Walmart Bundles Digital Downloads With Physical DVDs

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1. Jon Gales
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 5:37 pm

   Hollywood’s wet dream becomes reality, getting consumers to pay multiple times for the same content. It isn’t going to fly with consumers. No matter what the MPAA says, it only makes sense that once I have purchased a movie it’s mine to playback on whatever device I want.

2. Michael Arrington
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 5:39 pm

   so…pay extra for a DRM’d download, or spend 5 minutes ripping the DVD yourself and doing whatever you want with the file.

3. Allen
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 6:35 pm

   Natalie, I am not sure I understand the wording here:

   Wal-mart sold an option for a digital download with the purchase of the “Superman Returns” DVD when the movie went on sale today. This is the store’s first foray into the digital movie business.

   Also, I just spent 5 minutes looking on Walmart.com for this download option. I can’t find it anywhere (one of the superman dvd’s is sold out)… could you post a direct link? Thanks Natalie!

   My belief is that most walmart shoppers are like my mother - would buy the dvd to watch but would have no idea what a portable format even is

4. David Mackey
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 6:42 pm

   At least it is a good step in the right direction. The combination of physical DVDs with downloads is a good step. Until we have a reliable place of off-site storage that is constantly accessible consumers will not be comfortable having movies only on their computers (or they shouldn’t be).

5. Cruncher
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 7:13 pm

   Techies wont be happy with the resolutions,so wont play it.
   Non-techies do not care about the digital, so wont play it.
   who will play them - walmart QA teams?

6. Dave
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 7:13 pm

   I would never pay extra money for a downloadable version of a DVD that I already own/paid for. If I want to watch it on my computer, I will use my DVD drive - its free…duh. Makes no sense to me…but maybe I am missing something.

7. Ryan
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 7:30 pm

   Interesting approach… I agree though and think it won’t work.

8. Matt
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 8:52 pm

   After purchasing the DVD to try this service out I tried to acess the website and it comes up with

   “We are sorry, but Wal-Mart Video Downloads Beta is only available in the United States.”

   Im a Comcast Customer in Vermont .(OK some wags might say VT is not part of the US ;P)

   Called thier Support and after the rep was running around trying to get her supervisor she tell me they will call back within 10 minutes .

   I call back Hours later to find out if they resolved the isssue no one knows , so Im put through to a supervisor who proceeds to tell me they cant contact me via email even though they are offering a online service .And they havnt resolved the issue .

   The both times I called the first thing the Wallmart reps ask me for is my email adress …..The supervisor tells me that is only for survey purposes .
   Looks like they respect a privcy policy that is supposed to be in place either .

   Walmart better get the Customer Service up to scratch if they want to be in the Online video download market or they wil have another failure on thier hands like they did with thier DVDs in the Mail service .

9. Hornswaggled
   

   November 28th, 2006 at 9:11 pm

   Now if i buy it at the sote then they know that I won it right, why not allow me to also view this for free digitally? Then I would buy my movies at Walmart if i were so inclined. I though this whole thing about DRM was to make sure that the content that was purchased would only be accessable by the purchaser.

   I thought this was going to be a value added service, not an add on option. I vote for stupid on this one.

10. Hornswaggled
    

    November 28th, 2006 at 9:12 pm

    whoa, I must be getting tired, didnt proof read my post at all, sorry.

11. Peter
    

    November 28th, 2006 at 9:55 pm

    i just noticed Sony BMG has tons of videos up on Google Video, and a commercial plays afterwards:

    http://video.google.com/videop.....=augustana

12. Fernando
    

    November 28th, 2006 at 11:22 pm

    “When customers buy “Superman Returns” at Wal-Mart, they can choose to pay $1.97 more to play it on portable devices, $2.97 more to play it on PCs or laptops, or $3.97 more to play it on either portable devices or PCs/laptops. But not in iPods.”

    iPod is not a portable device? Seems like underneath this attempt at a digital movie download service, is an attempt to downplay the significance of the iPod player in this space. When will it be realized by service providers that the iPod is a part of this space, if not THE market leader. So appreciation of this fact must be acknowledged by firms venturing into digital downloading.

13. grapesmc
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 12:24 am

    Sounds similar to the hub-bub around the big media play to get Apple to subject their users to a higher level of restrictiveness in regards to the playability of movies. Specifically Universal, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Bros, to be known as “The Backwards Four” from this time forward, trying to force Apple (who is doing just fine in the space without them) to get more defective by design.

    What these guys don’t (and won’t) get is that the only way to integrate into the (already) established landscape is to embrace, not try to force into a direction that no one’s going for. The net-savvy public has more foresight than these clowns combined.

