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New Disney / Samsung HDD Video Set-Top Box 192

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-might-be-neat dept.
MDMurphy writes "Disney announced a new set-top box built for them by Samsung that will hold movies downloaded over the air via what they call MovieBeam in an internal HDD. You'd pay a monthly rental fee for the box and $2.39 - $3.99 per movie for a 24 hour viewing period. Dotcast Inc. provides the movie beaming, sending the digital data out over terrestrial TV broadcast stations. "
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New Disney / Samsung HDD Video Set-Top Box More

New Disney / Samsung HDD Video Set-Top Box

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  • Don't know if this will work (Score:5, Informative)

    by l810c ( 551591 ) * on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:19PM (#7116423)
    This [videostoremag.com] was announced months ago and will be similar to Movielink that several other major studios have joined.

    The movie will not be of the same quality as DVD. Also, if it's the same as Movielink and other pay-per-view, there is still a ~6 week window that movies will be available at the rental store before they make it here.

    I don't understand what the benefit is to people who are already paying for DirecTV or Digital Cable.

    • Having worked for a failed "Brodband Entertainment Network [intertainer.com]" (their term not mine) in my opinion there are some hurdles to get over.
      1. A decent codec that provides both DVD quality video and 5.1 audio
      2. Enough bandwidth to support streaming, who wants to wait for it to download
      3. Easy integration to the TV

      It sounds like they have taken care of #3. But if I have to wait longer than it will take me to go to Blockbuster (I didn't see a download time in the article) for something that is going to be less than VHS q

      • 1. Xvid or Divx containered in OGM format can support 5.1 and subtitles, with *amazing* quality in 1400 MB.

        2. With your average 1.5 Mbit cablemodem connection that is just over two hours for 1400 MB, so give a little queue time.

        3. Just over $200 for an Xbox and a mod chip..... ;)

        4. If I could be legit and do this... well....
    • Movielink have also just announced [com.com] a deal with Road Runner to deliver video on demand to Road Runner customers, including a free Movie of the Month.

  • How long until it's cracked? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Electrode ( 255874 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:19PM (#7116427) Homepage
    I give it 3 days.

  • Whatever happened to? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:20PM (#7116435) Journal
    Whatever happened to the Sony/Matsushita deal to create a media-box oriented Linux distro?

    Here's a link [forbes.com]

  • Oh boy! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Gyorg_Lavode ( 520114 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:20PM (#7116440)
    Oh Boy! for a 2 dollar rental feel I can download movies at a day/$4 that I can get for a week/$4 at blockbuster. What a deal.

    • Re:Oh boy! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by xeno_gearz ( 533872 )
      Is that starkly different from the people who purchase "pay per view" movies?

      The ultimate factor there is convenience. I agree with you however and would rather go to the store and rent for cheaper. Still there is certainly an audience for this feature. This is nothing new.
      • The ultimate factor there is convenience. I agree with you however and would rather go to the store and rent for cheaper. Still there is certainly an audience for this feature. This is nothing new.

        This seems to be a pretty direct competitor for PPV, and PPV seems to be a big winner because I don't have to pay a monthy rental fee for PPV. The possible plusses, Tivo like playback, aren't likely enough to convince folks to start paying $5/month to have the opportunity to get PPV from yet abother device in t

      • I rent PPV movies all the time and then record them to my PVR to watch when ever I feel like it...granted it is an additional step but easily automated. I think netflix is a sweet deal too and use the heck out it. The question I have is this, wasn't there a federal ruling that the airwaves were free and if you could receive the signal you were entitled to it ?
    • A movie that you will typically only watch once and then forget to bring back on time, incurring the late fee which makes up most of Blockbuster's revenue. Hmm...
    • But it takes considerably longer to rip a DVD from Blockbuster than it does to copy the raw MPEG from a standard IDE HDD.

    • Re:Oh boy! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Aiku1337 ( 551438 )
      Their target market is very small, according to the folks at Disney that I talked to. It's targeted at people who rent like 10 movies per month and also incur a lot of late charges. This way they can still rent a lot of movies but not suffer from late fees.

