{"id":43,"date":"2003-05-30T11:36:53","date_gmt":"2003-05-30T11:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/2003\/05\/30\/030500mouse\/"},"modified":"2023-08-13T18:27:18","modified_gmt":"2023-08-13T18:27:18","slug":"030500mouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/2003\/05\/30\/030500mouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Those Mouse Ears or Rabbit Ears? – The Wonderful New World of Disney"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Click Quick Jump Menu to this Month’s Articles Fiber to the Home – Finally TV Internet – A Real World Review FCC’s Impending Cross-Ownership Ruling Mouse Ears or Rabbit Ears Call for Papers May, 2003<\/b> <\/p>\n

Are Those Mouse Ears or Rabbit Ears? – The Wonderful New World of Disney<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

by Ken Pyle<\/a><\/p>\n

Several interesting announcements and products have been released from Disney since last month. First, is Disney\u2019s <\/strong>announcement and rollout of their new consumer electronics product<\/strong> offering that includes televisions, DVD players and CD players. These products are on the shelves at large retailers, such as Target. They are competitively priced ($99 for a DVD player) and are easily recognizable by the Disney branding (one of the televisions literally has mouse ears). <\/p>\n

While they are embracing a retail strategy for a new consumer electronics product line, they seem to be focused on working through existing mass-retailers and not their own outlets. That is, Disney\u2019s retail outlets are struggling and, according to a May 23rd Associated Press article, Disney is considering selling their remaining 387 U.S. retail outlets. <\/p>\n

From a movie delivery standpoint, Michael Eisner suggested in the May 7th issue of USA today that, \u201cwe may be the one that goes directly to the consumer <\/strong>without a middleman.\u201d He said this in the context of their MovieBeam service which will be rolled out in a couple of markets this fall. <\/p>\n

MovieBeam will use a proprietary box that combines the Personal Video Recorder<\/strong> together with terrestrial broadcast of data (in the unused portion of their ABC affiliates’ broadcast signals) using technology from Dotcast to deliver movies on demand. The boxes will be pre-loaded with 100 hours of content, with a refresh rate of 10 movies per week. They have plans for content beyond just what comes from Disney. <\/p>\n

From an outsider\u2019s view, the MovieBeam device and service seems to tie in with Disney’s push into consumer electronics. Combining the advertising<\/strong> and promotional<\/strong> potential from their cable and broadcast properties together with the sales reach of mass-retailers<\/strong>, like Walmart and Target, Disney is probably is one of the few entities that could make this approach work. This strategy, if it works, will allow Disney to bypass<\/strong> the existing infrastructure<\/strong> for the delivery of their content and could have a significant impact on cable, direct broadcasters and independent telcos that provide video services.<\/p>\n

Some links of interest regarding this story:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cableworld.com\/archive\/cableworld\/2003\/04\/14\/cwd03041405.shtml<\/a>
http:\/\/www.gomemphis.com\/mca\/screens\/article\/0,1426,MCA_511_1977005,00.html<\/a>
http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/tech\/news\/2003-05-20-disney-movie-distro_x.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

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Copyright 2003 Viodi, LLC<\/a>. All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick Jump Menu to this Month’s Articles Fiber to the Home – Finally TV Internet – A Real World Review FCC’s Impending Cross-Ownership Ruling Mouse Ears or Rabbit Ears Call for Papers May, 2003 Are Those Mouse Ears or Rabbit Ears? – The Wonderful New World of Disney by Ken Pyle Several interesting announcements and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viodi.com\/classic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}