Movies Delivered Via Television Signal 274
valdean writes "Disney, Intel and Cisco have teamed up to launch Moviebeam, a $200 set-top box connected to your TV set that offers 100 movies at a time, with 7-8 new films replacing the 7-8 oldest each week. Movies cost $4 for new releases and $2 for old ones, with each payment granting 24 hours of access to that movie. There is no subscription fee and no monthly minimum. The nifty part? MovieBeam's movies are encoded in the broadcast signal of PBS stations across the United States, so you don't need a computer or an Internet connection. The bad part? The Moviebeam player also requires a connection to a phone jack -- every fortnight the box dials a toll-free number in the middle of the night to tally how much you've spent on movies so far, for the benefit of your monthly statement."
Working Clicky (Score:5, Informative)
Also note that prices [engadget.com] seem to be dropping [techliving.com] for the MovieBeam box. Quite a bit actually, the latter article states that you can get them for $49 now--$200 is the debut MSRP.
I've read a lot of luke-warm reviews on this thing and people say now that the system needs refinement. What I'm wondering is whether or not you can substitute a broadband (RJ-45) connection with the phone line connection. I don't have a land line at my home because four people in my family own cell phones. It just doesn't make sense to pay for long distance accross a land line. Is there an alternative to people like me for phoning home and notifying the company of my movie watchage?
Honestly, I guess I don't want Michael Eisner in my living room or a device that phones home to him.
Phone line tricks (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also only a matter of time before someone figures out the protocol for it to get authorization from the server over dialup and writes code to let a dial-up modem talk to the set-top box and say "account is good, authorized for another 2 weeks".
Not going to fly. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, even the protocol is probably going to be encrypted up the wazoo. Man-in-the-middle attacks are likely to be challenging on this.
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is if they've made the encryption that secure, one little glitch, and it's all over, No one can get anything and it's not likely that they'll be able to fix it.
There's a reason most products have manufacturer's codes and backdoors built-in. It makes troubleshooting possible.
Imagine you're watching a movie you've paid good money for, and there's a one bit drop in the tranmission. (After error correction) Remember, this is a shoot and forget systems. There's no oportunity to resend a bad packet like over the internet. Just one bit dropped from a really secure, compressed stream will render it useless.
My wife and I leave closed captioning on so we don't wake the kids. We recieve TV over the air, and even when reception is good, there's often errors in the stream. "To be or not to be, that is the &%%*&%*^(*"
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:3, Informative)
With that, errors (that persist after the error-correcting codes have done their magic) are amplified (a lot) but atleast the rest of the movie isn't fucked. If you re-synch every 10 seconds, for example, any error severe enough to get trough the error-correcting codes will result in up to 10 seconds of static.
There's (lots!) better ways. This is mentioned
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:2)
Given the involvement of Disney and their obsession with the perception of perfection, I'd say this was likely.
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:2)
But, for something like this, you would use fun little tricks like trellis codes [wikipedia.org], turbo codes [wikipedia.org], and convolutional codes [wikipedia.org]. You would be surprised how well this can work. In satellite work, using such tricks along with a few others makes it possible to recover a signal that is even below the noise floor. Cool stuff.
Plus, you can do all sorts of fancy things like send an XOR of two different blocks i
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:3, Funny)
I agree. They should bring back Garrett Morris shouting from the corner of the screen.
Re:Not going to fly. (Score:3, Funny)
That wasn't an error, that's really what Hamlet said. He was troubled you know...
Re:Working Clicky (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly, I guess I don't want Michael Eisner in my living room or a device that phones home to him.
Well, actually Eisner is not at Disney anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eisner [wikipedia.org]
Re:Working Clicky (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Working Clicky (Score:2)
A box that would likely be adopted by technically-oriented people with a requirement (POTS) from which most of these same people are moving away.
I wish that I were so ignorant. Life would be bliss.
