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Wal-Mart Enters NetFlix's Business
wcbrown writes "AP reports that Wal-Mart is entering into the online DVD rental arena, currently dominated by Netflix. Wal-Mart is starting out with 13,000 titles, six distribution centers, and competitive pricing. With a seriously tremendous infrastructure and expansive will, Wal-Mart stands poised to overtake Netflix. To say the least, that's not going to be good for business."
This isn't necessarily bad for NetFlix. First, it "validates" the market, and gives NetFlix a bunch of free PR (all the articles about the Walmart entering the fray will compare/contrast with NetFlix), including making tens of millions of consumers more aware of this new sort of rental scheme that they just don't grok yet. Second, it makes NetFlix a take-over target for any other company wanting to join in the competition (perhaps even BlockBuster, if their home-grown offering falters). Then again, maybe NetFlix will get blown out of the water.
Quick Jeff Bezos, patent DVD rentals and save us from Walmart!
Oh boy! Now I can watch the entire Jersey Trilogy without the elaborate strings of curses and insults! Thanks Walmart. We may even be able to get a family-friendly "Pulp Fiction" available for rent soon. Junior will love it.
Last week my local Walmar had a large vending machine that dispensed the DVD that you wanted to rent. and the machine would accept the returns also.
All I needed was my credit card/ debit card.
Maybe they are looking to expand in both online rental and vending style?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
To say the least, that's not going to be good for business
Competition is good for the consumer.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
Given that NetFlix has been pushing pop-under ads to my browser, I've chosen to avoid being a customer of theirs. So, as long as Wal-Mart doesn't start doing the same sort of thing, this sounds like a great idea.
I wonder if they'll have a similar "frequent renters get lower priority" scheme to what NetFlix has.
Walmart announced this service 6 months ago, Oh, wait. Not news, Just expanding their service... Of course Considering that walmart tends to bury the competition... and that their "free" trial is 30 days. Buh-by netflix.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Well as we have seen Walmart has a long and unbroken track record of removing/banning/censoring things too non-consertative/too non-christian/too non-'patrotic'/too 'contreversial' for their perceived vanilla brain dead store-goers. It will remain to be seen what they actually make available.
I really don't mean this to be a troll... but it occurs to me that Wal-mart's core customer group are not exactly likely to own DVD players.
Wal-mart's greatest move (from a financial gain POV) was to move into middling-to-small towns (this means towns with 4000 people or more, or county seats) and take over the businesses downtown, the mom-and-pop stores, by slashing prices. (Whether you like that tactic is irrelevant, it was enormously successful.)
Well, how much are you going to be able to slash prices on an online DVD rental? It's not like Netflix and Blockbuster are higher-priced than the market will bear.
They can try it... but I suspect it won't be a roaring success.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
That when I go to rent a movie, it's usually on a spur of the moment thing. It's like I ask my wife "what would you like to do tonight" and she might say I don't know...wanna rent a movie?
So then we go down to the rental place and look around, not really sure what we want and pick something up and go home THAT NIGHT and watch a movie.
With renting a movie over the net and having it mailed to you isn't quite what we're looking for. We want something we can see that night, not two days from then...because the way we live two days from then we might be doing something else that comes up etc etc. We live by the seat of our pants and never really plan out little things like movie watching in advance.
At least, that's how we play it. Is there really that much need for this out there? Just curious.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
I have always felt of things like NetFlix, and even the Tivo, as a "poor man's video on demand."
You pick the movies you want, and some time, a few days later they are there to watch at your leisure, taking as long as you want, with pause, rewind FF.
Everything you want from video on demand except the ability to pick a movie right now and watch it right now.
Which turns out to be not so important after all. And it's a lot cheaper than putting in all those servers and 7 megabits to every home of highly reliable bandwidth.
Another example of the old adage that you should never underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of magtapes, except this time it's a postal van full of DVDs.
I'm not *too* worried about this. I think Netflix customers are probably somewhat saavier than your standard Wal*Mart customer. Granted, Wal*Mart has the advantage of being able to pour money into the program (a la Microsoft's Ultimate TV) and the advantage of brick 'n' mortar stores to push the product, but if they play the same censoring games as they do with their music, I don't see them taking off. Hell, even Blockbuster is beginning to see the original-aspect-ration light.
