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Wal-Mart Offers Up Downloadable Movies
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Feb 06, 2007 07:02 AM
from the guess-who-i-don't-shop-with dept.
from the guess-who-i-don't-shop-with dept.
An anonymous reader slipped us the link to a C|Net article on another downloadable movie offering, this time from retail giant Wal-mart. Stinging from their loss to Netflix in the online DVD rental business two years ago, they are coming out swinging with this service. They've made arrangements with all six major Hollywood studios, and (the article theorizes) will likely have highly competitive prices. With Apple's dominance of this particular market, there is still no guarantee whether Wal-mart will have any success with this program. The biggest problem, commentators note, is that there is no guarantee Wal-mart's service will draw customers into their stores: the issue that ultimately caused them to scuttle the DVD rental service. What do you think of a major retailer getting into movie download business? Will the company be able to outmaneuver Apple and Netflix the same way it has done with other retailers in the past?
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Wal-Mart Offers Up Downloadable Movies
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Security (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Security (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
Tom
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
In contrast though, I would say that downloadable videos and songs are nowhere near their ideal price. The biggest problem is all this DRM and poor quality drastically reduces their worth to consumers. As an alternative to current options, they're abysmal. Take a look at Walmart's store here. I haven't seen many details, but it's pretty safe to assume that these will not be burnable to DVD, will not play on anything other than the PC they're downloaded on, will likely be fairly heavily compressed, and will be DRM'd to hell. Given even one of those conditions is true, why the hell would I pay the exact same price as a DVD for one of these downloads? At least iTunes gives me some break on the price. This store will be dead in the water from the first minute and we'll just here more croaking from the **AA execs about how they can't compete with illegal downloading.
Not if it's like their stores. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if Wal-Mart takes the same attitude with online movie downloads as they do with their stores.
Wal-Mart has always been about one thing and one thing only: Dirt cheap stuff. They might as well make it their slogan: "Wal-Mart, where you get Dirt Cheap Stuff(TM)." You can see this attitude in their stores with cluttered aisles, severe lack of cashiers, poor treatment of employees, etc. People have unfortunately been willing to put with this this because, well, they want dirt cheap stuff.
The online movie download business isn't about dirt cheap, it's about customer service. The people who use it aren't poor; they're at least middle-incomers with computers and high-speed access to the Internet. If Wal-Mart tries to go dirt cheap on this service, they're going to get eaten alive in this space.
Are you a parrot (Score:5, Interesting)
I get so tired about hearing how wal-mart supposedly abuses their employees. Look, I know people who work there and they don't have any qualms. Some are students working there (because 24hr operations offer flexibility) and others just because they don't look elsewhere.
While people love to rant about the items Wal-Mart sells how do these same people explain the grocery sections? Same brands as the big supermarkets at significantly lower prices. Heck I can find similar names in their department side of the operation as I can at the mall and save money.
Which brings me back to the online experience. Customer service isn't the real issue, its ease of use, selection, and then cost which will make or break their service. Other than end user billing issues the downloading side shouldn't be that big of a problem. I don't think that the majority of users out there have sufficient bandwidth for high quality downloads.
Why should Wal-Mart get into this? Easy, because it has such a low cost of operation. Pay for bandwidth, the servers, and that is a lot less than a B&M existance. They will still have lots of DVD in their stores but when people finally give up buying DVDs Wal-Mart probably hopes to be established enough to get that business.
I still don't see why people think Apple's service is that great. iTunes is good, but the series and movies are not the quality I would pay for, especially at the price some of the offerings are. A friend told me that the XBOX service is the best way to go but I doubt I will buy a 360 just for movie downloads.
So Wal-Mart gives us a new option. The more the merrier. The free market is a much better decider than other approaches. If Wal-Mart succeeds then they will do so because they deserve it. If they fail, that also is their fault as well.
