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Wal-Mart Jumps Into Video Streaming
Endoflow2010 writes "Today Wal-Mart has added streaming video to their website. What better time to compete with Netflix, now that they have raised their prices? On Wal-Mart's website, the movies will be available the same day the DVDs go on sale in stores. Walmart.com general manager Steve Nave said the retailer is following its customers as they increasingly embrace digital movie rentals and purchases. 'We know customers are starting to shift their behavior, in terms of how they consume their media,' Nave said, adding, 'As as customers make that change, we don't want to lose that customer as they shift to digital.' Wal-Mart, long the nation's leading seller of DVDs, signaled its intent to double down on digital movie distribution in February 2010, when it spent a reported $100 million to acquire Vudu, a Silicon Valley start-up that was gradually being added to home entertainment devices."
Streaming is useless when ISPs keep adding more caps.
Many ISPs are also cable-television providers and they're doing their best to smother this baby while it's still in the crib.
--
BMO
But will it support Linux?
'Impossible' is a word that humans use far too often. -- Seven of Nine
sell more DVDs than anyone else for a bunch of reasons other than that they have the best DVDs available. The concept that content is king will be more important online than it is for stacking DVDs high and selling them cheap.
Nullius in verba
Canada should join Europe instead, we have Spotify and Voddler here.
... I wouldn't touch it. I just don't do business with Wal-Mart for a number of reasons. Of course, I'm just one person among hundreds of millions who just don't care where they spend their money.
I don't respond to AC's.
I know Wal-Mart sells censored versions of CDs. Will they be doing the same with the movies, or is there a reasonable expectation that the streaming movie will be the same as I would see in the theater or on Netflix?
Unclear convo:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=85664
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
The MAFIAA standard plan to releasing content on the internet while maintaining control of the distribution chain:
The MAFIAA learned their mistake from iTunes, where they waited until it was too late to try to stop Apple. And while they eventually got variable pricing, they still had to give Apple more control than they're comfortable with - it still makes them rage to this day. They aren't going to make the same mistake with films and TV shows: no single competitor will be allowed to get big enough to dictate contract terms. It will be the studios who make a profit and the studios who anyone has to go through to publish content; the role of the distributors is to distribute content as cheap as possible for the studios.
And thus we're on Step 3. WalMart is the competitor the studios are setting up to combat Netflix. When Netflix is sufficiently bled, WalMart will then have their contract prices increased just as Netflix had.
No, they raised the price. Used to be you got discs for $8 and streaming was free. Then the two of them were $11, meaning streaming went up to $3. Now to get the same thing it costs you $16. They raised the price on streaming. If you were only streaming while you had the ability to get discs, too, then you were choosing to pay $11 for a streaming-only account. That's not what its price was, it was just what you decided to pay for it. Since their streaming has a limited selection and degraded quality (no 1080p, bad throughput issues, etc.) it isn't worth as much as getting the same movie on a disc. Its only advantage is the fast turnaround, which isn't worth what the quality and limitation cost it.
But it is competition for Amazon Unbox.
This sig is the express property of someone.
From the article, this is not an unlimited streaming service like Netflix or Hulu. This is a video-on-demand service like iTunes (and plethora other similar stores) where you have to pay for every item you download, either as a rental or a purchase. Yes, you can get titles the same day the are released on DVD -- for a $25 download price.
That is just too fucking awesome: people want to time-shift streaming to make it cheaper, more efficient, and less painfully laggy. Don't get me wrong: it is a good idea. I sincerely like it. Who wants to stream when the network is at its busiest?
Then, next, all you need to do is have multiple recipients for each stream (no problem getting people to synchronous their receipt, since they're time-shifting anyway; this is a job for a computer!), so that you can reap the advantages of broadcast or multicast. For a popular TV show with n viewers, this would lead an an up-to-n-fold increase in efficiency on some segments of the network. For large values of n that is truly a no-brainer.
And then you will have invented something new and patent worthy. Call it "cable television combined with DVR." It would be awesome tech, similar to what people will be using in the year 2000.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Newsflash: DVDs are digital, have been since they came out.
Please stop calling each new wave of technology "switching to digital" -- practically everything is digital already; I know it's hard, but you'll just have to bite the bullet and get half a clue what you're talking about so you can describe it. In this particular case, "internet", "on-line", "streaming", and/or "not a big truck" may be useful.
Over the past few weeks I'd grown concerned that some horrific accident had decimated the ranks of overly-pedantic Slashdot users - I'm glad to find out you're okay!
#DeleteChrome
So if you want snow tires and the only way to get them is by buying a Bronco, snow tires are the price of a Bronco.
Only to you.
Walmart actually has a pretty substantial datacenter back-end for doing logistics, supply chain, and stocking decisions stuff. They are a touch cagey about just how substantial.
More importantly, though, Walmart's vast physical distribution network makes it one of the major sellers of DVDs, which puts it in a helpful position when negotiating with studios over the price of streaming a given video a given number of times. With their clout in that area, they just have to not be worse than other CDNs(or, if they are, hire one or more CDNs to do it for them) in order to offer a competitive price.
I didn't buy an expensive 62" high-def display, Oppo BD player, component surround sound system, and nice speakers so I can watch the crap quality of what Netflix and everyone else today calls HD.
Simple, sell them and get a 32". You can now watch Neflix and what everyone calls HD today, will really be HD, and be equivalent to even bluray.
Does it make sense that you can get a physical DVD for $1, but to stream it you pay $5.99?
RedBox has costs including millions of discs, 10s of 1000s of kiosks, employees all over the country to physically drive and stock the machines.
Companies like Comcast and Netflix basically already have the infrastructure just sitting there to wipe out Blockbuster and RedBox and anybody else out if they offered $1 movies. Plus it seems like the % profits on $1 streamed movies would be way higher vs RedBox with it's physical costs.
Is this something being blocked by the old studio type execs or am I missing something? I know there are costs with streaming, but it can't be anywhere near what they are to run 25,000+ RedBox kiosks at $1 a rental can it?