Bye Bye DisneyDVD, Hello MovieBeam?

[MickeyMouseboy]

Eisner on Moviebeam and 'disappearing DVDs'

In the not-too-distant future, Americans may get their Disney movies straight from the coporate Mouse.

Speaking at two investor conferences in New York last week, Walt Disney Co. chairman and CEO Michael Eisner sketched the borad outlines of a strategy for delivering movies without involving video stores, cable operators or internet services.

Rather, Eisner said, Disney is seeking ways to reach consumers directly in a bid to increase the studio's margins from in-home viewing.

"A lot of this is about taking out the middlema, so you go from 45% or 50% margins," Eisner said at the Deutsche Bank Conference on June 4th.

The Disney topper focused on three initiatives aimed at moving the studio closer to the consumer: Moviebeam, the over-the-air video-on-demand slated for testing this fall; EZ-D, the disposable discs Disney will begin testing with technology investor Flexplay in August; and Movies.com, the Disney-owned online movie information site that Eisner said would gradually evolve into a movie download service.

"One or all of our initiatives may be stupid, but the point is, we're going out there and testing different way to reach the consumer," Eisner said. "We're interested in finding--that's finding, not funding--new ways to get movies into the home relatively inexpensively."

For now, thought, Disney is funding the development of Moviebeam through its wholly owned subsidary Buena Vista Datacasting.

The test is due to kick off this fall in Salt Lake City and two other markets yet to be announced. According to a company spokeswoman, Disney expects to have movies from "most of the Hollywood studios" available on the service by the time the test is launched. "We have those commitments now," the spokeswoman said, but the declined to identify specific studios.

The service sends movies directly to set-top boxes subcribers' homes by piggybacking onto conventional broadcast signals. Disney has reached licensing agreements with PBS stations, along with Disney-owned ABC stations, to give service "a pretty national footprint" if and when it's rolled out nationally, Eisner said. "Some people would say, "Who needs another box?, ' including me," Eisner said. "But Moviebeam technology can work in all kinds of boxes. so, in other words, Sony could make a DVD player and for say, another $20 or whatever, it could include Moviebeam technology, and we could download 100 films right to you DVD player without you ever having to go to the store."

Speaking one day earlier at a conference sponsored by Sanford Bernstein & Co., Eisner said he was not concerned that one or more of the studio's initiatives could fail.

Take "this thing that we're doing the disappearing DVD, which i think probably won't work, where the thing blows up after two days," he said. "I think it's going to boomerang on us, but it's a test.

We're trying all these digital things to make movies more accessible with a good business model at a reasonable price. If you sell five times as many Movies.com movies as you do home videos, the economics are better for the company, even if it's for lesser price."

Disney and Flexplay will beging testing EZ-D in August with a slate of 8 tittles. Although priced much less than regular DVDs, Disney hopes the disposable discs will attract rental-minded consumers while reaping a biggerslice of the consumer dollar for the studio than the traditional rental market yields.

Eisner's most ambitious vision is for Movies.com. Originally designed as a joint venture with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment to provide Movies-on-demand throught the internet, the site was repositioned by Disney as an information portal after Fox pulled out of the deal last year.

Disney hasn't abandoned the idea of internet Video-on -demand, however.

As Eisner envisions it, Movies.com will eventually allow consumers to download movies directly from the studio and burn them onto their own DVDs for a fee, not only eliminating any retail middleman but shifting the cost of manufacturing fromt he studio to the consumer.

"Movies.com could very easily be configured for the sale of a DVD, but we could download to the consumer instead of selling it to them," Eisner told the Deutsche Bank conference.

This is not until Disney has squeezed what it can out of the current DVD market, however.

"There's DVD now and maybe for another four years. Then there's HD-DVD," Eisner said. "We would like to get a round of out library out on DVD, then another round on HD-DVD before broadband is really fat enough to effectively download animated films. The home video market has tremendous margins for us. We're very much going to pursue that, but they're not so great that we're going to say we're not going to focus on what happens when it's over."

[Porce]

Look, I realize this guy is obsessed with cash, but for heaven's sake, just stick with DVD! VHS was the main type of video 1980's-2000. DVD should be able to last as long, too.

[MickeyMouseboy]

moviebeam will never beat the feeling of going to the store and getting the packaging and the disc!

[jabroni76]

Well, I now have a new to-do list!

Keep DVD player in great condition
Buy all other Disney movies that are released on DVD.!

Then, I can ignore whatever the heck Eisner is doing! :\

[MickeyMouseboy]

i need to stock up on DVD players!

[jabroni76]

yes, sir.

I need about 40 more dvd players, so that will last me until Eisner dies!

[MickeyMouseboy]

if feel like a cuban(Disney Fan) waiting for fidel (Eisner) to die so we can get better things

[Jack]

If this ever comes to the market, I doubt it'll take away a lot from DVD & VHS sales - same reason Pay-Per-View hasn't obliterated Blockbuster & Hollywood Video.

[MickeyMouseboy]

but moviebeam is going to be like napster