14. Bob Caswell
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 4:40 am

    I’m just not sure which is a worse move, Wal-Mart’s announcement or TiVo’s addition of commercials at the end of recordings.

15. Drew Olanoff
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 5:12 am

    We’re all in the Twilight zone. I would love to meet the guy who came up with this brilliant initiative for Walmart and then shake his hand for successfully stealing a paycheck.

16. NeoTechie
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 7:21 am

    The 4th qrt rocks!

17. Edward
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 8:02 am

    This isn’t the first time this has been done. Lovefilm did this months ago with the release of King Kong on DVD.

18. Rajeev
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 8:05 am

    Wow,

    I think Walmart is too late in entering the disgital market like kodak. But guys better late than never.

19. dwilliams
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 9:18 am

    Hollyweird needs to get its collective head out of its collective butt and realize that for this whole download thing to work - movie files need to download fast, they need to be cheap, and I, the consumer, the customer, need to be able to play them anywhere, on any device, at any time. I don’t want to watch movies on my computer. I have a big screen television with surround sound system and dvd player to do that.

    Of course they do it this way because of the whole “piracy” issue. Listen kids, if you actually think that everybody who watches a pirated copy of your dreck is a lost customer, you are brain-damaged. The chances that they would have gone out and purchased a “real” copy are somewhere between slim and none. They are not lost customers. They are not customers at all. They are only watching your movie because it was free. They would have never paid a single dime for it. Never. You cannot count as a lost sale a sale you never had.

    Am I saying that this is not a concern? As a filmmaker myself, no I am not. If someone wants to watch my work and own a copy, then I would like to be paid, but for the most part, people who really do want to watch my work will buy it from a legitimate source. They will not steal it or make copies and give them away to their friends. A handful will but that is one of the realities of the business. The point is, the majority will not. And those who do, would have never paid for it away.

20. Jorge
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 11:09 am

    I have to say that the staff at TechCrunch is a collection of retards and degenerates. Or maybe it’s just the writer of this “article.”

    For less than $4, you can get a digital copy of a movie, which you can download AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT. So what if you can only keep one movie at a time, Walmart lets you DOWNLOAD IT AGAIN LATER.

    I will repeat that: you can download it again later. You don’t have to keep it on your computer. That means you don’t have to worry about losing it if your hard drive crashes.

    Jesus ****ing Christ. It’s like you want them to give you the movie on a silver platter while angels sing in the window and dozens of nubile woman service your every need.

    This may not be perfect, but it sure beats most of the stuff that’s on the market right now, especially the crap from Amazon and Apple. (Lost your download, too bad! You can pay again!)

21. ran
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 11:48 am

    Jorge, you can keep your silver platter, angels and even the DVDs. I’ll take the nubile women!

    dwilliams, I couldn”t possibly agree with you more! I bought maybe 1 cd/dvd a year before (and still do) free downloads were available. Now I can watch/listen to free ones all the live-long day but even if I couldn’t, I still wouldn’t buy more than 1 per year. And I think most people who download the free ones are the same as me.

22. Dr. Phil
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 11:52 am

    The BEST web-based MOVIE RENTAL site will be REELTIME.COM

    This up-start company is adding content daily and inking contracts with big movie houses

    They use GridNetworks patented p2p technology for streaming DVD quality video in FULL-SCREEN

    Subscription allows use from anywhere, anytime for movie rentals

    Check it out … The FUTURE is REELTIME

23. Patricia
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 12:36 pm

    Hmm. Well, it’s a good step for WalMart to try to expand its business, so hooray for them. What I wonder, though, is how many WalMart customers are really at a place technology-wise where they’d adopt the idea of downloading a movie to their PC. I can already hear my friend back home saying over the noise of her carload of children saying, “well, why would I go through the trouble of downloading it to my computer when I can just buy the DVD?”.

    Lots of people shop at WalMart, I know, but their core customer base strikes me as an ill-fit for this idea, at least for now. Maybe WalMart will push for a different audience with this initiative, but I don’t get the sense that many companies, even good, really big and successful ones, understand the unique business environment that is the Web.

24. Gonzalo Leon
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 1:20 pm

    Dr. Phil,

    Yeah, that Reeltime website is great! And cheap! Makes all these other places look pretty bad. However, the content right now is limmited (a thousand at most). When will they be expanding?

25. Shasaf
    

    November 29th, 2006 at 7:29 pm

    Good initiative, but instead of packaging the digital downloads along with the dvd, it would be interesting if WalMart packages the digital downloads seperately. To be honest, i think the DVD and digital download markets are distinct and need seperate packaging.