Wal-Mart launches movie, TV download service
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Tuesday introduced a test version of its new video download service, making it the first major retailer to offer such a service with the backing of all of Hollywood's big studios.
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(InfoWorld) - Tapping a new service from Hewlett-Packard, Wal-Mart joined a growing field of providers of digital video download services with the launch of an online movie store on Tuesday. The offering is built on HP Video Merchant Services, a Web-shopping technology also launched Tuesday that allows businesses to set up an online video store. HP holds hundreds of petabytes of digital films and TV shows in its data centers and provides back-office sales and search applications, said Willem de Zoete, vice president and general manager of Digital Entertainment Services at HP. Customers like Wal-Mart use the service as part of their online retail offerings, allowing cinema fans to browse movies based on genre or search by entering the name of an actor, director, or film. Customers can then download the movies to play on their PCs or portable video players or order a packaged disc to arrive in the mail, choosing a DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu-ray format. A first-time user must install a program on the PC before starting the 30- to 45-minute process of downloading a 1.5GB movie over a typical household broadband connection, although most can start watching within five to 10 minutes, said Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart's divisional merchandise manager for digital media. Once the movie is downloaded, each user has the right to transfer it to three separate portable media players using Microsoft's Windows Media Player and to watch it an unlimited number of times. Customers who own media extender boxes can also play the digital file on TV screens, Swint said. The service will compete against Apple's iTunes store, which is limited to movies from Disney and Paramount in addition to TV and other programs. Other video download services are available from Amazon.com, AOL, Movielink, and CinemaNow. Microsoft also offers a movie and TV download service to Xbox users. Wal-Mart claims it has a market advantage over those sites since it offers movies from most of the major Hollywood studios and television networks. Compared to conventional movie rental stores, the digital movie rental industry is still struggling to build the size of its catalogs. Wal-Mart now sells about 3,000 of the movies and TV shows stored in HP's digital vaults and expects that number to rise quickly as content providers convert their own libraries to digital versions. "Today, the majority of movies are stored on tapes in buildings. That is a choke point at this moment in time. Part of my focus is to work with Hollywood studios to make movies available in digital file formats," de Zoete said. Another bar to building larger catalogs is that many obscure movie titles are never brought to the rental market if studios think demand is too small to sell the vast quantity of discs created in bulk reproduction batches, Swint said. That also stops retailers from taking advantage of the "long tail," the marketing theory that shops can make more money selling small quantities of each niche item than selling a large amount of trendy, short-lived items. To solve it, HP plans to offer "manufacturing on demand" in the future, opening up a huge catalog of old titles by producing a single disc to meet each online order. HP has started building a factory to do that work, and will add it to their Video Merchant Services package. In the meantime, Wal-Mart is selling new releases, which become available the same day as the DVD release, for $12.88 to $19.88. Older movies cost $7.50, and TV programs cost $1.96 per episode. DVD buyers will also have the option of paying an additional fee to download the digital version for playback on PCs and portable devices.
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Amazon.com AMZN.O on Thursday   unveiled a widely anticipated Internet service offering movies   and TV shows that can be downloaded to personal computers,   solidly moving the online retailer into the nascent market.
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Amazon.com launched a video download service Thursday, ending months of speculation that the Internet retailer would be getting into the online TV and movie business.
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One step at a time Comment We have to say we are a little baffled by the trial film download service the Wal-Mart has launched, tied as it is to the purchase of a DVD from the store. The price is right, just $1.97 for a file that will play on a portable device (except which portable device, not another Windows device surely). Itâs $2.97 for PCs and Laptops (yep itâs only a Windows version) and $3.97 for both.â¦
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Friday said it plans to exclusively back the Blu-ray high definition movie format, the latest blow to the rival HD DVD camp backed by Toshiba Corp.
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Time Warner Inc pay TV channel HBO will launch a service on Tuesday to let subscribers download movies and television shows over the Web, joining a crowded market for video on the Internet.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Seeking to push digital media further into homes, Apple Computer launched its long-awaited online movie service Tuesday and showed off a device that will make it easier for consumers to watch the videos on television.
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Friday said   it was not trying to dissuade movie studios from working with   other forms of distribution, such as Apple Computer Inc.'s   iTunes download service.
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Paid music and movie download service launches today.
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Amazon.com on Thursday unveiled a   widely anticipated Internet service offering movies and   television shows that can be downloaded onto consumers'   personal computers.
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Amazon.com  on Thursday  unveiled a widely anticipated Internet service offering movies  and television shows that can be downloaded onto consumers'  personal computers.
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By Elizabeth M. Gillespie  Amazon.com Inc. launched a digital video downloading service Thursday, ending months of speculation that the Internet retailer would be getting into the online TV and movie business.
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Friday abandoned the flailing HD DVD format, potentially ending a war over next-generation DVDs as it joined Best Buy and Netflix in supporting rival Blu-ray technology.
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Wal-Mart Enters the Online Music Store Mix  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched an online music store that works with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player. Wal-Mart, which began offering music downloads in March, said that its new store will offer downloads at 88 cents per song and is somewhat of an affiliate of ...
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Amazon, the biggest online retailer, starts a TV and film download service in the US called Unbox.
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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has closed an online movie download service it launched less than a year ago.