Re:Working Clicky (Score:4, Insightful)
If the product is a success with the target market, it will be dead simple to bring out an Ethernet or wireless capable version that can run over broadband, but there's no reason to be wading into already thickly infested waters for a product launch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Working Clicky (Score:2)
Could it run Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
$49 for how big a hard drive and a bunch of other parts? If it can store 8 movies, that average 1.5 hours, that's 12 hours. Assuming the high quality mode of Tivo, that about a 40 gig drive. Not that great a price, I'll wait for these boatanchors to be unloaded at yard sales and ebay to strip them. I wonder if the processor can run Linux? Sounds like they have a HD tuner inside, so they could be cool to hack.
Movies via TV? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Movies via TV? (Score:2)
Re:Movies via TV? (Score:2, Funny)
KFG
Movies? Via Television? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Movies? Via Television? (Score:2)
Trusting the client? (Score:3, Insightful)
<sarcasm>Yeah I don't think this is going to be cracked.</sarcasm>
Re:Trusting the client? (Score:3, Funny)
Comic Book Guy: Well first of all I've a plan to eliminate obesity in women.
Lyndsey Nagle: Oh please, for a nickel-a-person tax increase we could build a theatre for shadow puppets.
Dr. Hibbert: Balinese or Thai?
Lyndsey Nagle: Why not both, then everybody's happy.
Comic Book Guy: Oh yeah, everyone's real happy then.
Lyndsey Nagle: Do I detect a note of sarcasm?
Professor Frink: (With sarcasm detector) Are you kidding
prepayment (Score:2)
Hmm, the obvious alternative would seem to be prepaid cards, sold over the counter. If I was them, though, I'd build in a system like this just because people will probably try to hack the cards or system; I'd really want some way to know if hackers had been successful, so I could update the firmware.
If they want users to pay by credit card or similar, the need for a phone connection is obvious....
Just my $0.02,
Michael
Re:prepayment (Score:2)
At which point they'd be hacked like the satellite cards. The phone-home capability does two things:
1) Allows security "updates" when the thing gets hacked.
2) Makes snooping traffic a lot more difficult.
Re:prepayment (Score:2)
3) Artificially limits their potential customer base to people that have POTS lines.
I don't have POTS, and I'm not paying a monthly fee to get it on top of $200 for the player just so that I can watch movies for $2-4 a pop. I don't think Netflix, etc. has any reason to be quaking in their boots just yet, and it sounds to me like this product is going to go the way of Circuit City's Divx.
Re:prepayment (Score:2)
I see you think like a CEO.
Unfortunately all of your engineers know the second when the product get's hacked by using the most powerful detector on the planet...
www.google.com
as soon as you see people talking about success you have been hacked. Really simple and seems to be beyond the grasp and understanding of the worlds corperations leaders.
It isn't new to the UK (Score:4, Informative)
The given reason is that it is to allow for pay-per-view broadcasting, but I cant help thinking there is other uses to having the box plugged in 24/7. However, to give fair credit, the equipment, UI and service is excellent and they cant have much personal information other than your viewing habits. Can they?
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
The fee is to encourage people to plug it in because it is much much cheaper to provide pay material through automated means. About 1-10% of phone authorizations end up being with a live person, which adds up very fast.
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
As others mention below in replies the phone line is mandated to be connected for the first twelve months of your contract IF you want the subsidised Sky box, if you are willing to pay full price for it you do not have to leave it connected. Sky's line on why this exists is for "Interactive Services" like e-mail for which they actually had a contract with a third party. The fun part was asking them (this was a few years ago) how much it would cost in Ireland to send an email using the box to which the o
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
Anyhow about this movies-over-terrestrial thing - I presume this service is terrestrial transmission - how exactly does it work? Yeah I read the article, and it says it piggybacks on PBS's signal. I presume it's some kind of digital transmission. But we have quite a bit of digital terrestrial transmission going on here in the UK,
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2, Informative)
For a pure, unmolested box, there's no bug.