  • DSounds like those DivX boxes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Altima(BoB) ( 602987 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:21PM (#7116446)
    I can't really see this working too well. Sure retunring tapes and DVDs is a pain in the ass, but limited systems such as this don't exactly have a good history of success. Remember those DivX boxes that could play movies that would expire after a couple days? Crashed and burned, all it did for the world was provide an amusing angry character for Penny Arcade. I'm betting we won't really hear much about this again.

  • I'm sure... (Score:4, Funny)

    by GatorMan ( 70959 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:21PM (#7116452)
    ...this won't get hacked just like DTV, DishNet, 802.11, and everything else sent through the air!
  • Not too mention at $3-$4 a movie, A LOT of DVDs now are $9.99. Not much more but you keep it for free, unlimited viewing , and better quality. Though I guess people who want to buy the movie and customers of digital cable,etc are NOT the target market, if they are then this service will fail. I think if this is made to compete with blockbuster, netflix,etc.. then they have a good chance, since most people I think prefer the ability to not leave their house to "rent" a movie and as long as they don't mind
    • I agree. What is with this "limited time?", that is sure to greatly reduce the demand. It would be much simpler to just have the disk fill up so that people are forced to pick an old movie to throw away. Any plausable DRM system that would prevent these time-limited movies from being copied would also work for the non-time-limited ones.

  • Anyone remember the Divx DVD wannabe? Doesn't Disney ever learn. I personally would not pay $x a month for a box, and then an additional $y to rent a movie for 24 hours. that's just stupid.
    • My thoughts exactly. When reading this I instantly thought DivX is back. I think one of the following things will happen.

      1) It gets hacked and people start grabbing movies right out of the air
      2) It doesn't sell and gets discontinued
      3) They remove the 24 Hour limit, and go flat rate (IE Netflix w/o Snail Mail)

      Personally I can see the third option being a good business model, but knowing how Disney operates it will probably be unnamed option #4

      4) Buy a senator, make watching t.v. illegal unless you pay dis

  • What about DVD extras? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Thinkit3 ( 671998 ) * on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:22PM (#7116461)
    Will you get widescreen, or at least the option? What about the 5.1 sound? And I doubt the video quality will approach DVD. When they say you'll get exactly the content of a DVD, then there's a reason to switch. The only service to do this seems to be netflix, which just sends you the damn disc.
    • It's not meant to be a competitor to rentals, it's meant to be a competitor to pay-per-view. You don't get all that stuff on pay-per-view either.
    • We use netflix. It's a nice service. We usually kick back on the couch and have a couple drinks. We don't really care about 5.1 sound (the TV has only two speakers). We don't give a damn about extra. With DVD you have to press a button to make the movie actually play, whereas with VHS all we had to do was put put the tape in. But it is nice not having to press buttons to stop and rewind.

      Maybe we're the only ones who just simply watch the movie. But I suspect many others also couldn't care less abou

  • Break down the price (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GreenCrackBaby ( 203293 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:25PM (#7116491) Homepage
    $7/month rental fee for set-top box.

    $4/movie

    $30.00 activation fee in some areas.

    Holy shit. Break it down...let's say I watch 7 movies a month (yeah right, I wish I had that much time).

    $4 for movie + $1 rental + $.50 for activation fee (assuming roughly 70 movies a year, activation fee spread out over year) = $5.50 per movie, with more restrictions than you get with traditional rentals.

    Where's the cost savings? Why on earth would people buy this...are they really so lazy that driving to the movie store is such an effort (please don't answer that!).
    • Why on earth would people buy this...are they really so lazy that driving to the movie store is such an effort (please don't answer that!).

      You're talking to a group of people that does most of their shopping online. What do you think?
      • You're talking to a group of people that does most of their shopping online.

        While this is true, I'd say the #1 reason for buying things online is because they're typically cheaper. There's a certain element of convenience, and a certain element of laziness, but at the end of the day there's also a smaller price tag. I don't know how much movies cost to rent in the US, but in Canada I think a new release movie is around $4 at major chains (~2.50 US?) and can be had for much less at the independant rental

      • You're talking to a group of people that does most of their shopping online. What do you think?

        Actually, there are more benefits to shopping online than merely convenience. A lot of online stores are cheaper than brick-and-mortar stores, even when you factor in shipping prices (and remember a lot of online stores are starting to have free shipping options). So, this service would definitely not make sense for people looking to save some money on their entertainment spending.

