MovieBeam was a video-on-demand service started by
DisneyThe Walt Disney Company , often simply known as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, known for its family-friendly products...
. Movies were sent wirelessly into the subscriber's home by embedding digital data (
datacastingDatacasting is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital television, but may also be applied to digital signals on analog TV or radio...
) within local PBS stations' analog TV (
NTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
) broadcast to deliver the movies to a
set-top boxA set-top box or set-top unit is a device that connects to a television and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen.- History :...
. The data was embedded using dNTSC technology licensed from Dotcast, and distributed to TV stations via
National DatacastNational Datacast Incorporated is the subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting Service which handles datacasting on PBS TV stations throughout the United States. Services using ATSC digital TV include MovieBeam and UpdateTV, for which bandwidth is leased by other companies...
. Up to 10 new movies were delivered to the player each week.
MovieBeam was a video-on-demand service started by
DisneyThe Walt Disney Company , often simply known as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, known for its family-friendly products...
. Movies were sent wirelessly into the subscriber's home by embedding digital data (
datacastingDatacasting is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital television, but may also be applied to digital signals on analog TV or radio...
) within local PBS stations' analog TV (
NTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
) broadcast to deliver the movies to a
set-top boxA set-top box or set-top unit is a device that connects to a television and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen.- History :...
. The data was embedded using dNTSC technology licensed from Dotcast, and distributed to TV stations via
National DatacastNational Datacast Incorporated is the subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting Service which handles datacasting on PBS TV stations throughout the United States. Services using ATSC digital TV include MovieBeam and UpdateTV, for which bandwidth is leased by other companies...
. Up to 10 new movies were delivered to the player each week. The player also contained free movie trailers,
previewPREview is a requirements method which focuses on the early stage of Requirements Engineering: discovering and documenting requirements. PREview uses a Viewpoint-Oriented Approach to enable the conversion of top-level goals into requirements and constraints...
s, and other extras.
The set-top box was sold for a one-time fee ($149.99 as of August 2007). The cost of viewing a movie varied from $1.99 for older movies in standard definition to $4.99 for newer releases in HD. Movie rentals expired 24 hours after the rental period began.
The box had high-end hardware, including
HDMIHDMI is a compact audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data. It represents a digital alternative to consumer analog standards, such as radio frequency coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, and VGA...
,
component videoComponent video is a video signal that has been split into two or more components. In popular use, it refers to a type of analog video information that is transmitted or stored as three separate signals. Component video can be contrasted with composite video in which all the video information is...
outputs, and
coaxialCoaxial cable, or coax, is an electrical cable with an inner conductor surrounded by a tubular insulating layer typically of a flexible material with a high dielectric constant, all of which are surrounded by a conductive layer , and finally covered with a thin insulating layer on the outside...
(SPDIF) and
opticalAn optical fiber is a glass or plastic fiber that carries light along its length. Fiber optics is the overlap of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of optical fibers...
(
TosLinkTOSLINK or Optical Cable is a standardized optical fiber connection system. Its most common use is in consumer audio equipment , where it carries a digital audio stream between components such as MiniDisc and CD players and DAT recorders...
)
digital audioDigital audio uses digital signals for sound reproduction. This includes analog-to-digital conversion, digital-to-analog conversion, storage, and transmission. In effect, the system commonly referred to as digital is in fact a discrete-time, discrete-level analog of a previous electrical analog...
outputs. The box also had
USBUSB is a way of setting up communication between a computer and peripheral devices. USB is intended to replace many varieties of serial and parallel ports. USB can connect computer peripherals such as mice, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras, printers, personal...
and
EthernetEthernet is a family of frame-based computer networking technologies for local area networks . The name comes from the physical concept of the ether...
ports, although these were not activated in the last release of the
firmwareIn electronics and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
. An HDMI or
DVIThe Digital Visual Interface is a video interface standard designed to provide very high visual quality on digital display devices such as flat panel LCD computer displays and digital projectors. It was developed by an industry consortium, the Digital Display Working Group . It is designed for...
connection was required to watch HD content, which was in
720p720p is the shorthand name for a category of HDTV video modes. The number 720 stands for the 720 horizontal scan lines of display resolution , while the letter p stands for progressive scan or non-interlaced...
resolution.
