The lights have gone out for MovieBeam, a set-top box
service that failed to grab a significant slice of the movies-on-demand market.
The service closed at the weekend after its parent company
Movie Gallery went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October.
MovieBeam was launched by Walt Disney in 2003, closed down
in 2005 and then relaunched as a spin-off in February 2006 in which Disney, Intel, Cisco and three VC
firms invested $48.5m.
Movie Gallery picked it up in March this year for just $10m.
MovieBeam???s $199 set-top box used part of the broadcast
spectrum to download up to 100 new movies to its hard drive that could then be
rented and watched on the user???s TV.
Its problem was too much competition appearing and too
little consumer buy-in to the concept.
MovieBeam competed with video on demand offered by cable
companies. Then there were other digital download services such as MovieLink
and CinemaNow. These allowed downloads to PCs or laptops, which could be hooked
up to a TV.
A whole range of networking devices have also been appearing
such as Apple TV and D-Link???s Medialounge player with MediaMall TV channels,
which allow content to be readily moved from the PC or internet to the TV
screen.
A second wave of services also arrived in the past year ???
Amazon Unbox on Tivo, Netflix???s free online movie viewing service and Xbox
Live???s impressive collection of high-definition material for the TV-connected
360 console.
Akimbo, a similar set-top box service to MovieBeam, has also
failed to gain traction. In September, a Silicon Valley start-up launched the
$399 Vudu box, which can stream its database of 5,000 movies to a TV over a
broadband connection and charge $1 to $4 rental for each movie.
Whether any standalone set-top box service can succeed is
questionable, given it has to fight for a place with games consoles and cable
and satellite boxes under the TV that can have the same capability.
The television itself is moving towards becoming a device
with its own direct connection to the internet, where consumers may prefer to
pay for a web-based service, rather than connect up yet another piece of
hardware.
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