        What?!? You mean large

    • What Disney ought to do is, either, give the boxes away (but make people sign for them and pay to replace if lost/damaged...not a big deal, insurance covers this kind of stuff), and just charge for the viewing, OR, charge a flat rate of like $20 per month, all the movies you want. Either way would be a much better deal for consumers, and would get them more customers (which == "more money").

      They'd basically be combining the best parts of TiVo and HBO.
    • You're not considering the proximity of video rental stores or gas prices. PPV isn't as necessary in cities and suburbs due to the convenience of rental places, but out in the courtyside, it can be time consuming and costly. For many people, it can be an hour round trip and several dollars in gasoline to pick up a video (though many work or shop in more urban areas, they aren't going to make a special trip just for a movie on a rainy day).
    • Old release value day -- 5 movies for $5 for five days
      Bag of chips and salsa, 2L of soda $6
      2 Good joints -- $10

      5 days worth of amusement, snacks included, $21.

    • Another way of looking at it:

      8 movies per month, chosen from the Netflix catalog of 15,000 titles: $20.

      8 movies per month, chosen from Disney's catalog of 100 titles: more than $30.

      Getting the Samsung box cheap after the service folds, and turning it into a home media system: Priceless.
    • "Where's the cost savings? Why on earth would people buy this...are they really so lazy that driving to the movie store is such an effort (please don't answer that!)."

      Dude, it's not like there's four video stores between my house and my job I drive to and from each day. Oh, wait, there are. Yeah, wtf?!?!?

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gmurnock ( 606806 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:25PM (#7116492) Homepage
    Sounds cool, but why only 24 hours? If there's one thing people want these days, it's not to be bound to any arbitrary schedule. It'd be cooler if they could allow you to have, say, five movies at a time "checked out", with no time limit. Then it'd be like NetFlix, but without the mail :)
    • And that would be more sensible, since the device is hard-drive based. "You are free to watch the movie as often as you want until you delete it to make room for something else" would be more reasonable that "24 hours".

      It's essentially the electronic version of Netflix. But then, why not just use Netflix? If late fees are the problem, Netflix is certainly a good solution.

  • The fact that there will be a camera ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by burgburgburg ( 574866 ) <splisken06.email@com> on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:28PM (#7116528)
    in the set top box so that Disney will be able to watch you watching their content to ensure that you are watching with a respectful level of attention and in a responsible manner, not half watching or touching yourself or the like, is reason enough not to get it as far as I'm concerned.

    Now if you'll excuse, I've got to slip into my mid-afternoon tin foil hat (the mid-day one has worn out it's blocking powers by now).

    • no, the camera is only to check that only registered paying users of the system watch the movie.
      In the following case (among others) you will receive an additionnal invoice :
      * your parents are visiting, and watch the movie: add 5$ per viewer
      * you babysit children of the neighborhood : add 2.5 $ per child
      * your pet is watching tv : add 1$, except in case of mainly animal movie, in which case add 5$

  • TV broadcasts have always been free to recieve... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:29PM (#7116536)
    I wonder about the legal issues here, since licensed broadcast TV signals have always been in the clear and legal for anyone to recieve. I'm not sure if it's clear that TV broadcasters can deliver encrypted pay services on their sidebands, or that it would be illegal to break such encryption, DMCA notwithstanding.

    Of course, with the current roundheeled FCC majority, it's probably a safe bet that if TV broadcasters wanted to start "premium" terrestrial pay services, they'd probably be allowed.

    -Isaac

    • ... licensed broadcast TV signals have always been in the clear and legal for anyone to recieve.

      Not quite true. SelectTV started as an over-the-air scrambled channel. It required a set-top box but no cable. This was back in the early- to mid-1980s.

    • A long time ago (25 years?) there was a company called ON TV in Phoenix that broadcast their pay signals over a normal UHF channel (channel 15 I think). They had a contract with the local indy station to take over their broadcasts from something like 7pm until some odd hour in the mornning.

      In order to receive the channel content, you had to have/rent/purchase a decoder box that had nothing but a big knob on it that said-- wait for it-- Off and ON.

      My grandmother had one. It worked well enough. Nothin

    • Well. According to DirecTV's recent lawsuits, even owning hardware that could be programmed to break signals is implication enough to sue ya for $12k. Doesn't matter if they have any proof at all. All they need is to see a credit card transaction from years ago with someone who sells the stuff and you are toast.

