New York Times – February 6, 2007:
Wal-Mart Stores may have lost the online DVD rental battle, but it has no plans to lose the higher-stakes video downloading
Wal-Mart’s video download site will offer movies and television shows. The new service enters a field already crowded with competitors.Today the company will introduce a partnership with all of the six major Hollywood studios — Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal — to sell digital movies and television shows on its Web site (www.walmart.com/videodownloads), becoming the first traditional retailer to do so.
The move plunges Wal-Mart into competition with several established sites, like Amazon.com, CinemaNow and iTunes, and given the chain’s penchant for price cutting, could drive down the cost of a digital download.
Found by GregA.
If the “success” of Wal-Mart’s music service is any indication, I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about.
Any word as to the quality? Is it Windows only? What is the DRM involved? I went to their site, but didn’t see any details on any of this…unless I’m looking in the wrong place.
They’ve got the pricing way out of whack. Movie downloads aren’t going to work over five dollars.
Great! Another reason to avoid Wal-Mart.
I did a little bit of digging and found this:
So it makes me think that it is using some sort of MS DRM. I also found that you can burn the files to DVD but they can only play in a PC linked with the service, I have not been able to find out what that means exactly.
Yes, because being first to the dance is always part of Apple’s go-to-market plan.
Great! Are they going to ‘Clean Up’ their movies like they do the music they sell? I will be glad to get my movies from another source.
It is certainly beta if not alpha as that website is rigged to only work with windows IE. Firefox displays nothing but garbage
I don’t need sanitized music or movies, and I don’t need disposable electronics and clothing, I now have no reason to ever go to Walmart. Using MS DRM has drawn a line for me. Dvorak and his Anti Mac comments over and over as well have caused me to bailout on this site. Nearly everyday is a Anti Mac comment based on halftruths found on this site.
Stick to Reporting and leave the politics to your posters, we don’t need spin from the source, the sheeple posting here are already full of it..
10. “Dvorak and his Anti Mac comments over and over as well have caused me to bailout on this site.”
First, John didn’t post this, I did.
Second, I don’t see how this is “Anti Mac.” The title, the only thing I wrote, is a fact not an opinion.
Third, I was the one who wrote in comment 1. “If the “success” of Wal-Mart’s music service is any indication, I don’t think Apple has anything to worry about.”
I have now tried the iTunes, Amazon Unbox and Wal-mart video downloads.
1st Place goes to Amazon Unbox
2nd Place goes to iTunes
Wal-mart doesn’t even place. Prices are too high, requirements to add a special downloader and the difficulty I am having in downloading make me think the Wal-mart service is DOA
It won’t improve the image of Wal-Mart anyway.
http://www.BoingBoing.net has a nice GIF taken from a Mac + Firefox.
Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t render! http://tinyurl.com/3ca9fn
Walmart’s service caters only to Windows.
So that leaving out 5% of the home computer population.
Isn’t leaving out that 5% the most outspoken and rights-defending group?
// Yeah, I was careful not to bash Mac cultists…the other guys do it so well
15. “Not to mention is still too expensive for what it is.”
I agree. You can get new DVDs for about 10 bucks from Best Buy and Wal-Mart. You can rip those to your iPod or any other portable music player. You can loan the disc to a a friend. You can sell it when you’re done. You can’t do any of those with these services.
Considering those facts, the downloaded version will have to be a lot cheaper. Like maybe 50% off the lowest price of the DVD. And even at half off I’d probably still buy the DVD.
I could see “renting” a download movie for a couple of dollars. Right now I rent movies from Netflix for about $1.43 each using the 8 movie at a time plan. So if there was a movie I just couldn’t wait for Netflix to deliver, I could see watching it online for two bucks.
I was watching CNN earlier and they were talking about this. The demo that they used showed a Mac at the website. They didn’t try to download or use the file, just browsing the images.
Really low quality, DRM’d, Windows Only, for $20?
