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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.
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BMO
Small problem with that plan is that for #4, Walmart would have to cave... if there is one thing that Walmart has shown to be outrageously good at, it is controlling their suppliers' pricing.
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... 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.
Haha, the hundreds of millions who shop there do so precisely because they care where their money goes.
Not exactly. They don't care where it goes, they just care how much of it is going.
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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.
It's Flash-based, so it does support Linux if you install the latest Flash plugin.