Monday, July 14, 2008

MovieBeam Acquired By Indian Firm

Movie Beam, the ill-fated movie distribution technology firm funded by Disney, Intel, and Cisco, has been sold again, this time to an Indian firm named the Valuable Group. The Valuable Group said that it has acquired all assets, trademarks, IPR, and alliances of MovieBeam from the last buyer of the firm, Alabama-based Movie Gallery. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Movie Beam had raised over $200M to create a distribution service using broadcast signals to distribute new releases of films for video-on-demand access; the firm was launched in 2005 by Disney, and eventually sold at the cut rate price of $10M by Movie Gallery in March of 2007. Valuable said it will re-launch Movie Beam with an investment of $100M over the next two years. Valuable Group is a media and entertainment firm based in India.

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