Er.. who is going to buy from them? Who? I mean.. even the people that do it once will never do it again after they play the damn thing.
Everyone knows Apple is a sadistic content monopolizer, so I will definetly try this service from Walmart
18. “Er.. who is going to buy from them? Who? I mean.. “
The only reason Wal-Mart got into this service is to destroy it. They’d much rather you come into the store and buy crap.
Wow, It worked flawlessly for me. I purchased Talladega Nights for the Irony of it all. The movie is 720×300, otherwise DVD wide screen format. It is an excellent quality rip, i am not noticing any artifacts. I paid $15 for it. Currently it Retails for at least $20 in DVD format. Looks like they have thousands of movies at the $7.50 price point, television episodes are $2. So there is a small discount for the dowloads, but not much.
The Vista version of Media Center found my movies automatically. You can also just click on the WMV file. On the other hand, both DVD Maker and Windows Movie Maker refused to touch the file.
Their website help points to a number of media center extenders, but it is not clear if you can play the movies on the media center entenders.
However, the quality is DVD (no extras though) and on Vista at least it worked flawlessly. The downloader is kinda on the heavy side at 10MB (vongos downloader comes in at 3MB) , but otherwise unobtrusive and brainless to install. ( Got a couple of UAC warnings )
Otherwise, Pedro is right, it is still too expensive for what it is. But then, I don’t have the whole ‘I must own my media’ hangup going on. A lot of people seem to feel that way. Maybe we can hope this service will spark a price war.
Wal-Mart’s DRM is premised on NOT letting you view downloaded content on your living room TV set.
Sorry, dudes — I’m involved with beta testing two separate systems designed from the gitgo to enable convergence. For my likes, being able to download easily and practically — and watch the content either on my monitor or HDTV — is the deal-maker.
22. “Wal-Mart’s DRM is premised on NOT letting you view downloaded content on your living room TV set.”
Are you saying you cannot watch these files if you plug a TV set into your computer? Or are you saying there are no non-computer devices that will play them on your TV set.
Interesting, Steve Jobs just published an article on the Apple web site basically calling for the record labels to abolish DRM, and says Apple will embrace it completely.
Article here:
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”
I don’t see any benefit to this. You can buy Talladega Nights on DVD for $17.76 shipped from DeepDiscountDVD. You will own the DVD and it will play in any of tens of millions of DVD players. It will also play in most PCs with a DVD drive. You can lend the DVD to a friend, and you can later sell it or trade it.
Walmart’s media website doesn’t even render in a usable format using a Firefox browser (I just tried it). How much confidence do you have that you’ll be able to:
1) view the movie in the first place?
and
2) view the movie 10 years from now? (The DVD format has been around since 1997. Do you have any software from 1997 that is compatible and works reliably in your current PC?)
This is an inferior product with so many limitations and restrictions that I don’t see why you’d waste your time.
Listening to people arguing against making copying and downloading illegal, sites like this are supposed to drastically reduce illegal copying, and bring movie studios more money than ever. We’ll see hoe this works out.
#23 — Steve, I quoted WalMart. Their premise is that they do not want these files viewed on a TV set. That’s what they’ve told interviewers.
Of course, anyone can get pretty much anything to interconnect, hack, rip, etc.. I didn’t think that’s what we’re discussing.
As for the demented few who think Seve Jobs somehow invented DRM — it will be interesting to see Comments on your upcoming post, this morning, on Jobs’ position paper on DRM.
Tee Hee!
SN- I also use Netflix and if I want to watch the DVD later, I can clone a copy with CloneDVD which also has a module to rip to an IPod or Sansa or device of your choosing. Plays on ANY DVD player, and will strip out DRM and Trailers if you like. Nice Software.
I checked the Wal-Mart site — one HUGE marketing problem — it’s priced like BUYING videos, not renting.
If it was rental prices — let’s say three bucks — I think it could work.