Channels & viewing

[northshoreman]

For a long time earlier this year, MovielandTV was a great channel to watch, great classic movies from the past, many of which were not available FREE anywhere else. Movies like Bullitt, Vertigo, The Hustler, American Graffiti, The Chase, In the Heat of the Night  ... just to name a few. A few months ago, MovielandTV was disabled on Roku, and about a month later, the vast majority of the content reappeared in a new app, Cinema Box. Life was good for a while longer.  Last week, MovielandTV reappeared with the original content it had presented, and the same movies were no longer on Cinema Box. That status lasted until this morning. Now, BOTH apps generate the Roku message "This channel is no longer available." Older posts/threads seem to point to there being some copyright issues with the content offered. The MovielandTV channel has appeared then disappeared, the reappeared 2 or 3 times from what I can determine with the older posts. MovielandTV and Cinema Box both seem to circle around the same content, and perhaps are owned and operated by the same entity. I am curious about the peak-a-boo behavior here. Can someone flip the switch back to ON secure the switch in the ON setting, then call it a day ... once and for all? Thanks for any insight!

[davidjazz]

Roku never comments on why channels come and go. As you pointed out, many have speculated that MovielandTV was showing movies they did not own or have the rights to show.

Even though Roku is just the platform, Roku runs the risk of lawsuits for copyright infringement. While that may not be fair, they have the the money and therefore will be the target.

I suspect MovielandTV and Cinema Box run under the radar for awhile, get caught and disappear until the heat is off. Best you can do is hope they come back in some form.

The only way that they can come back legitimately is if they own or lease the copyrights. Then they will become ad-sponsored or pay channels. That's the only way they can "flip the switch to ON" permanently.

[tzedekh · Accepted solution]

They have returned, although MovielandTV is now simply Movieland and the name of their publisher is different. Also, they now lack a search function.

[northshoreman]

Agreed, MovielandTV and Cinema Box BOTH seem to have the exact same layout and content, WITHOUT ANY WAY TO SEARCH for content, or to ORGANIZE TEH CONTENT (for example, in a Save List). There are some great classics in there, it is just very unwieldy to use.