Company type | Conglomerate |
---|---|
Industry | video-on-demand |
Founded | September 2003 United States |
Founder | The Walt Disney Company Movie Gallery |
Defunct | 15 December 2007 |
Owner | The Walt Disney Company Movie Gallery |
Parent | The Walt Disney Company Movie Gallery |
MovieBeam was a video on demand service started by The Walt Disney Company, specifically its subsidiary Buena Vista Datacasting, LLC. [1] [2] Movies were sent wirelessly into the subscriber's home by embedding digital data (datacasting) within local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) [3] stations' analog TV (NTSC) broadcast to deliver the movies to a set-top box. The data was embedded using dNTSC technology licensed from Dotcast, and distributed to TV stations via National Datacast through the vertical blanking interval, the same method used to provide closed captioning. Up to ten new movies were delivered to the player each week. The player also contained free movie trailers, previews, 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 featured the highest-end connection hardware of the time, including HDMI, component video outputs, and coaxial and optical digital audio outputs. The box also had USB 2.0 and Ethernet ports, although these were not activated in the last release of the firmware. An HDMI or DVI-D connection was required to watch HD content in 720p resolution. [4]
MovieBeam connected to the servers by telephone line to trigger billing of rented movies. The modem may or may not have worked with VOIP lines, depending on the quality of the connection.
Disney spun off this company in January 2006. Intel Corporation, Cisco, Disney and several venture capital firms including Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund, Norwest Venture Partners and Vantage Point Venture Partners had invested $48.5 million in MovieBeam. [5]
On March 7, 2007, Movie Gallery, Inc., attempting to diversify beyond physical video rental, 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, [6] and on that date MovieBeam officially shut down service. [7]
As with most over-the-air paid television services, MovieBeam required a perfectly clear over-the-air signal in order to download the film data from the vertical blanking interval, and there was a possibility in a certain month that the MovieBeam customer would have no interest in any of the films offered (nor of extra or trailer content); though not wasting any digital bandwidth, it would then needlessly use energy to download unwatched content. Most viewers already received those stations through cable and satellite providers, which offered much more robust pay-per-view or video on demand services of film content, including from Disney. Presumably, cable services offering MovieBeam's channels were fully-compatible with MovieBeam and the MovieBeam set top box could download content that way, but providers were free to filter out VBI data services which duplicated their own offerings for the sake of full picture clarity and which would waste cable bandwidth.
Because of the over-the-air method of download, the films, if purchased, were excessively compressed and of lesser quality than DVD or Blu-ray. Sealing the service's limited life would be that the service used full-power NTSC analog broadcasts instead of digital ATSC 1.0; NTSC had an upcoming expiration date of February 17, 2009 via full-power stations (later revised to June 12, 2009) due to the upcoming digital transition. There was no public knowledge of a new digital-specific revision oncoming to the system. [8]
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of over-the-air programming was the most common form of media distribution. As Internet and IPTV technologies continued to develop in the 1990s, consumers began to gravitate towards non-traditional modes of content consumption, which culminated in the arrival of VOD on televisions and personal computers.
Enhanced-definition television, or extended-definition television (EDTV) is a Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) marketing shorthand term for certain digital television (DTV) formats and devices. Specifically, this term defines an extension of the standard-definition television (SDTV) format that enables a clearer picture during high-motion scenes compared to previous iterations of SDTV, but not producing images as detailed as high-definition television (HDTV).
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company—operating in cable television, direct broadcast satellite television, and IPTV streaming services. It was formed in April 2018, superseding an earlier company from 1995. The service was established as a 50/50 joint venture between News Corporation and Telstra, with News Corp and Telstra holding 65% and 35% ownership shares respectively.
Top Up TV was a pay TV service in the United Kingdom that was launched in March 2004, operating on the digital terrestrial television platform. The service aimed to "top up" Freeview customers by providing additional content and services through encrypted TV channels unavailable to other viewers.
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as television shows and films, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aerial systems, cable television, and/or satellite television systems.
FilmFlex, is an on-demand movie rental services provider, claiming to be largest outside the US.
Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, IPTV offers the ability to stream the source media continuously. As a result, a client media player can begin playing the content almost immediately. This is known as streaming media.