The box office system works by having a credit on the viewing card, viewings are stored and then cleared once the box dials up everything gets added to the bill. By fooling the machine into thinking a
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It isn't new to the UK (Score:2, Informative)
The return of the hacked box (Score:2, Interesting)
This seems surprisingly similar... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see:
Oh yeah, now we have replaced DVDs with a cable. Anyway, it won't work.
Will they never learn? (Score:5, Insightful)
First lay out $200 for their proprietary player, then pay for a phone line for the damn thing, all for the pleasure of paying $2 - $4 a movie.
I'm still waiting for Apple and Netflix to make a move.
Re:Will they never learn? (Score:2, Informative)
Imagine... (Score:3, Funny)
Bad?? (Score:3, Interesting)
This sounds like a fun PVR project.
from tfa (Score:5, Funny)
INTERNET MOVIE-DOWNLOAD SITES Oh, forget it. It takes forever to download a movie, the quality isn't great, and you need a computer that's connected to your TV.
I must be on the wrong internet
The bad part ? (Score:2)
I can't say that *I* would be thrilled to have yet another box in my living room though, and I'm sure tehre are plenty of points of failures in the system. And I woldn't dream of paying a dime for allowing them to stream films to it.
Re:The bad part ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The bad part ? (Score:2)
Actually, I would bet that since the PBS government subsidy has been cut so much, and since private pledge drives have been failing to meet goals for years, that this is a deal that local PBS stations are entering into to stay alive.
Personally I think it is a great idea. If they can grant access to companies for this type of scheme, and that allows them to keep their shows commercial free, I am all for it. I think this shows some great creative thinking and a surprising amount of flexibility on the par
Re:The bad part ? (Score:2)
Re:The bad part ? (Score:2, Funny)
develop a box that decodes them and doesn't require you to pay extra - you can
And PBS is getting how much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I read TFA the last time it was posted, and I clicked over to make sure it was the same (type) of service - I didn't see a "dollars back intot he public coffer" section on the front page.
Re:And PBS is getting how much? (Score:4, Informative)
Enough to make it worth their while. This has been going on for several years at this point. Probably several thousand, if not more, per month. Enough to help offset the transmitter power bill.
Or at least, as a taxpayer I should be getting a kickback
Uh... No. PBS member stations are not run be the federal government and in only a few states are they owned by the states. They are getting this money directly into their own operating fund. Tell me which state you are in and I can tell you if the PBS stations are owned by your state or not.
Re:And PBS is getting how much? (Score:2)
The federal government has always been horrible at getting it's due from renting stuff like land or the airwaves. It's always been cheaper for companies to buy congresscritters and senate-beings than to pay market value to using public property.
Re:And PBS is getting how much? (Score:2)
Realize that this is coming from someone who finds some o
Re:And PBS is getting how much? (Score:2)
Of course then they become a government mouthpiece. Currently they have government grants but they do have to get sponsorship to pay their bills. But being owned by the government wouldn't make them any more hardhitting...
This has to be the silliest headline.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This has to be the silliest headline.... (Score:2)
how many minutes till the dial-up billing's hacked (Score:2)
My time-shift right (Score:2)
Re:My time-shift right (Score:3, Informative)
Harkens back to Windows 98 (Score:3, Interesting)
Didn't Win98 have a downloadable content app over PBS signals? Ah yes, WavePhore's WaveTop [microsoft.com]. Since all the links on that page now go to parking "search pages", I guess that one didn't work out very well.
same system as Sky TV (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:same system as Sky TV (Score:2)
And what about a systems outage on behalf of the phone company? Do they verify that if you have no wire connectivity they should't just charge you? Or do they just say "bugger it, free money is free money no matter the reason for the outage"?
I mean, what's to prevent a company with such an arrangement to 'encourage' vandalism of the phone lines to generate a little revenue?
Man in the Middle attack (Score:4, Insightful)
You will need one of these [grandstream.com] handy little gadgets plugged into your PC, a copy of Asterisk [asterisk.org], and you're almost good to go. Just convince the Moviebeam player that your PC is the Moviebeam central office. It'll phone through and report your usage. But your PC isn't the Moviebeam central office, so no bill will be generated. You may also have to get your PC to call the real Moviebeam central office and report no usage.
