Wal-Mart Jumps Into Video Streaming 150
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."
Voddler (Score:1)
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What a troll.
2 minutes looking at their site shows:
1) Voddler has about 2500 movie titles, most of which aren't even new releases - lots of crappy direct to video. Vudu/Walmart and Netflix have 5-10x that, and Vudu has new releases.
2) They are not even remotely like Spotify, they charge per title VOD for their movies, somewhere around US $3-4 per 24 hour rental. Same as everyone else.
3) They aren't watchable on any TV or BD players like other services, which are available on almost every consumer device a
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VUDU is the same. You can only rent movies to stream, unlike netflix where you pay once a month for all-you-can-eat. And VUDU has been around for 4 years. [techcrunch.com] Yes, FOUR, and it hasn't gone mainstream yet, while Netflix is everywhere.
And VUDU wants 99 cents to $5.99. [latimes.com] Come on, $5.99 is about what I pay Netflix for the month, and you want me to give you that for just one movie? No thanks, not when I have redbox down the s [redbox.com]
Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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Bandwidth caps should be taken away during those times when usage is low, similar to cell phone plans with free unlimited nights and weekends. Then you could schedule your movie downloads for the wee hours and watch them the next day.
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They should invent something like... prestreaming. So like say I want to watch Harry Potter tonight. But I know he internet will be like busy. So I tell my TV to prestream it this morning so that when I go back to watch it tonight. It's like already there.
You could load it with down pipe. I think I just discovered my first patent!
Re:Useless (Score:4, Funny)
Excellent! I think they should add another layer. Say like when I know what I want to watch 2-14 Buisiness days (M-F) from now, I could tell them and they'd send it to me on some type of disc and I could watch it whenever I got it and send it back when I was done. ;)
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probably because the MPAA said NO... even if the file is held in memory, there's a chance someone could save it permanently (for archival purposes, of course)
Great Idea (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Conan, is that you?
Speaking of the year 2000... (Score:2)
For many years the movie selection at Wal-Mart has been all DVDs though I think they might have Blu-Rays too, now. I can't even remember when I last saw VHS tapes or anything like that. If Wal-Mart wants to follow customers "shifting to digital," the year 2000 is about the right time to announce it.
So.. two predictions: 1) In the year 2000 we'll have digital movies and high-performance efficient analog delivery systems. 2) 11 years later we
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We had those here in Portugal, before we moved to unlimited. We had 20GB/month to use (for a 512Kbps package), but then between 1am and 9am it was "happy hours," where it didn't count.
Of course, P2P clients with scheduling to connect/disconnect at designed times where very popular.
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at designed times
Oi, eu falo Portugese fluente (mais, de Brasil, nao de ai). I wanted to constructively say that the correct word is "designated". And also, that the root appears to be the same in both cases: "design"; it is something planned by a human, whether designing something (creating, drawing, etc); or designating something (classifying, demarcating, stating a time at which it will happen, etc).
Cheers!
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Oh, thanks.
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>We have never come even close to hitting the Comcast limit of 250 GB / mo.
That's because what you're streaming isn't HDTV.
HDTV streaming will wipe that out by the 15'th of the month.
1080i HDTV (30 full frames/sec) is 25Mb/second, roughly.
BluRay (60 frames/second 1080p) is 40, roughly.
So let's just use 1080i for now and ignore BluRay.
25Mb/sec is roughly 2.5MB/sec. This is roughly 9GB/hr. 9 guzinta 250 27.7 times, or 27hours 40 minutes of video.
You can wipe that out in a week normal viewing. As it stan
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You don't seem to understand...
ISPs that are also cable companies (comcast, cox, twc, etc) will guarantee that streaming is "shit tier" third-class/steerage class video and the only way you can get actual HDTV (why else did you buy a flat panel tv?) is to buy into one of the cable "bundles." HDTV streaming will simply run into a cap by the end of the week and you'll be SOL for the rest of the month.
Because of this, the cable companies will retain their monopoly over HD content. This is by design. It is
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So walmart will team with Google and become an ISP. Then offer tiered network access where if you stream from them, it doesn't apply to your monthly cap.
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So walmart will team with Google and become an ISP. Then offer tiered network access where if you stream from them, it doesn't apply to your monthly cap.