MovieBeam connected to the
serverA server is an application running on a computer that delivers a service. For example, a web server will deliver web pages when requested by a browser . The way a server and a client dialogs is called a protocol...
s by
telephone lineA telephone line or telephone circuit is a single-user circuit on a telephone communications system...
to trigger
billingBilling may mean:*The process of sending accounts to customers for goods or services is called billing. The document used is called an invoice...
of rented movies. The
modemModem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
may or may not have worked with VOIP lines, depending on the quality of the connection.
DisneyThe Walt Disney Company , often simply known as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, known for its family-friendly products...
spun-off this company in January 2006.
CiscoCisco Systems, Inc. is a multinational corporation with more than 65,000 employees and annual revenue of US$36.10 billion as of 2009. Headquartered in San Jose, California, it designs and sells networking and communications technology and services....
,
DisneyThe Walt Disney Company , often simply known as Disney, is the largest media and entertainment conglomerate in the world, known for its family-friendly products...
and several
venture capitalVenture capital is a type of private equity capital typically provided for early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company...
firms including Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund,
Norwest Venture PartnersNorwest Venture Partners is a global, multi-stage investment firm focused on investments in early to late stage venture and growth equity investments in U.S...
and Vantage Point Venture Partners had invested $48.5 million in MovieBeam.
On March 7, 2007,
Movie GalleryMovie Gallery, Inc., headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, is the second largest movie and game rental company in the United States, behind Blockbuster Video. It rents and sells DVDs, movie videos, and video games. It has over 2,200 stores in North America, operating mainly under the Movie...
Inc acquired MovieBeam Inc. Movie Gallery at the time stated that the expected cost of acquisition, plus operating expenses for 2007, was $10 million.
On December 5, 2007, MovieBeam began calling its customers informing them that Moviebeam would be ceasing operations on December 15, 2007, and on that date MovieBeam officially shut-down service.
The main reason for failure of the service to penetrate and capture a portion of the video-on-demand market was the presumption that viewers would watch those movies that the network thought they would be interested in. The dependence on precise positioning of the reception TV antenna to obtain movies was another big problem. Differences of a centimeter or two, or poor weather conditions, could cause movies to be missed being downloaded over-the-air. Cable TV and satellite TV set-top boxes now provide video-on-demand services with far better features than MovieBeam. The video quality of MovieBeam was greatly criticized by viewers due to excessive
video compressionVideo compression refers to reducing the quantity of data used to represent digital video images, and is a combination of spatial image compression and temporal motion compensation. Video compression is an example of the concept of source coding in Information theory...
, made necessary by using analog instead of digital TV (
ATSCATSC is a set of standards developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee for digital television transmission that replaced much of the analog NTSC television system on June 12, 2009 in the United States and will replace NTSC by August 31, 2011 in Canada and December 31, 2021 in Mexico.The...
). Analog TV is also to become obsolete in 2009. These and other challenges sealed the fate of this much-hyped company into a
flop- Terms :*Flop, a box-office bomb in the entertainment world*Flop, as verb or noun, referring to flophouse, cheap rooms in a transients' hotel*Flop , a poker term describing the first three cards dealt to the board...
of technology history.
On July 11, 2008, Valuable Group acquired MovieBeam, known for its success in rapidly building and operating numerous media and entertainment initiatives also started and runs the largest satellite-based
digital cinemaDigital cinema refers to the use of digital technology to distribute and project motion pictures. A movie can be distributed via hard drives, optical disks or satellite and projected using a digital projector instead of a conventional film projector...
network in the world.
External links