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Wal-Mart Closes Online Movie Download Service
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Dec 28, 2007 01:34 PM
from the hard-to-fight-the-flix dept.
from the hard-to-fight-the-flix dept.
eldavojohn writes "A year after opening its movie download service, Wal-Mart has abandoned the endeavor. They claim this is a result of HP's decision to stop supporting its video download store software. The article also notes that, unlike iTunes, Wal-Mart offered variable pricing which attracted a lot of studios. 'The world's largest retailer instead turned its rental service over to Netflix Inc. Wal-Mart still operates a music download service and continues to sell CDs and DVDs at retail stores and over the Internet for shipping by mail.' Is this evidence of the strength of unified pricing in media downloads or just another company being squished by the giant Netflix & Apple?"
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Wal-Mart "squished"? (Score:4, Funny)
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I was gonna say.
You mean for once WalMart isn't the one doing the squishing? How'd that happen?
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It's hard to be all things to all people.
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Here in Austin, which is admittedly not a huge metropolis but is a good sized city, there are already several Wal-Mart stores, and I guarantee none of them are hurting for cu
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In the suburbs, you have a huge sub division with cookie cutter houses
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If that were true, then the city wouldn't have needed to pass laws to make it impossible for WM to open up.
Chicago is surrounded by 42 Wall-Marts and the city-dwellers are exceptionally eager for WM jobs and services. Witness this from George Will's column on the issue:
This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city, and
Re:Wal-Mart "squished"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Cost and lack of extras the reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Compound that with the fact that there is probably a Walmart (or some other large dicount retailer) within 5 miles of your home in most major areas.
If I can get in my car, drive to the actual Walmart, buy the superior product for the same or often less than the one online, and be back at home in under 20 minutes
- Roach
Re:Cost and lack of extras the reason. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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I guess I should feel lucky to have a job that lets me go to the grocery store. Where they sell DVDs. Often for less than $20.
Sorry, but the "I make $X per minute" thing is just silly in almost every case. You don't work 24/7. You are not getting paid for your non-work time. My wife does not pay me $40/hr to take out the garbage, does yours?
And anyway
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Online video distribution is slowly coming. They can't hold out forever. Music finally got here with itunes, video
Squished? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like saying the local burger joint is going to crush McDonalds! Sure, Netflix is a big company, but they're nothing compared to the Wally-world behemoth.
Re:Squished? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes a big company will try some new endeavor to much fanfare, but not bother to try very hard, assuming somehow that they will win because they are big. When that happens it's easy to take them out. Wal-Mart had no plan here; they just thought selling some videos at terms dictated by the studios might get them some cash. If they ran their retail stores that way, those would fail too, but they put serious effort into their retail stores.
Parent
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Actually, I can't find the source off hand but I've heard that WalMart has quite a bit of sway with their suppliers and can dictate to them how much they want things to cost or even packaging. So, what you're saying is that they ran this download store the complete OPPOSITE as their retail stores
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Re:Squished? (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate my local Walmart as much as the next guy. And individual stores may be inefficient or suck. But the corporation as a whole is extremely efficient. I work in the trucking industry. Walmart is one of the companies that can afford to spend $1000 on an experimental MPG increaser. Whether it be APUs for the trucks, side skirts for the trailers, single tire rears, etc. If engine company X can provide
They forced use of APUs on ALL trucks after doing a trial run. At a trucking conference they presented their savings broke even at 16 months. Now a ton of other companies are following their lead.
I thought I read on
I don't have a lot of nice things to say about walmart, but that they're inefficient isn't one of them.
Parent
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Depending on how vertically integrated the Chassis OEM is, it may be more than a generator. Sometimes the coolant is used as the heating fluid in the cab. Yes they are just generators mostly, but that's what the industry decided to call them. Because the 15L engine is the "Main Power Unit" this is the "Auxilary Power Unit"
California for 2009 has enacted STRICT Anti-Idling laws. Any more than 15 minutes idling and not in traffic, the engine must shut down. (Written into the engine
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Wal-mart does what it does (Score:5, Insightful)
That is only half of what Wal-mart does (Score:2)
That is only half of what Wal-mart does, they are also very good at negotiating low prices from suppliers.
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Re:Wal-mart does what it does (Score:4, Insightful)
I read somewhere that 75% of all KMarts and Sears competed with a Wal-Mart, but only 33% of Wal-Marts competed with a Sears because of this strategy. When you can beat your competitors on price, location, and convenience, you're going to do well no matter what.