Datacasting 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 terrestrial television (DTT), but may also be applied to digital signals on analog TV or radio. It generally does not apply to data inherent to the medium, such as PSIP data that defines virtual channels for DTT or direct broadcast satellite system, or to things like cable modems or satellite modems, which use a completely separate channel for data.
In Demand is an American cable television service which provides video on demand services, including pay-per-view. Comcast, Cox Communications, and Charter Communications jointly own In Demand.
Sky+ HD was the brand name of the HDTV service launched by Sky plc on 22 May 2006 in the United Kingdom and Ireland to enable high definition channels on Sky to be viewed. For the first two years after launch, the service was branded Sky HD. The service requires the user to have a Sky+ HD Digibox and an HD ready TV. A subscription to the original HD pack carries an extra fee of £10.25 a month in addition to the standard Sky subscription, allowing customers to view HD channels corresponding to the channel packs subscribed to. Additional Pay-Per-View events on Sky Box Office HD are not available to customers unless they subscribe to the Sky HD pack.
V+ is a set-top box for Virgin Media's Virgin TV service, which provides personal video recording (PVR) and high definition (HD) functionality to customers who subscribe to the service. Virgin TV have taken a different approach from rival Sky's Sky+ and later Sky+ HD services, by implementing a rental scheme for the V+ Box. When Virgin TV was launched, there was an installation charge and a monthly charge for all customers with a discount for XL customers. On 1 June 2007 pricing was revised, with all customers paying a one-off set-up fee and TV M and L customers paid a monthly charge, while TV XL customers had no extra charges. Various deals to lower the set-up fee have been made available to all customers in order to compete with rival Sky.
National Datacast Incorporated (NDI) was a pioneer in data broadcasting. It was a for-profit subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which had a minority stake in the final years of this subsidy. It handled datacasting on PBS TV stations throughout the United States. Services using ATSC digital TV included MovieBeam and UpdateTV. UpdateTV continues to be operated by its present owner, Qterics, leasing bandwidth to other companies for the purpose of automatic television firmware updates.
Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global (50%) and Telefónica (50%) after the merger its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. Currently about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.
Vudu is an American digital video store and streaming service owned by Fandango Media, a joint-venture between NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. The company offers transactional video on demand rentals and digital purchases of films, as well as integration with digital locker services for streaming digital copies of films purchased as home video at retail.
A cable converter box or television converter box is an electronic tuning device that transposes/converts channels from a cable television service to an analog RF signal on a single channel, usually VHF channel 3 or 4, or to a different output for digital televisions such as HDMI.
Internet television in Australia is the digital distribution of movies and television content via the Internet. In Australia, internet television is provided by a number of generalist, subscription-based streaming service providers, in addition to several niche providers that focus on specific genres. Australia's five major free-to-air television networks also all offer catch up TV of previously broadcast content to watch via their webpages and apps, and a number of ISPs and other companies offer IPTV – the live streaming of television channels sourced from Australia and elsewhere.
Movies Anywhere(MA) is a cloud-based digital rights locker and over-the-top streaming platform that allows users to stream and download purchased films, including digital copies redeemed from codes found in home video releases as well as digital purchases from participating services. Movies Anywhere is operated by The Walt Disney Company. The platform provides content from Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. The system utilizes an internal platform known as KeyChest, which synchronizes content licenses from digital distribution platforms linked to a central user account.
Selectable Output Control (SOC) is a content protection Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that is incorporated into approved devices that enables a Multichannel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD) to disable non-secure audio-video output by encoding the video with a specific signal. SOC aims to limit the output of high definition video over non-secure analog outputs such as component video connections. When enabled, SOC will only output high definition content over a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) to devices that are High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) approved. When SOC is enabled for a program, televisions that do not have an HDMI port or are not HDCP compliant will not be able to view content. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) until recently has had a ban on the use of SOC.
UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an alliance of 85 companies that included film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.
An over-the-top (OTT) media service is a media service offered directly to viewers via the Internet. OTT bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms—the mediums through which companies have traditionally acted as controllers or distributors of such content. It has also been used to describe no-carrier cellphones, for which all communications are charged as data, avoiding monopolistic competition, or apps for phones that transmit data in this manner, including both those that replace other call methods and those that update software.