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Wal-Mart Offers Up Downloadable Movies
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?
If they can provide as good a security model for protecting identity and financial information as Apple, they've probably got a shot. With the record of other brick and mortar stores lately though, they've got an image that needs a little polish though.
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.
This'll certainly start to change when the AppleTV comes out, though.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Am I the only one who lands on this article "Who really won during the Super Bowl?"? Is the link wrong?
Global warming is a cube.
... why the !&^!%# would anybody buy the virtual DVD?? This assumes people can't rip the physical object themselves - they're betting on people who pony up for fast internet links but don't use Google?? Oh, and don't own a DVD player.
I don't think that Walmart has a chance - Netflix and Blockbuster have the long tail. If WalMart is banking on only the 'major studios' they're missing the point - selection, selection, selection.
But how Wal-Mart treats employees can and does affect the tax payer. Case in point, Wal Mart got into a lot of trouble over stating that many of their workers in Maryland would be better off on the state's(tax payer funded) insurance than on Wal-Marts(Walton funded) insurance. Another even more reckless point is that Wal-Mart stated that inclimate weather is no longer an excuse for being late for work. How many white collar employees that weren't in critical(and thus usually better compensated compared to their peers) roles would accept this? It also puts everyone else in danger. While obviously there are exceptions, I would wager that more often than not Wal Mart employees tend to drive less reliable cars that are less likely to have snow tires and they are less likely to have (good) car insurance. So what happens if they are rushing to work after dropping the kids off in bad weather and they wreck because they were trying to satisfy Wal Mart's unreasonable demands. They may cause loss of life to themselves or others, they are more likely to cause significant property damage that they cannot pay to recompensate, traffic may get snarled, the police may have to spend money getting them out of there. Everyone BUT Wal-Mart loses, and yet it is Wal-Marts policy. They would rather see this happen than give someone an hour or two of overtime while they are covering a shift for someone who cannot make it into work. That is how Wal-Mart's policies towards employees hurt everyone.
Monstar L
Poor people shop at Wal Mart because they have to. The stores suck, the employees suck, everything sucks about Wal Mart.
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 is unlikely to make this work, because (whatever you think of them) their excellences are not in innovative use of technology. What they are good at is business deals that look good to their suppliers but turn out to benefit Wal*Mart in the long run... and in ratcheting down their suppliers' prices.
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Note how the business strategy is all about exclusive deals, about locking others out of content.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Do you have children? Have you ever tried to take them to day care and/or school an hour, or even half an hour, early?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
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.
Most Wal-Mart store employees are not white collar employees, so comparing them to what white collar employees may or may not expect isn't a fair comparison. Most blue collar employees are expected to be at their jobs at a certain time or they get docked pay, that's way it is, if you don't like it, find a job you can make it to on time or better yourself and move into a white collar job, where the expectations MAY be less.
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.
Four things have to happen for me to even try it.
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.
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.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I have children, been there and done that. My wife and I both have full time jobs.
When I exited the military, my kids were six and seven. I got a decent job in the DC area so we moved here. Things are expensive here and until I could get established and promoted at work, my wife had to get a job. We have no relatives or friends within several hundred miles of us and day care was too expensive. You know what we did? My wife worked at a nearby 711 during the night shift and I did side IT work for local businesses. The pay sucked but it helped make ends meet. She was a dedicated and responsible employee and because of that, was given some flexibility on nights she was scheduled to work but I could not make it home (I travled a lot for my full time job). Eventually she took the jump and got a job at a local chip fab making a lot more money but she still had to request night shift because of the kids. Same thing, if in the chance I could not make it home, she was able to work that out with her supervisors. If you are a good and dedicated employee and communicate with your co workers and supervisors, you WILL BE given some flexibility. Once my kids hit 10 and 11 and we felt comfortable giving them keys to the house, my wife was able to get a regular day job but still had to deal with medical appointments and picking the kids up from school when sick etc.. Again, if you are dedicated, you will be given some slack. Now my kids are 15 and 16, I've progressed through the IT chain and make about three times what I did back when this started in 1998 and my wife has gone to school and now is now a licensed insurance agent making very good money and on track to start her own insurance agency.
It CAN be done but you may have to take some sacrifices and consessions along the way. If you are a dedicated and responsible hard working person, the good fruit will eventually come your way. If you are a slacker and looking for special treatment or would like to blame others for your shortcomings, you too will get what you deserve.
I don't think my wife has ever called in sick for work in 20 years or working and I average about once instance every 2 years.
From TFA: "Download prices will be $12.88 to $19.88 on the day of the DVD release; older movies will start at $7.50"
... so I also just used up 10% of my monthly internet access to boot! I could drive to walmart (there's one 2 miles from my house, surprise!) and buy the thing in the amount of time it takes to download it.
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