PC Mag chimes in with a 3.5/5 review of the current iteration of MovieBeam. It’s not as critical as HD Beat’s take, but it’s probably also not as accurate focusing on convenience while discounting HD compression issues. MovieBeam is making a retail push as you can see from the pic I snapped yesterday at Best Buy.
PC Magazine says: As media companies struggle to find new, secure ways to distribute video digitally, MovieBeam is using old-fashioned broadcast TV—albeit with a little tweaking—to offer a video-on-demand service. The MovieBeam Player ($199.99 direct) holds 100 recent Hollywood movies, which users can rent at any time. It takes a digital version of a film and piggybacks that data onto a conventional television broadcast signal. The player then receives that signal, reassembles the video file, and stores it on its 160GB hard drive. When you want to watch a movie, you select it and are charged from $1.99 to $4.99. You can watch any movie you “rent” as much as you want in a 24-hour period. It is more convenient that schlepping to the video store or waiting for your favorite films to arrive via Netflix, but most people won’t find it worth paying $200 plus rental fees.