      Toast in the sense, that even if you fight it, you'll still be out a few thousand in legal counsel. Then if you lose, add $12-20k on top of it and possible criminal charges.

      I'd just say fuck it, ma
    • There are no regulations regarding "non clear" transmissions that are ancillary to your main television service. Already there is data going in many vertical blank and horizontal blank (Microsoft Actimates) intervals on analog TV. Now there is Dotcast modulation as well.

      In the DTV realm, you have the possibility of sending IP encapsulated in MPEG-2 transport stream, which is fairly standardized. Already there have been tests of sending Windows Media UDP streams and multicast file transfers over DTV sign
  • I'd prefer to have all the movies I want for a flat monthly fee... or better.. higher UL/DL speeds...

    • Re:Why don't we get it for a flat fee? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @03:45PM (#7117462)
      Then get Netflix.

      Another option is to get a dual tuner PVR and record PPV with it. It's not technically video on demand, but close enough.

      I've noticed one of the real crappers about how americans watch movies. One word sums it up: impulsive.

      Go to www.imdb.com, browse around. Find artists you like, directors, etc. Read reviews from real people, select your movies, add to your netflix queue or record them off the PPV channels with the PVR. Then watch them on Friday/Saturday/Sunday with the lady.

      You can't really beat that for download speed. Realtime PPV signals equate to around 1.6MBytes/sec (assuming DVD quality). If you want to equate UL/DL speeds using a different transmit medium, such as snailmail, you are still doing pretty good:

      I figured it up and, assuming a 72 hour turnaround on my netflix movies, I'm getting what amounts to 104,166Kb/sec via snail mail when I do 3 movies at a time. This also has the advantage of getting all the extras and unlimited access to the DVD until I feel like sending it back. If you were evil, you could even rip the movies onto DVD+R media. Don't do that, though, it's illegal.

      Please excuse my random babblings.

  • Great Concept (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Honest Man ( 539717 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:29PM (#7116542)
    I like the price and I'll be game to use it 'on demand' but the monthly service fee has to go for the box - I'd rather just buy a box for $50-$100 and have a glorified dvd/vhs player.

    Disney should take the next step though and for $20 bucks you should be able to 'own' a license to unlimited playbacks of a movie. Just press a few buttons on my controller and a pin number and wala we own the license and the kids are watching their movie.

    It would be enough value for me, in 'unlimited' form that I'd be interested because that way there would be no 'wearing out' like vhs/dvd's have and my kids (who watch their favorite movies literally hundreds of times before moving on to the next 'favorite') would not be costing me $3/movie each time they wanted to see it on the 'current' plan.

  • Quality (Widescreen...Dolby Digital?) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mindee ( 530099 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:29PM (#7116544)
    The problem I see with PPV I currently have is that I've gotten snobbish with not wanting to watch Full Frame non surround sound presentations of a movie. I can pay 4 bucks to watch cropped stero movie or drive to blockbuster and pick the same movie up, widescreen and surround sound for the same 4 bucks. I don't need crisp clear amazing dvd picture quality, it can be close enough but it has to be widescreen and surround sound would be great. The lack of choice means that my TV viewing is limited to what's on High Def tonight or pop in a DVD, until they get the presentation correct I won't sign up. I think slowly at a trickle, consumers are getting widescreen snobby - even surburbanites know the difference now and not just the geeks =) - Mindee
  • Let's run down the list, shall we?

    TV

    DVD

    VCR (legacy)

    Cable decoder

    Tivo

    Surround sound receiver

    Playstations (1 & 2)

    Xbox

    Game Cube

    and now a Disney decoder box you rent PLUS movie rental. Great. Another box to dust.

  • Last Mile (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hashbrownie ( 313486 )

    Disney is just trying to get into the "last mile" game. Its media business is well vertically integrated except for its lack of cable/telephone/ISPs that actually enter people's homes and generate monthly revenues.

