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MovieBeam

F

Filthy_Susan

Guest
Anyone have comments on this? $250 receiver. Movies $4 and $2. 24 hour rental. Disney is the parent co, I believe. It is available in Buffalo and 28 other metropolitan regions.

Could this be serious competition for the movie lover to cable and local rental houses? The 24 hour rental seems a bit restrictive but it's an interesting idea if it works and can sustain itself.

http://www.moviebeam.com/opencms/opencms/Pages/
 
They're going to have to either 1) drop the receiver price drastically or 2) lower the rental price and increase the time. Nobody (ok, very, very few people) is going to pay $250 for the right to not drive to the video store when the actual rental cost is the same or higher, or when they can get some form of Movies-on-demand service for about the same rental price without the box charge. Where I live, I can rent a movie for 24-hours from my grocery store for $0.99, or I can use the movies-on-demand that is included with my cable and pay about $3.99 for 24 hours. I can go to Blockbuster and rent a movie for days on end and still only pay four or five bucks. And then there's Netflicks, Blockbuster Online, etc.

With all of the competing forces out there, even if they drastically change their pricing options, I don't know if it would be enough to grab marketshare and turn a profit. There are a lot of options out there, and this one just doesn't strike me as capable of making a significant dent.
 
> Anyone have comments on this? $250 receiver. Movies $4 and
> $2. 24 hour rental. Disney is the parent co, I believe. It
> is available in Buffalo and 28 other metropolitan regions.
>
> Could this be serious competition for the movie lover to
> cable and local rental houses? The 24 hour rental seems a
> bit restrictive but it's an interesting idea if it works and
> can sustain itself.

Normally I would say this belongs on the national board, but it's nice to see a post that is NOT related to Rochester for once... lol.

I don't see how this will work. Most people already have cable or satellite, both of which have tons of movie channel options. On cable, there's movies on demand, which is essentially the same thing, but without the $250 equipment purchase fee. I don't keep up with satellite well enough to know if they've got on-demand yet, but they do have pay per view, which normally offers a few dozen options of the hottest current movies.

Disney could be shooting itself in the foot here, ESPECIALLY if it only releases its own movies exclusively to this service. People aren't going to pay $250 up front, and then another $2 or $4 for this. They might think people will, if it's the only way to see Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista movies, but in reality, they'll be hurting themselves altogether.
 
Moviebeam is an interesting concept, but I see it as television's version of the Edsel.
 
> Normally I would say this belongs on the national board, but
> it's nice to see a post that is NOT related to Rochester for
> once... lol.

If you have seen any of the posts on TotalBuffalo concerning television in Buffalo you would be glad that they are not here. :)

> I don't see how this will work. Most people already have
> cable or satellite, both of which have tons of movie channel
> options. On cable, there's movies on demand, which is
> essentially the same thing, but without the $250 equipment
> purchase fee. I don't keep up with satellite well enough to
> know if they've got on-demand yet, but they do have pay per
> view, which normally offers a few dozen options of the
> hottest current movies.

Well, one difference, they claim, is that some movies will be available upon theatrical release. Being cable-free I'm not sure cable PPV does that. The offset for the box is that there are no monthly fees. I dropped cable years ago because paying $45/month then for a couple of hours per week of viewing seemed excessive. If you love movies and they have a large enough catalog with a broad range of offerings then it could be worthwhile... could.

> Disney could be shooting itself in the foot here, ESPECIALLY
> if it only releases its own movies exclusively to this
> service. People aren't going to pay $250 up front, and then
> another $2 or $4 for this. They might think people will, if
> it's the only way to see Disney/Touchstone/Buena Vista
> movies, but in reality, they'll be hurting themselves
> altogether.

The movies are not all Disney & Co. It's a new service and I'm not sure what the delivery mechanism is. It's over the air (BroadBand bandwidth for DVD quality video is still expensive) so I guess the costs of that mechanism is going to dictate how viable it can be.

I totaly agree though that 24 hour viewing for $4 is quite high, but that's the same you pay at a place like Movielink.com for a lesser quality video.
 
The box price didn't throw me off the idea so much as you note the cost per film and the license length. If they did $0.99 for a month. I would consider it. Better still 6 months even at $2 or a choice of either lease per movie. I imagine though that there are built-in costs to cover the inevitable copying that will surely happen. I can't see what would prevent me from passing the movie to my DVD recorder to make a perm. copy.

> They're going to have to either 1) drop the receiver price
> drastically or 2) lower the rental price and increase the
> time. Nobody (ok, very, very few people) is going to pay
> $250 for the right to not drive to the video store when the
> actual rental cost is the same or higher, or when they can
> get some form of Movies-on-demand service for about the same
> rental price without the box charge. Where I live, I can
> rent a movie for 24-hours from my grocery store for $0.99,
> or I can use the movies-on-demand that is included with my
> cable and pay about $3.99 for 24 hours. I can go to
> Blockbuster and rent a movie for days on end and still only
> pay four or five bucks. And then there's Netflicks,
> Blockbuster Online, etc.
>
> With all of the competing forces out there, even if they
> drastically change their pricing options, I don't know if it
> would be enough to grab marketshare and turn a profit.
> There are a lot of options out there, and this one just
> doesn't strike me as capable of making a significant dent.
>
 
> Moviebeam is an interesting concept, but I see it as
> television's version of the Edsel.

I don't know. I you are paying $2K as a start price for an HDTV then is the MovieBeam pricing that high that you wouldn't even consider it?
 
The reason I think Moviebeam will be TV's version of the Edsel is that many cable systems already offer on-demand programming, including pay-per-view movies.

There simply may not be much of a demand for Moviebeam.
 
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