Re:Are you a parrot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are you a parrot (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the weather making them late, maybe they should plan better. I have never had snow tires (even though I could easily afford them) on my car, and I'm not involved in accidents or late for work when it snows, because I plan ahead and leave earlier. BTW, most of the accidents I see in the snow are caused by idiot SUV drivers that think they are invincible in the snow, but forget that ultimately you have to stop that beast. I would be surprised if a majority of Wal-Mart employees are driving $30K+ SUVs.
Re:Are you a parrot (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you a Wal-Mart manager? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then we agree, because so do I. Although my solution isn't to ignore it happening and rationalizing that it's okay because people obviously work there, it's for us to try to get them to stop.
The same way I explain their stores. If you don't mind digging through misplaced stuff to find what you're looking for, putting up with aisles that are three feet wide, standing in line for half an hour because there are only two cashiers, and don't have any questions about what you're shopping for because the people that work there ignore you and have no clue what the hell they're selling just so you can save a few cents on your Charmin, then Wal-Mart is a great place to shop.
I have too many incidents of unhappiness at Wal-Mart to recount them all here. The two that stick out in my mind were when I needed a few simple items one Saturday afternoon before Christmas several years ago. I walked in and saw two--two!--cashiers open, and people lined up too far to see. I would have been in the store at least an hour. I walked out, drove ten miles to the Target down the street, and haven't been to a Wal-Mart since. The other time was when I sprained my ankle and needed an ice pack and Ace bandage. Wal-Mart was the closest store to me (a mile or so away), so I drove down there, hobbled in, and hobbled back to the pharmacy section. A worker there who was stocking shelves literally watched me as I painfully limped up to her and said that my ankle was sprained, and I would appreciate it if she'd help me find the ice packs and Ace bandages. She pointed away and said, "I think it's two aisles over, maybe three," turned her back to me, and went back to putting the stuff on the shelves.
So yeah, you could say that I seriously doubt Wal-Mart will be able to do anything like run an online movie business competently, and even if the movies are, as I said, dirt cheap, I won't be using it.
Newsflash, ease of use and selection are part of customer service. Cost will be a factor, but I seriously down that the target market (no pun intended) for this service will be looking for movies that cost $2.95 to download instead of $2.99. They'll be looking for the stuff that Wal-Mart truly sucks at, stuff like, as you mentioned, ease of use and selection.
Well hell then, let's all get into the movie download business, since it's so cheap! You're forgetting the cost of developing and maintaining the software, marketing, and guaranteeing a certain level of service and uptime. These kinds of things are not cheap. If Wal-Mart takes their typical attitude of trying to do it on the cheap, you'll have software that is excruciatingly painful to use, lots of system down time due to back-end hardware and software issues, non-existent customer service and support for the mass of e-mail complaints that will pour in, and other such problems.
I don't propose anything different. I'm with you on this, let them compete in the ma
Re:Not if it's like their stores. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be a dweeb. I want cheap downloads. I don't care about service, nor about the condition of the stores. I'm going to buy movies online from the cheapest supplier because what you'll be downloading will be *exactly* the same, no matter where you get it. I'm paying for it via a credit card so I don't care if the company goes bust or is dodgy - it's not my money on the line.
Can you provide me with a single credible reason for ever going with a company other than the cheapest one for online movie downloads?
Re:Not if it's like their stores. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple vs Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
This'll certainly start to change when the AppleTV comes out, though.
Link (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Link (Score:4, Informative)
Article link [com.com]
Wal-Mart Video Store [walmart.com] note: the site renders horribly in Mozilla & Firefox... at least for me.
corrected link (Score:5, Informative)
Walmart will also be selling TV series. They have more studios signed up than Apple, mainly due, I think, to Walmart's caving in to the Studios demands (same pricing as DVDs).
Rent 10 (Score:2)
Kroger sold gas with 3cents off thinking people would enter the store. Bwa Ha Ha Ha...Now they don't give us poor scum anything off.
