“Movie rental service MovieBeam, once backed by Walt Disney, Intel and Cisco Systems, will close down Saturday, stranding people who paid $200 for its set-top box with a useless piece of hardware,” Brian Deagon reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“The MovieBeam box stored 100 movies that were continually refreshed through a wireless connection. Backers invested some $50 million in the venture before selling it a year ago for $10 million to Movie Gallery, the movie rental store chain, now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization,” Deagon reports.
“The collapse of MovieBeam follows the recent sale of Movielink, a movie download Web site backed by big Hollywood studios that pumped $148 million into the money-losing venture. BlockBuster bought it for $6.6 million,” Deagon reports.
“Analysts say these services were in large part simply ahead of the times. But a new crop of players — including Apple, TiVo, and Netflix — believe the time is right. They’re looking to steal market share for fee-based movies, TV shows and videos from cable and satellite TV companies,” Deagon reports. “‘There’s not a success story out there yet,’ said Michael Greeson, an analyst at research firm Diffusion Group. ‘A lot of people overestimated consumer appetite for these video services. The original models were really far ahead of the consumer market.'”
Deagon reports, “Not even Apple, which launched Apple TV in March, has succeeded, at least not yet. Apple TV is a set-top box that delivers video from the PC, downloaded through Apple’s iTunes, to the TV set.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Besides movies, Apple TV also plays music, TV shows, movie trailers, podcasts, photos, home movies, and YouTube videos.
Awwwwwfffffffhhhhhhhhhfffffggggggg !!!!
I’m stuck with this useless box now !
I’ll bet that all five of the subscribers are pissed.
So, you’re saying WebTV might have a chance now.
I thought Daniel Dilger would have prophesied the death MovieBeam months ago. I mean, it was obvious, right?
I’m getting weary of self anointed techno-Nostradamuses who seem more able to compose a lengthy editorial than forecast future reality.
I could see merging TV, the Mac mini and Airport Extreme and inter-connecting it to my hi-fi and HDTV. A Mac mini media server. I want fewer boxes under my TV, not more.
We have an all laptop house, with cell phones only. Cable splits between my Airport Extreme and HDTV/HD-DVR, with an ethernet cable running to my office network switch and laser printer. It would be nice to have a home Mac dedicated to some media service, instead of using my business Mac for media chores. Besides, web surfing and email is really fun to do on a big Full-Res HDTV. Watching a movie and checking IMDB
Ripping thousands of CDs and DVDs (literally) and sorting/managing them in iTunes just doesn’t make sense. it’s too much work, besides.