Parent
Re:Wal-mart does what it does (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
It's Walmart (Score:4, Insightful)
HP Dropping support sounds like a cop out... but a believable one
Technically inclined also prefer physical (Score:2)
When digital has no significant price advantage over physical the technically inclined may also prefer physical. Rip the DVD or CD at the fidelity you choose, re-rip in the future as technology improves, consider the disc a backup as well.
I'm also hesitant to consider someone who buys digital to be technically inclined. Most kiddies can manage that.
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Businesses are NOT swiss army knives (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is evidence of businesses trying to be too many things to too many people and slowly discovering that no, you can't be everything to everyone. "Jack of all trades, master of none" indeed.
Focus on a specific market and DO THAT WELL.
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anyone can sell cheap Haynes underwear, but not everyone can sell digital content
That's only true if you assume that you can get cheap Haynes underwear in the first place. The reverse is true (at least for my skill set) when you consider how easy it is to set up a website compared to how hard it is to get the physical store, negotiate price with the supplier, buy from the supplier, distribute to the individual locations and manage the employees that are required to sell those products. Wal-Mart is exceptionally skilled at all those things and their size has made them even more so.
Un
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The only reason that's a rule for small business is because it's easy to get ahead of yourself and waste away your time and money trying to do too much. If you're limited and don't have the money and man power to specifically go after something, t
Outside the Core Competency (Score:4, Insightful)
While hindsight is 20/20... this is a classic example of an "Old media" company failing to adapt to the "New Media" because they didn't have any expertise in the current technology.
Wal-Mart's core competency is managing their supply chain. They make money by being the most efficient supplier of products that are in local demand. They operate their integrated technological systems marvelously. They don't know jack-shit about the internet and "download-able content". They should partner with Amazon to run their webpage... though that would probably start to enter into an anti-trust area.
Too many restrictions... (Score:2, Insightful)
Due to licensing restrictions, you cannot copy or transfer your video files and play them on a different computer.
What if I want to watch movies on my laptop and my desktop? What if I decide to buy a new computer and can't watch my movies anymore? Wal-Mart should realize that people can just download a movie via P2P and not have to deal with any restrictions like this. I for one and much more willing to pay money for media if I can do whatever I want with it.
All of Wal-Mart's eggs were in HP's basket (Score:4, Insightful)
It's neither (Score:2)
Trying to do a downloadable media store without taking the iPod into account is like trying to market an office productivity suite that doesn't read/write MS Office docs: You're doomed to failure from the start.
If (and this is a BIG if) the movie studios wake up to the benefits of DRM-free downloads like some record labels have, the big winner here could be Amazon.com. They're uniquely positioned to equal, if not better the success that Apple has had. They're platform agnostic
No contract with HP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably had code escrow but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would bet they did have a code escrow agreement - in the event HP decided to back out of doing the software (which they did) WalMart gets access and use of all the HP source.
The fact that Wal-Mart is shutting down operations shows exactly what use code escrow is - jack and squat. What is WalMart going to do with a bunch of hacked together HP code, without any of the people who worked on it?
Plus in general a problem with code escrow is that you can't look at the source before you take it over to see how feasible that proposition really is.
Parent
My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my software.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Walmart fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never buy any kind of application software from Hewlett-Packard! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...
Seriously, HP has the worst cace of attention deficit disorder of any company I've ever seen. I've spent 25 years watching them announce "the next big thing" only to completely forget about it a year later after having sold it to three big customers (who are then completely screwed of course). Anyone who buys a proprietary solution from them at this point deserves what they get.
G.
Re:My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my softwar (Score:2)
DRM is what kills it for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sales force (Score:3, Interesting)
However, short-term, DVD is still king. So do they cut into their current sales for an uncertain future (can they really win against the other big-players?
Another possible explanation, is perhaps they realized getting into variable-pricing was a mistake. If history gives us any lessons, the media companies are greedy bastards. They don't seem to give much thought into long-term planning. This is one case where the intelligence of Apple really comes through. They realized that unless they could control the prices, companies would try to charge more money than the physical media costs. I suspect after some grace period, in order to save face, NBC will come back to iTunes.
Nonono you got that wrong (Score:2, Funny)
Like this:
WALMART ONLINE MOVIES SUX0RZ
or if you liked the service
WALMART ONLINE MOVIES SHUTDOWN SUX0RS
See, that wasn't so hard, was it?
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Thanks for letting us know your price for doing something you don't like.
"think I have even taken back things that I purchased at another store."
Ah, you lie and commit fraud, that explains it.
You sir,are a Dick, and the reason places like wal-mart stop being customer friendly.
You, and people like you, are the knife that is killing 'The Customer is always right.' policy.
Dick.
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iTunes, however, offers most of the tracks I want and with no waiting. Usually I can't get them any cheaper from Amazon. Plus there are a lot of times i don't want the w