Wal-Mart’s New Download Service: A Journey of Suckance
Wal-Mart, already the most dominant player in DVD sales launched a bid to extend its dominance to digital movie downloads. With the new service, the company becomes the first major retailer to offer such a service that encompasses movies from all the major studios.
When Amazon.com launched its Unbox service, it lacked movies from Disney, and since the launch of the iTunes movie store, it only offers movies from Disney and Paramount. Wal-Mart on the other hand offers movies from the following studios:
Disney and Pixar, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. Pictures, Lionsgate and MGM, as well as TV shows from Fox, Fox Reality, 20th Century Fox Television Classics, Comedy Central, VH1, MTV, Nickelodeon, the CW, Warner Bros. and more. Wal-Mart initially will not offer shows from ABC, CBS or NBC.
The problem with the service, though, is that it doesn’t work with the Firefox browser. Furthermore, as so eloquently stated on Boing Boing, the service entails,
paying $20 for a 240X320 movie in a DRM-laden Windows Media file that won’t play on a Zune or an iPod, or a computer running Mac or Linux.
So in conclusion, give the Wal-Mart movie download service a try only if you would like to embark on a journey of suckance. Of course I would write a comprehensive review of the site, but you can see how the site renders for me:
Thord previously covered the service for 901am.
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- Disney.com to stream full-length movies
- Fandago acquires Movies.com
[...] Wal*mart video downloads Published February 8th, 2007 Internet Business Couldn’t say it better. [...]
By Wal*mart video downloads « elevatorfactoids on February 7, 2007 1:00 pm
I’ve always thought it odd that the world’s largest retailer couldn’t get stylish clothes on the racks–their offerings always seemed clunky and way out of date–and even now, with their PR division trumpeting a new fashion-consciousness, they still can’t get it right. The clothes just don’t look good.
There must be some institutional ossification (perhaps in its leadership’s brains) that makes them “rigid, conventional, sterile, and unimaginative”…and let’s add “stupid”, in their business model as applied to apparel, and now, digital downloads.
This is why I shop at Wal-Mart only if there’s no other choice.
Because of their history of corporate buccaneering, I’d be quite happy to see the Wal-Mart pirate ship sunk, and their ‘jolly roger’ with it.
By Vince Williams on February 7, 2007 6:42 pm
Walmart is irelevant in so many fields.
By David Krug on February 8, 2007 12:06 pm
So true.
By Vince Williams on February 8, 2007 1:30 pm