If Netflix embarks on an even semi-intelligent ad campaign, I think they have a fighting chance.
-d
How exactly is this bad for business? Is it bad for business like Canon coming out with copiers was bad for Xerox business? You know, where it drove the exhorbitant price of copiers down to where most of us have them built into our 300 dollar printer? Yeah.. I see how bad that has been for Xerox.
.50c, netflix can A) price to match, B) add a benefit that makes their slightly higher-than-the-otherguy price worth it, C) go out of business. Either way, its good for the consumer, and thats pretty much the bottom line.
Its not "bad" for business, it is just business. It is competition. If walmart undercuts NetFlix by
I tend to not shop Amazon, beause I dont like thier policies, and i can usually find something at close to the same price. (And, I can usually get brick and mortar stores to match Amazon's price to get my sale.) I suspect the same thing will happen here. A lot of people DONT LIKE Wal-Mart.. and wont rent from them. But anything that kills BLockbuster and 48Hours is good, imho. I still think the ridiculously high price that they charge for DVD's will come down as people find it cheaper to rent them enough to get tired of them.
(Okay.. so its not so ridiculous anymore, but why does it seem the more successful the film in the theaters, the cheaper it is to get, but it costs three times that for something that is slightly more obscure? The costs of production of the DVD's should be about the same, shouldnt they?)
maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
To say the least, that's not going to be good for business
Um, yeah, maybe not for Netflix. But I thought competition was good?
rooooar
I think at least one thing wal-mart has going against it is the worry that they could try to inject their social mores into which DVDs they carry.
If they do not do this, that's fine, but if you're going to limit your selection so you don't carry 'immoral' stuff it's going to hurt you. Not carrying stuff you disagree with isn't a problem if you're the big superstore people go to for convenience, but once they reach the online arena, well, if you're going to bother renting movies online then most likely you're going to be the kind of person who actually thinks "Kite" is kind of neat. There's a reason that people buy music from amazon.com before they'll buy it from Walmart.com, and yes, Marilyn Manson probably has something to do with it.
Then again, maybe Wal-mart's gotten a bit more flexible about that as of late.. i found our local wal-mart carrying "the boondock saints" last week. Given, we're in a college town, but that's still pretty surprising.
I heard Blockbuster for awhile censored their tapes. Is this true, and have they stopped doing it with the move to DVD?
Asda? Did someone just fiddle with their left hand at the business name registration office??
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
Rent DVD porn. I'm serious, the porn market on the internet already makes insane amounts of money. All you need to do is start up a NetFlix service that rents out DVD porn.
:-D
Both NetFlix and the new Wal-Mart service will not carry such titles.
And if anyone out there knows of a service like this already, please, let me know
Wlamart has food, clothing, gasoline, and domestic services all in one handy area..
;)
I guess as soon as they offer housing and, then the dream of corporate feudalism will be complete.
will be better off for it.
OH NOES!!! IT APPEARS YUO DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR DIS HERE PIZZA! WAHT EVER ARE YOU GOING TO DO!?!?
Why rent a DVD, then have to wait for it???? Go to your locally owned, operated, mom and pop video store and check out an indie flick, or a new release even. Support your local stores and help your local economy. Wal-mart employs one of my parents, but my town's local economy is shrinking, and this town could one day dry and blow away. I think this is a common thing all over the U.S.
In short, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES.
Thank you
To say the least, that's not going to be good for business
As a Wal-mart stockholder with no stock in NetFlix, I think this will be very good for business.
I doubt WalMart will carry anything with either nudity or controversy. I mean they just pulled Cosmo off their shelves because it was too tittilating. Being so 'family oriented' eliminates a *huge* proportion of the films out there.
I think NetFlix can survive simply on the fact that they can carry a wider selection of films...
carry such exotic fare as the non-rated version of "Embrace of the Vampire". So what good is the service? Seriously, Wal-Mart will heavily sensor the movies they carry. I say screw-em.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
To be honest, I think Netflix has already saturated the market for this. As has been identified by others, the true geeks, rent and rip the DVD, or find the torrent, or KaZaa or iMesh it.
