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A WSJ freebie today is an article by Walter Mossberg about a new company called MovieBeam, which:
[I]s selling a $200 digital gadget prestocked with 100 movies -- some in high definition -- that you can rent at the click of a remote-control button for as little as $1.99. There's no drive to the video store, no chance of a movie being out of stock, no monthly fee, no waiting for the mail. . . . The MovieBeam service doesn't require a computer or Internet connection, and it operates independently of your cable or satellite provider. The MovieBeam box, which looks like a slim DVD player without a slot for DVDs, is basically a smart hard disk drive that connects to your TV and receives new films every week via a small, inconspicuous indoor antenna. It holds 100 movies at a time, rotated weekly in batches of 10 (but MovieBeam chooses, not you.) New ones cost more to rent than old ones.
Mossberg concludes: "MovieBeam is a smart solution for users who don't like the hassles of renting DVDs, and don't want to fool with their computers for downloading movies."
I think he understates the blockbuster potential of this invention.
It gives the content companies a path into the home apart from telephone, cable, satellite, or an any futuristic last mile connection, such as WiMax or Internet over power lines.
This provides economic leverage in the tugging between content and communications over how to split the pie.
Perhaps even more crucially, it gives content significant leverage on piracy issues, vis-a-vis both ISPs and consumer electronics manufacturers. If piracy continues untrammeled, and the ISPs and the CE companies do not help, then the creators have the option of pulling back and distributing products solely through tightly tethered devices, which will certainly have DRM considerably harder than that that now protects DVDs.
Would this be done lightly? Of course not. The content industry does not want to obsolete millions of DVD players. But if movie piracy gets totally out of hand as broadband expands, and if other efforts to address it are stalled, what choice would there be? There would be no incentive to protect a DVD industry in which each movie sold one copy which was then replicated infinitely.
I think this is a very big deal indeed.
"MovieBeam," says Mossberg, "which was developed by Walt Disney Co., and is now an independent firm partly owned by Disney."
posted by James DeLong @ 4:20 PM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation
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