[opendtv] Re: Disney to Sell Moviebeam
- From: "John Willkie" <JohnWillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 20:45:05 -0700
since when is the vertical blanking interval an unused portion of the
spectrum?
John Willkie
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Shutt" <shuttj@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "OpenDTV" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 1:09 PM
Subject: [opendtv] Disney to Sell Moviebeam
> Gee, never saw that one coming. Let's base a business model on a service
> that is slated to go away in 4 years.
>
> The party is over and the mouse has one heckuva hangover.
>
> John
>
>
http://broadcastengineering.com/newsletters/bth/20050911/Disney-moviebeam-20050911/
>
> Disney to sell MovieBeam
>
> Sep 9, 2005 3:07 PM
> Beyond The Headlines e-newsletter
>
> Disney is trying to shed most of its interest in the over-the-air
MovieBeam
> video-on-demand service that it shut down last spring, according to a
recent
> federal securities filing reported by CNET News.
>
> The company announced in April that the service was being temporarily
> interrupted in the three cities where it was being tested, but that it
would
> ultimately be restored after an upgrade.
>
> In financial documents filed last month, the company said that it is still
> seeking to refinance the business, and ultimately hoped to relinquish most
> of its interest. The company concluded that the refinancing would not be
> enough to cover its investment.
>
> The MovieBeam service was the most high profile of several experiments
> taking advantage of unused portions of the television spectrum to beam
> content to homes.
>
> In Disney's case, subscribers would pay $8.99 a month to rent a device
that
> would periodically be automatically refilled with up to 100 movies that
> could be watched any time for about the price of renting a movie. The
> service was operating until April in Jacksonville, FL; Spokane, WA; and
Salt
> Lake City.
>
> The company said in its filing that recent negotiations with a financial
> investor had persuaded the company that it would not recover its
investment
> in MovieBeam, and that it had decided to take a $24 million charge related
> to the service in the third fiscal quarter of 2005.
>
> The company's plans were reported by the www.aidContent.org.
>
>
>
>
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