The market to watch is when someone (like a Wal-Mart) puts thier money into the technology to develop a streaming technology or a download and play type of busniess model. Of course what that model is, I can't say (or I'd be rich!)
I think the weak link in the chain is the hardware. If I could watch movies without having to actually get a DVD or pry my kids away from the DVD player to watch a movie, it would be more appealing.
Also, there is nothing (in movie rental land) worse than getting your NetFlix rental disc after waiting 2 months and seeing that it appears to have been run over in a gravel pit. (Just return it, we'll put you back on the list).
Lastly, our stupid television media (techno-morons) had this story last night and said Wal-Mart was going to now compete directly with Blockbuster for the video rental market. No mention of NetFlix whatsoever. Shows an interesting perspective on what the true perception of the "masses" are about what technology exists.
Dave
Not good for the consumer? Rubbish. You act as though aggressive competition guarantees an irrevocable market dominance. It doesn't! As soon as your theoretical future-walmart doesn't meet the consumer's desire for quality+low prices+convenience (something it currently does quite well, mind you) another business can rise up to meet that need.
Give the consumer due credit -- when a company takes it's customer base for granted and acts like a "dinosaur" it loses market share to smaller, more nimble companies that give the customer what they want. The business history books are full of examples (see Sears & Roebuck, K-Mark, IBM, etc.)
Result? Problem solved, unless you simply don't believe that capitalism works.
According to this article in Slate, Wal-Mart, with $244 billion in revenues last year, represents nearly 2.5 percent of the U.S. economy. Worldwide, they employ 1.38 million.
Gee, just what I always wanted! A censored DVD rental company! Sigh. I have lost complete and total respect for Wal-Mart over the years. First they started flexing their muscles to censor the video game industry and made it plain that any video game they didn't like wouldn't be sold by Wal-Mart, thus making game companies cave and self-edit their games. Then they pulled some men's magazines off their shelves that had less female skin than most women's magazines these days. Now they want to start renting out DVDs, which I'm quite sure are censored? Heh, good luck.
YEah! I DEMAND streaming porn on the projector at elementary schools! Who is WalMart to tell us what they will and wont sell! HOW DARE THEY have some morals and make decisions that they feel protect their clientele!
Sheesh.. the NERVE of walmart to think that someone like me may not want my six year old son asking why a mostly naked wrestling chick is on the front cover of STUFF magazine in the checkout line! (Stacy Kiebler.. next month).
Well.. I think I'll take my dollar right down to the local dark wank-in-the-back porn shop to show my outrage! (end sarcastic rant).
Dude.. its their store. They can sell, or not sell, whatever the hell they want. If you dont like it, dont shop there, but dont act like its some crime against humanity that Wal-mart doesnt carry pimply faced teenager prot0-spank material at their registers anymore.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
When I tried Walmart dvd rentals a few months back the selection seemed about the same as NetFlix, but the quantity wasn't there. Just about every title I wanted to rent was a 'long wait', whereas on NetFlix very few titles have any wait whatsoever.
Walmart needs to get a greater quantity of titles before they steal significant market from NetFlix. I would also like to see Walmart enable returns/check-ins at stores (stores could bulk-main discs back to distribution sites).
I currently subscribe to Netflix, and at the rate they are either lost or stolen while in route back to the Netflix warehouse, I wouldn't want to be paying that for each one! Netflix has yet to charge me for those and state they won't unless it becomes frequent.
Anyway, I'll be sticking to Netflix...
I live to gib...
I tried the Wal-Mart service earlier in the year, and unless they drastically can improve their delivery times, Netflix doesn't have anything to worry about for quite a while. I had used Netflix for about 2 years, and generally was decently satisfied with their service, although their constant changing of rates was annoying and off putting. As an example, if I rented a DVD from NetFlix that had immediate availability, I would recieve the DVD approximately 2 days later. Not a bad turn around. Contrast that to Wal-Mart, which first, must have a drastically smaller inventory (or not as friendly of a reservation system to new buyers as Netflix) because almost all DVD's had a long wait. On movies that were available now, the EARLIEST I ever recieved a DVD was 5 days after I had ordered. Now I realize that proximity to distribution centers probobly greatly affects transit time, but for myself the inventory of Netflix coupled with quicker deliver time made me switch back.