If virtual DVD cost = physical DVD cost... (Score:1, Insightful)
WalMart vs. Netflix (Score:5, Insightful)
why? (Score:1, Redundant)
history has taught us (Score:4, Funny)
The service doesn't have to draw customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Success is not the issue (Score:2)
Personally I'd say let's wait and see what DRM they include and whether it's breakable. If it is, it is a market. If it's not, it's not. Simple as that.
...and (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing they are missing is that very few basic broadband packages offer enough download size per month to allow stuff like this to take off. Most ISP's offer 5GB-10GB a month for their basic packages, which isn't nearly enough for Wal Mart to make money off of anything.
Wal Marters will try this for a month, then get utterly shafted on usage fees then forget about it. The rest of us already have other venues to get movies.
Wal Mart would have to price this at $1.99 to get any movement, they won't price it at that level; any level they do price it at will suck and no one will care.
Wal-Mart you say? (Score:1, Interesting)
Wal*Mart doesn't have the right competencies (Score:5, Insightful)
How is Wal*Mart going to make their downloadable movies so much cheaper than the competition that they'll be able to drive the competition out of business? Force their IT department to outsource their movie download servers overseas?
And on the Internet everything is nearby. When a brick-and-mortar Wal*Mart succeeds in killing off the local small-town businesses, the local residents are faced with the choice of shopping at the local Wal*Mart or driving a long distance. On the Internet, even supposing that (say) Wal*Mart drives Amazon UnBox out of business, you're not going to have to drive ten miles to shop at the iTunes store.
The only way I can see Wal*Mart winning is if they use their famous muscle to pressure the MPAA into allowing their products to being delivered without DRM, and with the capability of burning a DVD. At the moment, the Wal*Mart video download website seems to be showing me such badly scrambled pages that I can't read how it works, but I don't think that's the way it works now.
Business Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
This makes business sense, but the problem here is that unlike in the old days when you shipped content to a news stand or bookstore, it is possible to scale a content delivery business indefinitely. Not cheap, but if the consumer is paying the fare for bandwidth, it is feasible.
The problem I see here is that it creates a situation ripe for a natural monopoly to emerge. If you get exclusives with enough studios, you cripple your competition. I'd love to download movies to iTunes, but so far they've only been able to sign up Disney. So it's nearly useless to me.
This can create a situation where a magnate like Rupert Murdoch can gain incontestable control over a significant slice of mainstream culture. That is bad. The organization controlling distribution will eventually control the point of view people are allowed to see in movies and other media.
This is why we need copyright term limitation. Either we take steps to restrict the freedoms of business to make deals like this, OR we strengthen the commons by expanding the public domain OR we accept control by a single entity over the bulk of information we have available.
Apple dominance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple dominance? While it's a fair bet that they sell a lot more movies through iTMS than any other vendors sell through through similar services, this industry is still extremely young - too young to declare a dominant vendor so early in the game. Let's table this and take up the discussion again in two years, when the positions of Netflix, Apple, Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, Target, and other future players will be more clear.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some torrent downloads to check on.
The superbowl (Score:1, Redundant)
Correct article. [com.com]
People in Stores (Score:2)
My thought is they get enough people in the stores.. but they need to get more people to their web site, to use their various e-services. For example, you can upload digital photos to their site and they will print them and mail them to you.
It seems that offering downloadable movies will appeal to the "net" segment of the population who would be much more into sshopping on their web site, etc.
If they offer affordable movies I would certainly give them a shot and it would make me more loyal to the brand.
It Might be worth it. (Score:2, Insightful)
The price is right for my preceived value of the show/series/movie.
I can play it on my DVD player and computer.
I can watch it any number of times.
It's offered in widescreen format.
Bonus: If they offer extras with the download like outtakes/deleted scenes and such from the movie.
Good Idea (Score:2)
2)
3) Profit!
