Wal-Mart Launches Movie Download Service
Wal-Mart launched a beta version of their movie download store today.
The new service is available at http://www.walmart.com/videodownloads and is offering around 3,000 movies and television episodes from all the major movie studios and some TV networks.
Wal-Mart's entry into this market is significant for a number of reasons. Early reports claimed that Wal-Mart felt their DVD sales would be hurt by online-download movie sales. As a result, Wal-Mart was said to be threatening movie studios against signing on with Apple's iTunes service.
Apple's iTunes initially launched with only Disney movies and later added Paramount films in January. The article suggests that Wal-Mart's entry "now frees studios to cut deals with other online services".
Wal-Mart's movie service is only available in Windows Media, so the movies are not playable on the Mac or iPod.
The new service is available at http://www.walmart.com/videodownloads and is offering around 3,000 movies and television episodes from all the major movie studios and some TV networks.
The nation's largest retailer is using its buying power to beat the prices charged by other download services in many cases, offering films from $12.88 to $19.88 and individual TV episodes for $1.96 4 cents less than Apple Inc.'s iTunes store.
Wal-Mart's entry into this market is significant for a number of reasons. Early reports claimed that Wal-Mart felt their DVD sales would be hurt by online-download movie sales. As a result, Wal-Mart was said to be threatening movie studios against signing on with Apple's iTunes service.
Apple's iTunes initially launched with only Disney movies and later added Paramount films in January. The article suggests that Wal-Mart's entry "now frees studios to cut deals with other online services".
Wal-Mart's movie service is only available in Windows Media, so the movies are not playable on the Mac or iPod.
Top Rated Comments
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66 months ago
OUCH! Steve's gotta be upset. Maybe if it flounders the studios will throw in with ITMS. The fact that it won't work for an iPod will make it limiting for most consumers. This store's geared strictly to the Media Center PC set.
66 months ago
Wal-Mart's movie service is only available in Windows Media. This means, the movies are not playable on the Mac or iPod.
What about Flip4Mac? You can use that to play WM files on your Mac. And then use iMovie to convert it to iPod format.
66 months ago
What about Flip4Mac? You can use that to play WM files on your Mac.
Nope. It won't play WM files with DRM.
66 months ago
Nope. It won't play WM files with DRM.
I guess that means it won't play on Zune either, I know who cares.
66 months ago
Eh, I don't see it taking off....ESPECIALLY with no iPod support. Not many people want to watch their movies at their computers. Ya, some probably have other portable video player, but the majority would want to throw them on their iPod and so on. We'll see what happens
66 months ago
It's Windows Media Player only. They say only XP or Vista is supported. Basically it's trash.
66 months ago
What about Flip4Mac? You can use that to play WM files on your Mac. And then use iMovie to convert it to iPod format.
Alas, Flip4Mac doesn't work with WM10 or WM11 (it might work with WM9 - I've heard reports of some successes), nor does it work with the vast majority of DRM'd Windows Media files. At least that's my understanding, I could be wrong...[ Read All Comments ]
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