not wasting any digital bandwidth, it would then needlessly use energy to download unwatched content. Most viewers already received those stations through cable and satellite providers, which offered much more robust pay-per-view or video on demand services of film content, including from Disney. Presumably, cable services offering MovieBeam's channels were fully-compatible with MovieBeam and the MovieBeam set top box could download content that way, but providers were free to filter out VBI data services which duplicated their own offerings for the sake of full picture clarity and which would waste cable bandwidth. Because of the over-the-method method of download, the films, if purchased, were excessively compressed and of lesser quality than DVD or Blu-ray. Sealing the service's limited life would be that the service used full-power NTSC analog broadcasts instead of digital ATSC 1.0; NTSC had an upcoming expiration date of February 17, 2009 via full-power stations (later revised to June 12, 2009) due to the upcoming digital transition. There was no public knowledge of a new digital-specific revision oncoming to the system. See also Disney Channel#Other services, describing Disney Family Movies, a scaled-down version of MovieBeam utilizing traditional cable pay-per-view providers Disney+, Disney's current-day streaming platform References External links Official site Interview with Carl Crabill, MovieBeam VP of Sales and Marketing Moviebeam review (part 1) review part 2 MovieBeam's (sort of) video on demand Dotcast dNTSC tutorial (PDF) Moviebeam ceasing operations Defunct video on demand services Defunct subscription services Products and services discontinued in 2007 American subscription television services Defunct broadcasting companies of the United States Television in the United States Former subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company Telecommunications-related introductions in 2004