M
Summary of comments (Score:5, Funny)
2) blah blah I'm smarter than wal*mart blah blah
3) blah blah wal*mart sucks blah blah
4) blah blah the link is wrong blah blah
You're welcome.
Why not, they do alright w/ music downloads (Score:1)
bad link to c/net (Score:1)
System Requirementrs (Score:3, Informative)
Switching to Konquerer I was able to browse a coherent page layout and locate these system requirements:
Wal-Mart Video Download Manager
- Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Vista (32 bit only no Macintosh or Linux).
- 256MB of RAM or higher
- 4 GB of hard disk space
- A sound card
- Speakers or headphones (if you want to play a movie or TV episode on your PC)
- An internet connection (broadband recommended)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
- Microsoft Windows Media® Player version 10 or higher (version 10 is preferred for syncing to portable devices)
-
The burden is lifted - here they come... (Score:1)
Image Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who do movie downloads are fairly well off. They've either heard about the societal costs Wal*Mart is creating, or view people who shop at Wal*Mart as inferior. They've been trying hard to overcome this but with little success. If you ask a fashionista to shop at Wal*Mart, you'll likely be met with laughter.
If they overcome this, they'll have to let people understand why it won't work with their iPods. Unless they can work with Apple or the MPAA to come up with a different iPod-compatible system, it's not going to be very popular.
Article is "Who really won the superbowl"! (Score:3, Informative)
Eivind.
i don't rent a lot (Score:1)
if they give a better selection than what is in the stores, then it might be helpful.
if it's something i can download and burn, that might work, but other wise i have no use for it.
how about a "no-net" option? (Score:2)
blockbuster, wal-mart, and who knows else could benefit from a "no-internet" download service where you take your thing (laptop/usb harddrive/set top player/xbox) in to the store and snarf movies from the store's intranet at 100mbt/1000mbit. the store downloads movies and then sells them to you. there would be far fewer costs (intranet webserver + NAS + ecommerce app). the stores themselves may only need DSL internet connections.
you could even ship the movies to the store on a drive or disc to save on internet costs.
if i could go into the store and get super cheap movies (saving the draconian DRM discussion for another day) onto a drive in minutes rather than days then ultra-convenience might just rule over price, brand name, and quality.
i think that the super fast no-net option will be the saving grace of the brick and mortar shop when it comes to selling software, movies, and music. the stores can save shelf space for merchandise that cannot be downloaded, the retail chains can save fortunes on not hauling pressed discs around the country in trucks, and blockbuster, walmart, and the rest will finally have an edge over net-flix and iTunes.
Why would anyone use these services? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get it. I really don't.
Why would I, as a consumer, pay the same amount of money as a real DVD at the store for an inferior product (DRM restrictions, lower resolution, etc)?
I then have to download it (time, bandwidth). Comcast still enforces their 40Gb per month limit
No thanks, I'll keep renting and buying real DVDs. Maybe once we all have the equiv. of FIOS and they either price the inferior product accordingly or offer the same product I can buy in the store, I'll think about it.
- Roach
Bandwidth (Score:2)
For me, selection is a problem. Ever since Blockbuster started with the their "new" keep the movie for too long, and you bought it policy, they don't seem to be restocking old popular movies.
What I would like is something similar to the Kodak photo kiosks already in WalMart stores. A kiosk that allows me to browse songs and movies, with short samples. When I find content that I like, it will transfer to media, and bill me. It would have to burn DVDs and CDs, and produce cover art. It would be nice to produce MP3 and MP4 for portable players directly as well (at a much reduced cost) and write to flash media and USB media.
If something like a media content kiosk is produced, the next step would be to open the content delivery "on-line" as well (I imagine that there would be a repository, or repositories of material to be sent to the kiosks).
Just dreaming...
Re:Wal-Mart new video website not Firefox compatib (Score:1)
Re:Wal-Mart new video website not Firefox compatib (Score:1)
Re:Wal-Mart new video website not Firefox compatib (Score:1)