Old-timers will have heard of various coloured boxes in connection with the phone system: Black Box {free incoming calls}, Blue Box {in-band signalling generator}, Red Box {payphone coin-insertion signal generator}, Beige Box {croc-clips to phone socket adaptor} and so on. More esoteric ones included the Jade {timer to avoid itemised bill threshhold}, Primrose {phone-line powered battery charger} and Violet {line holding circuit, defeats money-run-out on some subscriber-owned payphones} Boxes {all the good colours were already taken by the time they were invented}. But this setup truly is the fabled "sky blue pink box with yellow spots on"!
Re:Man in the Middle attack (Score:2)
PBS signal, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
It's bad enough tax money subsidizes the immensely profitable Sesame Street and Barney corporations. Oh, but NooooOOOoooo, Disney has to get their cut too.
Re:Maybe you didn't read the article (Score:2)
Now, stations are selling parts of their bandwidth to highest bidders. We, the people, gave them that bandwidth, shouldn't we get direct compensation for it?
PBS is a good thing, but I think it's roundabout for the government to say "We won't pay for you, but here's this incrediblely valueable asset. Sell it for
Lacking freedom... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have heard the commercial... and I'm not impressed with the whole concept. It just seems like a poor means of getting movies in that it also seems very limited in the choices it can give you. I have cable TV and I don't bother with having movie channels because I'd rather go to Blockbuster and rent and watch something when I feel like it and not when it happens to be on.
linksys? (Score:2)
Re:linksys? (Score:2)
I already do this... sorta (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference is that this takes a little bit of planning. Recently DirecTV had a free everything weekend, in which we got everyone of their non-PPV channels for free for the entire weekend. That weekend, my TiVo recorded pretty much non-stop on HBO, Starz, Cinemax & Showtime. I've gotten through a few of those movies that I recorded. By the time I get through all of them, it'll be time for another free weekend.
But if I get impatient, I can order a PPV and record it and watch it whenever I want, as many times as I want, until I delete it.
There are pros/cons to Moviebeam. For example, they have a much better selection. But that's countered by the fact that what I do record, I can keep until my hard drive dies.
Doesn't seem like a service that I really want/need.
Bandwidth comes at a cost (Score:2)
This already happens quite a bit on PBS signals I have seen, and carving out more of the pipe for data transmission of Disne
Re:Bandwidth comes at a cost (Score:3, Insightful)
*required, just like they were in 2003 and 2006.
Re:Bandwidth comes at a cost (Score:2, Insightful)
From Dotcast [dotcast.com]
"dNTSC® allows broadcasters to cost-effectively and reliably distribute large volumes of digital data using existing commercial television broadcasting infrastructures. Dotcast uses its technology to insert a broadband digital data signal inside the analog television broadcast signal and transmit it in a manner that is invisible to the television viewer."
Pushing Dogs and B-List Movies! (Score:2)
There were very few movies on the list I would watch for free. They aren't worth the time.
Further amazing tech news... (Score:2)
TFA's lame comparisons to Netflix, rental store (Score:2)
"No late fees?" Netflix doesn't have them. The policy of my local Blockbuster is that they leave messages on your phone if you're past the "due date" and that if you keep it _a mon
Been there, done that in the 80s: X*PRESS (Score:3, Interesting)
It was remarkable for its time. 9600 baud continuous and uncompressed was quite delightful in the days of 2400 baud modems. Megabytes a day! They had a packeted proprietary protocol. In the stream, you'd get various second-rate wire-service news stories and syndicated columns. They could also send files - you'd see a menu of files that were going to be sent over the next 24 hours, and select which you wanted, and it would grab them and store to your hard disk.
There were message boards, but the uplink was done by long-distance call to an incredibly lame BBS system running on a mainframe. I think they were aiming it at the educational market as well as stock market players. I remember late-night TV commercials for it.