One reason I won't be switching to Wal-Mart's service is the total lack of any gay-themed movies. And, I don't expect they will attempt to reach this market. NetFlix did some cleaning a year ago and removed all the softcore stuff, but left behind the hard-to-find gay-themed movies, some of which are quite good. "Metrosexuality" was great... short films series... none to be found at Wal-Mart. I admit, I'm gay so my judgement on this is slanted, but at the same time, isn't Wal-Mart's? If they judge this kind of movie wrong to offer, what else are they keeping from the public? Remember, Wal-Mart is the same company that refuses to sell certain games for PC / PS2, etc and even some movies due to content. Hell... the Drudge Report said the other day that Wal-Mart was going to start covering up some women's magazines due to obscene content! Hey, the word "SEX" was on a cover with Jennifer Anniston - I've been OBSCENED!!! Thank goodness Wal-Mart is around to protect us all. Praise be to Sam.
Theirs just one problem with that, because Wal*Mart is so large, when they refuse to carry a product unless it meets their criteria, it severly hurts buisness for that company. Whats that mean? It means before the majority of magazines/etc publish their magazines, they send a preview copy to Wal*Mart to make sure it meets their standards of publication. Basicaly you end up with censorship by market dominance.
look like philanthropists. When Nike abandons a plant because of safety concerns, Wal-Mart negotiates a rent decrease and moves in...
I have been a netflix fan for a long time now, and Wal-Mart would have to pay ME to buy ANYTHING from them...
Just check out www.corpwatch.org and search on WalMart, there's plenty to read...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Hard, though, to have sympathy for a company that nicknamed their product "Mosaic Killer", AKA Mozilla.
Microsoft may have fscked a number of companies, but anyone entering a market where people are already giving away their product should not be surprised when somebody else comes in and gives away their product.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I grew up in a small town, as did many of my friends. In nearly every town, a Wal*Mart has moved in and crushed all the local businesses. I know, capitalism, best for the consumer, etc. and all that. But it is turning every place in the US into a McTown, all with exactly the same things in them.
I'm currently a NetFlix subscriber, but I churn 20 movies a month. They lose money big time on me. I'm going to move to Wal*Mart, and if they don't try to throttle me somehow, I'll be more than happy to have them lose money on me.
'Deliverance' and 'Hee-Haw's Greatest Moments'
I dropped my subscription to NetFlix sometime last year and replaced it with GreenCine, even though they were slightly more expensive and took longer to ship to me. Why? Selection.
I liked getting anime DVDs from Netflix, but the way they kept buying only the first two or three DVDs of a six- or eight-disc series annoyed the frick out of me. I found GreenCine after a short search at Yahoo, and the site promised a greater selection of independent and anime rentals -- and they were absolutely right.
My point is, the real advantage of the online rental market should be greater selection of eclectic titles. Have you ever shopped for movies at Wal-Mart? Mainstream stuff all the way. Their CD selection is even worse. I started buying books and CDs from Amazon.com not for the prices, but because their selection was that much better, even if I lost the advantage of immediate gratification.
If people want to rent mainstream videos, then they'll always do it at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, where they're promised "guaranteed in stock" even if they only keep it for two nights. Immediacy is more important than "keep it as long as you like" in most consumers' minds; if it weren't, we wouldn't have movie channels on cable TV at all.
So kudos to Wal-Mart for entering a new arena (for them), and may NetFlix be driven to excel even more because of it. But until they both realize the real advantages of what they're doing and offer a wider and more complete selection, I'll happily ignore them both.
Perhaps Wal-Mart will surpass Netflix in total sales, perhaps by many times. However, I see these two companies not competing directly.
Wal-Mart has never been anything but a mass market company, with lowest-common-denominator sensibilities. In any category, *especially* movies and music, they sell a relatively short list of only the most popular, mass market items. Michael Jackson? Sure. The latest college radio, big city hipster fave? Forget it, even if they're selling in the millions.
Netflix, OTOH, has always catered to film buffs. They'll probably lose share to Wal-mart in the most popular releases, but will continue to grow elsewhere. So, if you want "Dumb and Dumber IV," go to Wal-Mart, but if you want the Cannes winners, indie greats, art films or classics, you're more likely to find them at Netflix.