You do realize that being an ISP requires access to the last mile? I don't think even the combination of Google / Walmart / Apple, the Vatican and Santa Claus can wire the entire planet. Or even the US.
Or were you thinking of dialup?
Canada anyone? (Score:1)
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Voddler is missing so many classics it's not even funny. From what I can tell, its collection is basically popular trash with a couple of exceptions. It doesn't even have The Godfather.
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Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.
And until that stops happening, just keep riding the bit torrent wave.
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Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.
I thought you guys were already the clear by paying a small tax on your CD-R disks?
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Canada always gets left out of (or ripped off by) these buffet style streaming services (be it music, movies, or whatever) because no one wants to go through the hassle of negotiating licensing fees for such a small market.
I thought you guys were already the clear by paying a small tax on your CD-R disks?
That's only for music, not video/movies/TV shows.
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Netflix in the States is also $7.99, but in Contintentals. In Loonies, that's $7.54.
So it's 1.06x the US price, not 0.5x.
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Doesn't that mean eight Canuck-bucks are better than eight Yankee dollars, too? Or is the $7.99 Canadian price not in CAD?
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As I understand it, Walmart is unlikely to have a better selection. The reason Netflix's selection is so poor is that American companies have been pretty much giving away multi-year exclusive digital rights to the Canadian networks. So Netflix's and (eventually?) Walmart's broadcast competitors get to decide whether they can show the movies and television shows that they control. Can you guess what their decision is?
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Obligatory (Score:3, Insightful)
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While that's a fair prediction, they might easily support Linux simply by choosing Flash over, say, Silverlight, or by using HTML5 video -- that'd get them iDevices without having to pay Apple a 30% cut. They certainly wouldn't do so out of a desire to support Linux, but there are other reasons to prefer these.
So, if you actually know what's going on, do you have technical details? Do they use Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, ActiveX? Did they completely roll their own?
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That still doesn't answer the question, though. Do you know what they're actually using?
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Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
It's Flash-based, so it does support Linux if you install the latest Flash plugin.
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Streaming a paid Walmart service onto a Linux box seems like the ultimate moral betrayal.
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ON the other hand, Wal-Mart (at least walmart.com) has a shitload of Linux.
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Only on /. can choice of OS become a "moral decision"... ;)
[oh, and I challenge you to name a networked TV or BD player sold in the last year or two that isn't based on Linux, and most likely streaming Netflix, Amazon, and Walmart (Vudu)...]
Problem.... (Score:2)
They are the same price as Apple is. At least my $99.00 appleTV will play all the videos on my iTunes. Granted they are partnering with Roku, but they need to be cheaper to compete.
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You can play the iTunes videos on your AppleTV. And Netflix & Vudu can be played on just about any networked TV or Blu Ray player sold in the last couple years, and a bunch of game consoles and set-top boxes...
I bet they (Score:3)
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But Wal*Mart censors their DVD's and CD's. (BLEEP!)
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Netflix (Score:2, Insightful)
Netflix actually lowered the price customers pay to get the most comparable service to the Wal-Mart offering (streaming-only), as well as for disc-only service; the only people who saw price increases were those people who want both streaming and DVD delivery, which
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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
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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.
No, streaming is still $8 (because there never was a way to get "just the streaming" without the DVDs). You just don't get the DVDs as of August if you change your plan to streaming-only.
Since their streaming has a limited selection and degraded quality (no 1080p, bad throughput issue
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The quality of recent streams has improved substantially.
That's good to know it doesn't suck everywhere. I dropped streaming because of late, we never use it. Selection spotty and inconsistent, video utter crap on a 42" HTDV with horrid compression artifacts and unsynched audio. This on either a 3M down / .5 up DSL or a 10 M down / 1 M up Cable. For $2 / month it was worth keeping just for those occasional moments of sheer boredom when you wanted to watch something. For $8 a month, it just didn't add up. Perhaps if they pulled this stunt in a few years (aft
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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.
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Which is most folks because the streaming library is a joke. Right now the discs only option is comparably priced to Blockbuster if you get the Bluray upgrade to Netflix. Plus Blockbuster includes PS3, Wii and Xbox360 game rentals in that price.
Folks that were streaming only had an option for that already.
