nonlinear

BestBuy surprised me with an offer for MovieBeam in their Sunday circular. It’s a project that’s been in the works for some time.

It’s an interesting use of broadcast TV bandwidth to distribute movies to homes.

A quick list of problems with the service is easy to create, however:

1. Costs ALOT more upfront than Netflix
   Let’s see: $200 for the box, $30 to register and $2-4 per movie.
2. Limited movies to choose from
   Great, there are 100 movies I don’t want to pay $2 each to watch on my TV’s new hard drive. Where’s my computer?
3. Requires a landline phone.
   Ugh. Let’s make something that early adopters, who are already using Vonage or some similar VOIP service, cannot take advantage of.

Now, Netflix can be very expensive. My wife and I typically watch only 5 movies per month — and right now we’re paying Netflix the princely sum of $3.60 per movie to do so.

But one of the biggest reasons we choose to stick with Netflix is the choice of movies — so far, we haven’t felt limited by the thousands of titles Netflix has available. I would feel very limited by only having 100 movies to choose from at any time.

This lack of choice may well mark the ultimate downfall of Moviebeam.

One way to bring choice back into the mix would be to allow the set-top box to access video via the internet. Unfortunately, the only input on the box is for composite video.

But what do I know? With a more agressive pricing structure (let’s say — give the box away), this could be an interesting way for Disney to keep ABC afloat and generate new revenue from renting movies.

Matt Haughey has an interview with a MovieBeam exec.

Categorized as television