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May 26, 2012

Wal-Mart launching video download store

by Brad Linder, posted Feb 6th 2007 11:32AM

Wal-MartWal-Mart is launching a beta version of its new video download store today. While there's no shortage of sites offering up movie and TV downloads these days, Wal-Mart could be the one to give Apple's iTunes store a run for its money. That formula? They're Wal-Mart, the company that sells 40 percent of all US DVDs.

Wal-Mart will have about three thousand films and television episodes available for download, with movies going for $12.88 to $19.88 and TV shows for $1.96 per episode -- a whopping 4 cents cheaper than Apple's price. New releases will be available the same day they come out on DVD. Older movies will sell for $7.50, compared with Apple's $9.99.

While the savings aren't huge, the selection is... sorta. Three thousand video files might not seem like a lot, but while Apple only has movies from Disney and Paramount, every major movie studio has signed on with Wal-Mart. They were probably afraid not to. Wal-Mart also lets studios set movies at different prices, while Apple wants uniform pricing on video downloads.

Oh yeah, and you need Windows XP or Vista and Internet Explorer to download videos. You can backup a video up to three times, but you can only burn it to DVD as a data disc, which will not play in a DVD player.

So if you're not happy with offerings from CinemaNow, MovieLink, Apple, AOL, Guba, Netflix, or Amazon, you've got a new choice. Really, given the relatively small amount of video content available (when compared with similar music download services), I think there's far more supply than demand in the market right now. But everyone and their mother wants to get into the video download service now, in preparation for the day when it's not just technofiles who know how to download a movie and play it on their TV sets.

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erroneous_nick

Derek,

I think you make a good point about the cost of a lot of these services being too high. I think the cost of downloadable TV shows and movies are too high. The same goes for music, both downloaded and on CD. At $1 per one hour television episode, I'd buy, but it'd also have to be high quality for a big television for my money. Right now I'm glad to see offerings and competition, but the prices are beyond what I consider worth spending. I think a lot of money is lost by overpriced products and services that turn away many people who would otherwise be frequent customers.

February 06 2007 at 10:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
BC McKinney

Wal-Mart's and Target's threats and objections to losing DVD sales have prevented most of the studios from signing with Apple, and now Wal-Mart announces its own downloads, with those studios, at lower prices than Apple? Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.

Richard, you are the first person I have seen say anything positive about Unbox.

February 06 2007 at 4:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RR

I think the prices are too high still for TV shows. At $2 an episode you couldn't realistically use any of these services as a genuine alternative to having cable/satellite. If there's 10 shows you watch per week, that's 40 a month, which is $80.

Bring it down to $1 an episode and I'll switch from ZERO downloads per month to 30 or 40 per month.

They could at least offer a lower quality download size for portable media players at a cheaper price. Charge $2 for a big high quality file meant to be viewed maximized on a monitor, and charge $1 for a small (e.g. 320x240 @ 500kbps) file that's targeted at media players. At $1 a pop you can really open up a market for people to want to watch their shows on the train/bus commute to/from work. I don't think that market is tapped at $2 an episode.

February 06 2007 at 3:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Richard Frisch

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

February 06 2007 at 12:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
erroneous_nick

"...you can only burn it to DVD as a data disc, which will not play in a DVD player."

I would assume that if one owns DVD creation software such as Nero Vision, for example, then a "playable" DVD could be created after all. Also, competition is always good!

February 06 2007 at 12:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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