After reputedly trying to bully movie studios away from working with Apple, retail ogre giant Wal-Mart has decided to enter the movie download business for itself. While this in itself isn’t news—the movie download market has become increasingly crowded over the past several months—they are the first vendor to strike deals with all six major studios; the hold out for many vendors, like Amazon’s Unbox service, had been Disney.
Besides movie content, Wal-Mart is also dealing in TV shows from a number of networks, though the big three broadcasters are conspicuously absent at present. New releases are expected to be available day-and-date with DVD releases, and prices are said to be similar to DVD releases, ranging from $12.88 to $19.88 for new releases, and down to $7.50 for older titles; TV episodes will run around $1.96. The quality of the titles are comparable with iTunes: you can download movies as either a 640x480 file to watch on your computer, or a 320x240 file to watch on your portable device—TV shows are only available in 320x240.
The price and quality isn’t particularly attractive: by trying to avoid cannibalization of DVD sales, Wal-Mart and the studios are shooting themselves in the foot. Prices for new releases, which will likely be what drives sales, are going to be more expensive than DVDs with lower quality and fewer extras; TV shows may be 3 cents cheaper than iTunes, but the quality is poorer.
Of course, none of this is particularly a concern for Mac users as, of course, the Wal-Mart service only works with Windows and, as they’re careful to explain, “PORTABLE BUNDLE FILES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH iPODS.” Wal-Mart also reputedly hired none other than Hewlett Packard to make their site more “user friendly.” Man, HP, where’d you come up with that slick loading graphic?
