Out of the Box

The reports turned out to be true. Despite Movie Gallery having both my email address and a direct digital link to my MovieBeam box, I received the official confirmation that the service was shutting down via quaint snail mail — quaint enough to arrive two days after the service was slated to be terminated. Moviebeam.com finally reflects the service’s defunct status.

There were still a few movies listed on the service for a while, but then the device began an unusual self-destruct procedure where it started erasing the titles featured on the service. I could just hear cries of “Dave… my mind is going.” in the background.I thought it somewhat poetic that the last film listed on my box was the Nicholas Cage movie Next.

Word on the street seems to be that — unlike the hard drive in the defunct RCA Akimbo box — the MovieBeam receiver’s hard drive is unfit for reuse due to use of an encryption chip (clearly developed before the current green trend) so it looks like the only souvenir I will keep from the product is its antenna that I’m going to try to reuse as a picture frame.

However, it’s not nearly as cool as the little Newscatcher pyramid that I still have from the vintage 1997 AirMedia Live push service.

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Engadget et. al. report that Movie Gallery, which picked up the troubled MovieBeam service from Disney earlier this year, is preparing to shut down the service. One of the challenges that the product faced was limited coverage area and finicky antenna placement. However, the device had an unused Ethernet jack. Finding some way to use it for the service would have made it a standalone competitor to Vudu and Xbox Live Video Marketplace as well as removing the phone line dial-up requirement for account authorization. All that said, as long as you could get the antenna placed in a good spot, MovieBeam was a pretty clean, enjoyable user experience.

The Engadget post notes that customers have begun receiving phone calls that the service will shutter on December 15th, but that seems like an odd way to manage a shutdown. While the news only recently broke, I (a MovieBeam user) have received no service shutdown e-mails. Furthermore, the MovieBeam Web site has yet to be updated with any news and the device itself still lists movies on tap for at least two weeks after December 15th. Perhaps all that will change on Monday.

If I were Vudu, I’d try to find a way to buy the customer list and market to it. Practically all of the MovieBeam titles available on the service are also available there, plus thousands more.

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