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.
posted Feb 17th 2006 1:52PM
Color me not impressed.
1. No way of knowing which movies are even in HD from their listings.
2. Nothing to keep them from dumping 3 and 4 year old bombs on the 'ole hard drive.
3. Land Line requirement. What is this, 1996?
This is like Video on Demand from my Cable system.
-bruce
That's a lot of money for convenience that, in my opinion, is fairly questionable.
Let’s skip over the time to datacast the high-def content. This whole product seems to me to compete with VOD and Pay-Per-View. Except that both of those I already have in high-def so I’m not paying for any new hardware or monthly fees, plus I don’t have to be locked into any new rights-management schemes. Even without having to outlay the cost of an HD set with HDCP(lucky me it seems), this doesn’t really scream “Get Me.” The hardware isn’t sexy, the cost isn’t compelling over what I’ve got, so unless it does something I don’t already have, what’s the point?
I think Disney is thinking the pay video market is bigger than it is. I’m not surprised that the studios are trying to get a piece of the pay video pie, but is there even a piece?
I have Adelphia cable and their Hi Def PPV's are the same price ($3.95) as their SD PPV's. What's the incentive to go with this? I agree with #1 - I don't think the pie is very big to begin with.