They missed the boat. With better software, they could've made lots of money selling these boxes to all the people who were using BBSes at the time. Instead of a sole national head-end, city or regional co-adminstration would've made it much more interesting.
Today, I think it still makes sense for all sorts of data. Isn't this one of the issues at the core of the argument about a tiered Internet? They want to shuffle the big one-way files (like movies) into an extra tier because they're clogging the regular Internet.
There are plenty of large files you'd be willing to wait for, no? You already wait an indefinite amount of time for a large file to be delivered. What if you could go to a web site, select a big file you'd like to receive, and know that by tomorrow it would be delivered to your hard disk? Yes, that sounds exactly like FTP/torrent/whatever. You don't care how the file is delivered. You just want to know you'll get it soon. Or, like X*PRESS, the web could show a list of all the files scheduled to come down the pike, and you could choose to grab one when they go by.
Imagine if your existing cable modem not only handled your bidirectional interactive Internet connection but also one of these separate one-way data streams. You'd get more data from your existing connection. Arguably, I'd say this scheme consumes far less of the cable company's resources. It's one-way broadcast. With today's technology, how many gigs per day could you squeeze into one digital or analog channel on a cable system?
Used for porn (Score:2)
Details at http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/37300 [heise.de] (German).
Re:Contact homebase only once every 2 weeks? (Score:2)
Re:Contact homebase only once every 2 weeks? (Score:2)
Re:Contact homebase only once every 2 weeks? (Score:2)
X = whatever I missed plus the strong encryption you mention. How cheap can you get with it?
Re:Contact homebase only once every 2 weeks? (Score:2)
Re:Contact homebase only once every 2 weeks? (Score:2)
hd is available.... (Score:2)
If you read the comment but hate to read tfa:
"MovieBeam could also play an important role in the new era of high-definition movies -- once it gets its act together. Each month, about four of its movies are offered in high definition (for an additional $1 each), which you can enjoy on any HDTV set that has -- stand back for oncoming jargon -- either an HDMI jack or a DVI connector with HDCP"
Re:Don't wanna pay? unplug the box.... (Score:2)
Of course the keys should be downloadable from a torrent site and the remote dial-in server possible to emulate using a PC and a modem... but then some good software should be able to descramble the TV signal without using the set-top box at all.
Re:Fortnight?? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnight [wikipedia.org]:
A fortnight is a unit of time equal to two weeks: that is 14 days, or literally 14 nights. The term is common in British English, Hiberno-English and Australian English, but rarely used in American English. It derives from the Old English feowertiene niht, meaning "fourteen nights".
Re:Fortnight?? (Score:2)
Re:Fortnight?? (Score:2)
I can't imagine the kind of comments you'd receive if you used the word "fortnight" in conversation.
=Shreak
Re:Fortnight?? (Score:2, Funny)
Remember when you were a kid and you built a fort out of cardboard boxes and then slept in it?
It's one of those.
I should know. I'll never forgive myself for what the dew did to my baseball cards.
Re:Fortnight?? (Score:2)
Re:Erm... (Score:2)
Heck, next thing you know, they'll be announcing songs over the radio!
Hey, wait a second ... the time machine worked, but it put me in 2006, not 1906. Wait until Doc and John Titor hear about this!!!
Re:Erm... (Score:2)
The way the Buck-a-night dvd rental place work it is simple - when the movie's new, they rent it for $3 bucks a night. Once the disk has made enough to pay for itself, plus a small profit, it goes down to $1 a night. Its pu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hundreds of movies? (Score:2)
The box comes loaded with 100 movies when shipped.
Re:Hundreds of movies? (Score:2)
The movies are transmitted in the color sub carrier of the TV signal. It is miniscule but is sometimes noticeable for a second. However, even at 5kbyte/s, over 4 weeks that is over 10GB. Plenty for two movies in there, more if they use a lower resolution.
Re:Phone Line Not Always Required... (Score:2)
Interestingly, at least with Expressvu