge plasma flatscreens, and as a cinephile (who minored in Cinema Studies in college) i honestly couldn't tell there was any compression at all -- the movies looked looked like Movies, not crappy downloads... Crisp, full motion, bright color, surround sound on most things i saw -- SD looks really good, definitely as good as DVD. and don't get me started on HD (holy mackarel, i love the wonders of modern technology)
I don't know all that much about the other things you mentioned like pricing model... I guess MB isn't always gonna be right for everyone. but i know there's a constant stream of new options and features coming down the pipeline -- like i heard internet connectivity's comin soon... and i imagine that that should address things like landline necessity, etc. anyway, my 2 cents...