    In contrast, Viacom, AT&T, AOL et al have last-mile capabilities, which freaks out other media companies like Disney and NewsCorp. (This is also why NewsCorp is going after DirecTV.) Disney/NewsCorp are afraid that they'll lose pricing power, not to mention being more susceptible to the ad

  • Yuck (Score:1)

    by KRck ( 690389 )
    Lets hope this goes the way of Circuit Kitty's DIVX concept. The whole idea is lame, the cost is lame, the fact its another device is lame. Can we also say a little late to market. We already have set top boxes like tivo. So now there seriously thinking that we are yet again going to stack another device in our home entertainment system. Can we say NetFlix, hell even block buster is doing the all you can rent for x dollars a month. Sounds to me like some suite had this great "idea" about 2 years ago and ha
  • Its just payperview that costs more. How is this any diffrent from a cable box with a built in DVR.
  • A monthly fee + 2-4 bukcs for a movie is still more expensive than renting, or even using netflix. I really don't see the point of even coming out with this and them expecting to make any profit.

    And yes, I like to wait in line.

  • "... for a $6.99 monthly equipment rental fee and a charge of $2.49 to $3.99 per film.... a one-time activation fee of $29.99 required in certain areas."

    So that means that your first movie is gonna cost anywhere between $39.47 and $40.97.

    And since I rent on average of 2-3 movies per month, this is not a very cost effective alternative. It's only convenient. This is clearly targeted at people who rent something like 10 movies a month.

    Anyone know via what means the movies will be downloaded? Do you have

  • Heck, the video stores give you a week! And they have a limited supply of physical DVD discs to work with. With this thing, there's nothing to "return", so there's no reason not to let users have access to it for least a week. Obviously they won't let you have it on your set-top-box HDD indefinitely, since they want you to buy the overpriced DVD, but 24 hours is too short a time. I estimate that the DRM will be broken within a week of release, making this whole point academic, however...
  • An initial lack of customer interest if not outright failure. This should be immediately followed by loud public statements blaming the lack of interest on air piracy (hacking the signal see also here [mrcranky.com]), the Internet, and El Nino, at which point they will look to begin lawsuits, sell the technology to someone else, or change the law to compel each and every one of us to buy the damn things.

    Perhaps they'll even sue all satellite dish manufacturers and radio makers under the DMCA!

  • Subliminal Messages! (Score:3, Funny)

    by altek ( 119814 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:45PM (#7116718) Homepage
    "Disney announced a new set-top box built for them BUY SAMSUNG that will hold movies downloaded over the air..."

    Now the editors are hiding subliminal messages in the form of "typos" !! :)

  • This offers JUST what we've been waiting for, high quality pr0n, anytime, without the late return hassles.

    ...uhh, nevermind.
    • Imagine the pr0n that Disney could produce! All those mousketeers grow up... and then there are the animated characters! Dopey Does Dallas!

  • HDTV? (Score:2)

    by mbbac ( 568880 )
    Will this support HDTV? Also, I don't see too many people paying a membership fee and then paying for each rental. You'd have to be a very heavy movie watcher for that to make sense. They should have filler content that is free with the membership like documentaries and such.

  • Woohoo! Free Disney movies for all! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dfay ( 75405 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @02:48PM (#7116765)
    Honestly, how long will it be before the delivery mechanism is reverse engineered and the security broken? Even when systems like this have a decent attempt at good cryptography (DirectTV, etc.) they usually get broken. And then there are the other schemes (SDMI, cuecat, etc.) where the attempts at security just give the /. crowd a good chuckle.

    It's hard enough securing Alice and Bob so they can talk to each other securely. It's much harder when there is one Alice and *many* Bobs, and the Bobs are divided into a group you can only barely trust (those that subscribe) and those you can't trust at all.

    Anyway, bring it on! I'd love to see another example of applying security techniques to this kind of problem... it's just that I anticipate that it will be another "whatever you do, don't do this" kind of example. :)

  • COOL! (Score:2, Funny)

    by asscroft ( 610290 )
    I would have expected the pr0n industry to be first with this. Go Disney!
  • Just like digital satellite, which is a total free for all. They are yet to produce a secure technology that can prevent those that are really determined from circumventing their protection schemes.

    They can not produced a system that can not be breeched. As long as the receiver/decoder is in the hands of the end user the end user holds the keys to the kingdom in his hands. He only needs to figure them out. And after that, free shit for everyone with a desire and an Internet connection.

  • Put current releases on this for $10 and watch the green roll in. After two-three weeks in national release, release to this system, and they'll do great. It'll cut into theatre revenue a little, but less than you'd expect.