That "walmart only, propietary" deal happend to me with a couple of my small refillable propane tanks. I got two from walmart, turns out they put a "walmart_only_ thread on the filler valve, you are forced to get filler-ups/exchanges only at walmart then, unlike my other ones that I can take anyplace handy.
I didn't mind walmart when sam walton was still kicking, it seemed like they at least made an effort to have "made in USA" stuff in abundance, and didn't have weird polices like this propane deal (and what they will probably do with DVDs-good call there), but now,since he's died and who knows who is running it as an economic division of the chinese peoples liberation army, I've about almost completely removed them from sucking on my wallet. Once in a great while I get stuck, and have no recourse but to go in there, and every time I see aisle after aisle of lost homes, lost jobs, lost equity, lost cars, basically a lot of lost hopes and dreams disgusied as cheap trinkets, like what were used to purchase manhattan island. Trinkets, ohhh shiny and cheap.
They are that-cheap. Cheap as in price, cheap as in quality, but very expensive with a bigger look at when once those dollars leave the shores of the US and cease acting as an economic force multiplier.
Yes, Wallyworld can sell whatever they want, measured against whatever corporate standards of decency they so choose.
... but where the hell else can they go?
... but when all that exists is Windows+IE where the hell can I run it?
But it still saddens me. Here's why, and I've seen this happen over and over and over. Walmart moves in to a community. All the smaller book/record/video/newsstand stores go out of business; they just can't compete. Then all that is left for that community at that point, in an EASILY ACCESSIBLE FORM, is Walmart's definition of "decent".
Yes, I can "shop somewhere else", but what if there IS nowhere else?
Is it legal? I believe it is. Competition == good. It's the American Way (tm). We should all be so lucky.
It is good for the community? I believe it is not.
Also sad is Wallyworld's penchant for pressuring publishers and distributors to modify their books/records/videos/etc before they will stock them. That to me falls solidly in a gray area of legality. Sure, the distributors can go elsewhere if they don't want to edit
Sure I can write a better browser
Da Blog
I tried their DVD service for a month late last winter. I've used Netflix for a year or so, and thought it worth a try.
What a disapointment. The UI is terrible, making it awkward to browse titles. They had none of Netflix's 5-star rating functionality. I've found that to be one of the best features, since it makes decent recommendations to me based on my preferences (much like Tivo), and it also lets you view highly rated users. At Walmart you're on your own.
They also had terrible stocking problems, although presumably they will fix that. Lots of "long wait" movies, compared to Netflix where that's quite rare.
Plus the movies took longer to go round trip. In Chicago, the nearest center is in Minnesota, and I get 4-6 day turnaround. Walmart was consistantly several days longer. This varies according to your distance from distribution centers, but friends in other places also have gotten snappy turnaround from Netflix.
Anyway, give it a try for the trial period, but also try Netflix. Walmart has a long way to go to catch up.
There's another alternative: P2P style netflix. Check out mozo.
Basic idea is that arround you -- your dorm, co-workers, etc.-- there are thousands of DVDs. If you pool them into groups and share amonst yourselves you'll never need Blockbuster.
Statistically, it works: average DVD owner buys 15 a year, rents 30. With these numbers, the average person has access to thousands of DVDs around them already.
And yeah, I wrote this code for this site, so I'm biased..
I am a Netflix subscriber and am familiar with their prices/selection/service. I thought I'd check out the Walmart page to see how much cheaper they were.
Guess what I found out? For the plan I'm on, they aren't cheaper at all. Walmart offers 3 packages, the cheapest being $15.54/month for 2 movies. Netflix offers 2 movies at a time for only $13.99/month. Now at the standard plan (3 movies), Walmart is $18.76 whereas Netflix is $19.99. To say that this $1.23 is going to quash Netflix is somewhat ridiculous. Add to that the fact that Netflix is still cheaper in the lower category and it becomes even more ridiculous.
May I ask someone knowledgable on the subject what can be "evil" about a department store, I have personally been to shops that are overpriced, with bad service or crappy goods but never one that is as morally black as I am told wal-mart is, come on! It's just a frigging retailer!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem