MovieNite Plus Review: The Device That Inspired Me to Ditch Cable

In a strange way, I consider television to be a business expense. You see, being self-employed with an office in my home, the boundaries between work and personal life are at best, blurred, and at worst, non-existent. I have the tendency to work myself to the point of collapse, so I’ve realized the importance of building in time during my day where I can switch gears from “Work time” into “Wind-down” time. Since my job involves being intently focused all day long, I have to do something to shake my mind out of work or I stay up all night plotting to-do lists and brainstorming in bed when I should be asleep. The two best things I have found for this is the gym and TV. Exercising focuses me on something other than work and relieves tension, while TV helps me relax and empty my mind. Sure, TV can be brainless – and that’s exactly what I need in order to shut off my busy, analytical work brain so that I can get some sleep! 😉

Because of this, I invested in a satellite TV package a couple of years ago. The area I live in is blocked by mountains, so you can’t get any TV stations at all unless you have cable. I’ve enjoyed it immensely, but rising costs have made it less and less practical for me to keep; and last week, I made the decision to drop my satellite TV package entirely. There were a few factors in this: First, I have been so horrifically busy that I have not had time to turn the TV on more than once or twice in the last few months. (There goes that great work-life balance that I bought the satellite package for! ;)) When I finally did get a chance about a week and a half ago to finally sit down and watch something, there was nothing on that I wanted to see. In order to cut costs, I was forced to drop a large portion of my channels, and although I still spend quite a bit, the selection isn’t great. I ended up watching part of the movie Point Break on TBS because there was nothing else on. I sat there and thought to myself, “Why am I watching this on TV? I own this on VHS. I could just turn on my VCR and avoid the ads!”

Secondly, you may have heard about the dispute between Viacom and two of the major dish providers. I am a customer of one of these providers, so last week, half my channels went off the air and are still missing as of this writing. Nickelodeon and MTV are the two channels I watch the most, so what is left on my package now that these are MIA? Luckily, the very day that my channels blacked out, I received a shipment in the mail from D-Link of their streaming movie player, MovieNite Plus DSM-312. And that was when I made the decision to “Cut the cord” and ditch my cable.

MovieNite Plus is a compact, easy-to-use streaming movie player through which you can use Netflix, VUDU, Pandora, YouTube, Picasa, and a host of other applications. It also says that Hulu Plus is coming soon to the DSM-312 – I’m not sure if my software will upgrade when that happens or how exactly that will work, as I don’t have it currently on my model. The box says that it’s also supposed to come with Rhapsody, but I couldn’t find this anywhere in the player.

If you’ve wanted to get a standalone unit for your Netflix account as opposed to a game console or your computer, this is a great option. The unit is super small and lightweight, taking up very little room – as you’ll see in the above photo, it is smaller than my answering machine!

Setup on the unit is quite easy and straightforward. It comes with a simple remote which you can use to navigate through the apps; the remote has several buttons labeled with the most-used apps, such as Netflix and YouTube, so you can switch between these with a click of a button if you like. When you turn the unit on, you’ll see 9 options: Picasa, Pandora, VUDU HD Movies, Netflix, YouTube, MyD-Link, VUDU Apps, MovieNite Apps, and AccuWeather.com.

The Picasa and Pandora apps allow you to access your online accounts via the TV, so you can view your photos:

Or play your music.

This would be good for parties and an alternative to the music channels on my satellite package, which I do use when I entertain so I don’t have to make playlists!

VUDU HD Movies allows you to rent streaming content on demand. I’ve never used this service, but the option is there if you want to rent something. Netflix, of course, is subscription-based, and I really do think it’s a great TV alternative for people on a budget because it offers so much great content with a small monthly fee. It sure beats watching my old VHS tape of Point Break – heck, with Netflix, I can watch Keanu movies that were made in the last 2 years instead of 20! 😉

The YouTube app allows you to search and play YouTube videos right on your TV. I love this! There are a lot of videos on YouTube these days that are decently long – 20 minutes or so – and I don’t know about you, but after 15 hours working in front of my computer, the last thing I want to do is sit here for another hour watching YouTube, no matter how cool of an indie film it may be. This app solves this problem for me and expands my nightly entertainment options during my “Wind-down” time!

