Re-Visting MovieBeam

Michael Gartenberg | June 28, 2006, 08:13 AM

I like movies but hate the process of renting them. I'm also not a real netflix fan as the last thing I need is another subscription fee to pay each month. I confess, I also don't get any of the movie channels. I've tried services like MovieLink on the MediaCenter PC hooked up to the display in the living room but the process seems to always break in between movies causing me to have spend too much time to make things work again.

So, when I read Jeremy Toeman's first review of the new incranation MovieBeam service, I made a note to check it out again. (Jeremy, who works for Slingmedia, is a person who I listen to on this type of stuff). When I read his more recent post and saw that there was a promotion to forget the box $49, I figured it was a no brainer and rather than wait for their PR folks to get back to me, I just ordered one as a consumer.

A day later, the box arrived and it set about the task of getting it connected. The basic connections were pretty straghtforward, but it does need to be connected to a phone jack (for billing purposes) as well an antenna that needs to be near a window so you can get the signal. You see the service operates a little differently, using a different spectrum frequency, the service is constantly downloading movies over the air in the backgorund. Every week, there's a few new movies that appear and you simply click on one to rent it at comparable prices to other channels. No wait and no fuss...

After a little bit of moving things around, I start the process of connecting. Waiting and watching a rather dull intro video, the unit finally tells me there's an error and I need to call the support line. *sigh*. First call to support is pretty smooth. I wait about a minute online and speak with someone who speaks English. He informs me my unit was not properly configured with the serial number of the unit they sent out. I read him the number and he tells me they will try to get the service working that day. I resist the urge to ask for an RMa # and go about my business.

A few hours later in a spirit of inspiration, I decide to try again. This time, the acoount gets activted and we now go through a little dance trying to position the receiver to properly get a signal. Beeping like a geiger counter, I finally manage to find a spot high on a windows that it mostly likes. We go from there to another screen asking me to call customer service once again to get a special code to activate the unit. Again, another minute on hold, my unit serial number in hand and my secret code is given to me. Whew. It wasn't a nightmare process, but there's just so many different steps, not to mention phone calls needed to make this thing work. Surely there could have been some sort of online set up and activation?

Once I got it all connected and activated, everything works fine. There's a pretty decent selection of about a hundred films, including several I want to watch. Good Night and Good Luck is there and Munich popped up over the weekend. Glory Road is here (I half watched it on a red eye a few weeks ago but I really want to see the whole thing) There's supposedly some films in HD on here but I haven't seen one yet.

My thoughts? It's a pretty good tactical solution for folks who like movies. The selection is limited but I found more content I was interested in seeing and fresher content than on MovieLink or Vongo. no to mention, unlike those other services, I didn't need a PC to make it all work. Netflix will likely be a good solution for most folks and of course there's always Blockbuster. At $199, I doubt i'd have purchased one. For $49, it's a fantastic deal, even if it's something you only use every so often. There's a 30 day money back offer, so if you don't mind a little hassle on the setup side, it's something to check out.

What's really cool is that it points the way to the future. I don't want 100 movies to choose from. I want every movie ever made available (or perhaps at least ten thousand to start with). I want to be able to que up films that I want it to cache for me instead of deciding what comes down. Like the first flash based MP3 players I used, I can see the potential here. But I want to get rid of the serial port connection and the 32mb of memory. In short, I want the iPod of movie services for my home.