  • Just borrow movies instead (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This [office-exchange.com] might be an interesting alternative. There is already a website that does this with books [communitybooks.org], but this would be sharing more media. It's free and it looks like they want to make their money from amazon. I don't really think it will work, but it's a nice idea.

  • Overpriced (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LamerX ( 164968 ) on Thursday October 02, 2003 @03:06PM (#7117003) Journal
    Who wants to pay a service fee, plus $3.99 for a movie. I don't even need an HDD recorder, and I pay the same thing for an all day movie on Dish Network. I'm sure that cable companies and DirecTV offer the same things. Heck, if you live close enough in town to pick up terrestrial broadcasts, then you probably don't mind the walk or very short drive to the video store. Sounds to me like this is going to go out of business as fast as Circuit City's Divx (not DivX ;-) ) movies.
  • This is yet another attempt by the lovely folks at Disney to circumvent the existing home video standard. Disney was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Circuit City's stupid divx system. Its all about charging the same price up front for a DVD rental without offering any of the DVD's special features, and then getting extra revenue off a monthly access fee and 2nd day viewing window. Lame. Circuit City's divx was crushed thanks to the online community's boycott; its time to launch another one -
  • This analyst [thestreet.com] doesn't like it.

    His prediction? "There's a $100 million write-off headed Disney's way."

  • is consumers can easily see there's something wrong with being unable to play their dvds without constantly paying more money. This is because they're used to having unlimited use when they've bought physical media. Here, there is no physical media other than the box. The box will seem like cable pay-per-view to the consumers, which they're already familar with. In this context, consumers won't see anything wrong with paying for content over and over again. Basically, this is how the media giants are planni
  • Great Disney now that you've basically made the video store obsolete what are you going to do to help the 2 or 3 million people that make that industry function? MacDonalds does not have room for them and surely anyone working at a video store is not about to work at a fast food place.

    Companies need to think of the social impact of their inventions lately. Putting 3 million people out of work takes 3 million people out of the circle of capitalism. I think those who are benefitting from capitalism the mo


  • No amount of coolness can compensate for the Evilness(tm) of Disney's hand.

    .
  • Disney have little regard for such concepts as democracy and consumer rights.
    They throw so much money at one particular senator that he has come to be known as the 'Senator from Disney'. Surely this is contrary to our image of democracy.
    Until they retire their constant stream of 'donations' and make a public apology for further corrupting an already pretty fucking corrupt political system ( land of the free, my arse ), I urge everyone to do the same as I do: hire their DVDs, re-encode them in DivX;) format,
  • Chalk this up as too little to offer, too much to pay, and too late on the technology. From what I understand, the quality won't be near DVD. $2.39-$3.99 per movie for 24 hours PLUS a monthly fee is *WAY* overpriced. And this is coming from Disney! What a horrible pair.

    Why a horrible pair, you ask? I'm not a parent myself, but I'm very aware that Disney is like crack for children. Try telling them "you can only watch this for one day" and you'll never hear the end of it. Kids want to watch the movie over
  • They are one of the many players trying to take public airwaves and make proprietary data applications that run on top of them.

    So, what you would have is some shady broadcaster who got a license for our public airwaves, and they carry a crappy standard definition broadcast of their home shopping network. On the remaining bandwidth in that ~20Mbps ATSC broadcast pipe, they would carry encrypted data that could only be used by subscribers to this Disney service.

    Screw that. If they want to broadcast, the
  • Anyone know what compression format this thing is going to use?

    MPEG-4 would seem like the obvious choice for a set top box, but I haven't heard any indication of what it really is going to be.
  • Di$ney wants nothing more than to have young children (who watch a Di$ney movie hundreds of times) pay each time they watch it.

    This is like stupid, civil liberty destroying, laws. One system gets rejected; they are back six months later with the same concept, wrapped up in a new, more obfuscated package.

    The whole thrust of Di$ney is to lock up their catalogue so they can feed it to you (and more importantly, your kids) in pay per view chunks, thus ensuring revenue for years to come. Micro$oft is no differ
  • 24 hours is the most stupid thing I have ever heard.

    if I'm downloading a movie to watch, I'm going to watch it straightaway
    if I want to watch the movie again later, then the earliest would be the next night, which is just outside the freaking 24 hour limit so what the fuck is the point?

    Just give me to three hours and 85% of my money back. You can keep the change

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