The myDlink app is a very cool feature that works with D-Link security cameras. You may recall that we reviewed one of these cameras at the beginning of the year, and it has become an invaluable tool for us in the past few months for combating vandalism. (That’s a whole other long story which I’ll be sharing with you soon!) This app works in tandem with the camera and allows me to watch the surveillance feed right on my TV screen – very handy, and it supports up to 4 cameras, so you can have your own mini security guard channel if you like!

VUDU Apps and MovieNite Apps both offer a selection of channels and functions which you can surf through. There’s a lot of different content on here, from TV-based Facebook and Twitter to clips from Network TV to web-based TV shows.

Here I am using the Twitter app! You can view tweets from friends and re-tweet them, but you can’t compose tweets or view your mentions, so it’s more for reading the “Twitter headlines” than writing content from your TV. For some reason, I couldn’t get the Facebook app to work – it told me I needed to make an account. Perhaps it’s only available to existing VUDU customers, although that seems odd because all of the other VUDU apps are free. That’s OK though, I can live without Facebook on my TV. 😉

There’s a slew of content channels on here and although I’ve flipped through all of them, naturally I haven’t had a chance to watch content on each one. Overall, these tend to be short segments of maybe 5 minutes; there are a ton of “Network TV” apps, but these are all behind-the-scenes clips or previews, not full episodes. There are some lengthier shows on here – one channel shows obscure classic movies, while another shows half-hour blocks of heavy metal videos – which I actually really like, since I’ve been missing my MTV! And there’s lots of good stuff on the short clips – Jai was excited about the TED talks segments and clips from PBS, and there’s a ton of other well-known programming on here like Funny or Die. But while this boasts over 130 apps and channels, just be realistic about what’s on here – I see the apps as more of a compliment to Netflix, simply because the clips are all shorter so I can’t just turn a show on and watch it for an hour on most of them. Also, I noticed that there were two TED Talk apps on both the VUDU Apps and MovieNite Apps section, so that is one similar/almost duplicate channel.

One thing I noticed about navigating the apps is that I found it difficult to read the descriptions at times and determine what, exactly, the channels and episodes were meant to be about until I played the clip. There are subtle differences between VUDU Apps and MovieNite apps – I find the VUDU Apps to be slightly easier to navigate; the downside to VUDU Apps is that it asks you at the end of each video if you want to share it to Twitter or Facebook – which wouldn’t be so bad, but when you share a video it just links straight to vudu.com to buy a membership, so I don’t really see the point; it’s mostly just an advertisement.

Finally, the device comes with the AccuWeather.com app so you can quickly access the local weather. The only downside to this is that we can’t find how to switch the location – it give us weather for Portland, and we’re in Seaside. We can pull up the Seaside weather if we do a search, but we can’t find any way to switch the primary city to Seaside.

Overall, I found the controls on this to be pretty easy to use, especially in comparison to other similar streaming movie players which I have tried. I love the simple buttons on the remote and find it pretty easy to type in search terms on apps like YouTube using the remote to control the on-screen keypad. I love that you can access favorite apps like Netflix with the push on one easy button on the remote; the only thing I might add to the remote would be a shortcut button for the security camera. I think this box would be a good option for those who aren’t terribly thrilled by high-tech gadgets, as it’s about as easy to use as these devices get. Although I’m a techie, some of the controls on streaming movie consoles drive me crazy, so I’m thankful that this one is pretty straightforward and simple!

We love the MovieNite player and are so excited to have it – especially since it gives us an alternative to satellite! Now, I don’t mean to say that MovieNite is a directly replacement for cable by any means. It’s a very different thing, and I will end up missing some TV shows that I follow, along with the comfort of channel surfing. However, I think it provides adequate entertainment for a limited budget, and at this point in time I simply can’t justify spending a large amount on cable when I have a treasure trove of entertainment available via Netflix/MovieNite. At some point in the future when I can afford the $100+ a month to get a good satellite package, I’ll consider returning to a dish, but for now I just can’t justify the expense. With more and more content moving online, I hope that at some point I can just buy some sort of Internet equivalent to satellite. In the meantime, I’m looking into getting a high-powered antenna to bypass the mountain interference so I can get my local channels – you know I can’t miss The Voice, after all! 😉

For more information on the D-Link MovieNite Plus streaming movie player, along with a list of retailers, click here to visit DLink.com.