Streaming library is a joke (Score:2)
I've spent the last two days flat on my back with some kind of horrible food poisoning. Lacking a DVD player in the bedroom, I trolled Netflix streaming looking for something good. Not only was I sick, I was bored, too!
You can sometimes find art house / foreign titles of quality, but quite often its really schlocky B movies in the 2-3 star range. The "best" selection is often StarzPlay, but even then its a lot of older titles in heavy rotation on the various Starz & Encore cable channels.
I've gotten
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They did. Or $25/2Gb.
I didn't make any statement about right or wrong. AT&T's change was, for most users, a price cut. It increased the price for heavy 3G data users, which is also a significant fact, but does not change the fact that the minimum cost of the data plan was reduced, and that the cost for most users was reduced
vudu (Score:1)
Even if it was the best and the cheapest... (Score:2)
Re:Even if it was the best and the cheapest... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
Censored? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unclear convo:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=85664
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Do they sell only the censored versions? That'd be lame, but not out of character.
I don't buy stuff from Wal-mart, except in emergencies. Nor will I buy this from them. But if it forces Netflix to retract some of their egregious price-hike, then more power to Wal-mart.
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I don't buy CDs or DVDs from WalMart anymore for that very reason. It's just wrong to get a movie with all the bad language dubbed over, it takes a lot of the edge of out some movies. There are too many other places that only sell the originals at the same price f
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Only is somewhat subjective, they made Nirvana relabel "Rape Me" to "Waif Me" for the CD release they carried and they refuse to carry and discs which have a content warning label on them. So, groups don't have to do it, but they're pretty much the biggest retailer of music these days so refusing to issue an acceptably edited disc is throwing a huge portion of the potential market away.
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Lol, I had a friend back in the day who was too stupid to realize that Walmart sold edited CD's. Until we broke it too him, he honestly believed that NWA and Ice Cube albums all came from the studio with those bleeps. It earned him the nickname "Cheesy E" at school.
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Sam Walton, the source of the old 'family friendly' policies, is dead and the money men running Walmart now are not going to add restrictions that reduce the in-flow of money unless they have to.
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The streaming movies aren't censored. It's all just re-branding the existing Vudu service on Walmart's site, anyway.
Vudu did remove their adult content after Walmart bought them, but it hasn't affected any other movies - in fact, they have a lot of "unrated" cuts of R movies, as well. (Vudu does, I mean - I haven't tried Walmart's version).
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Absolutely. We wouldn't want "dangerous" words heard by our perfect little children who never do any wrong and whom we need to shield and protect from everything even slightly uncomfortable or otherwise known as the "real world". You know, the one where everybody behaves, follows the letter of the law and never does anything wrong.
Seriously, I don't shop at Walmart, because I just don't believe in their business practices, their presumed moral authority over what I as a consumer can buy and the way they tre
are they edited movies? (Score:2)
Walmart had a habit (still do?) of editing songs on CDs it thought weren't family appropriate material. Are they doing the same with movies? Are Walmart movies like the airline version where cursing is badly overdubbed and the nude scenes are cut?
Step 3: Divide & Conquer (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Step 3: Divide & Conquer (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Step 3: Divide & Conquer (Score:4, Insightful)
I would be leery of trying this tactic if I were the studios. At least with WalMart. WalMart has enough leverage in the retail business to destroy anyone who messes with them. WalMart could simply threaten to no longer carry the studios DVDs if they don't play ball and the studio would have to buckle, unless they wanted to lose 30-40% of their DVD sales.
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And... this is a good thing? Walmart simply has gotten too big and has far too much power in the consumer market. In fact, Walmart's squeezing of suppliers just means better profit margins for Walmart, not better prices for consumers. Why does nobody get this?
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I certainly didn't say that. I hate Wally World as much as the next guy, but just because you think the 800 lb. gorilla in the room is a dickhead is no reason to pretend he isn't there and then step on his toes!
Here's my Concern (Score:2)
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I bought a Samsung TV recently too. Our first HDTV. (One of our non-HDTVs died and needed to be replaced.) I tried out the USB port last night using a spare USB thumb drive with some photos, MP3s and MPEG video files. It worked beautifully. That feature alone would make me more likely to buy a Samsung TV in the future when our non-HD, CRT television in the living room fails.
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But will it play the HTC3.4 video codec? What about the the MP3.4 audio with embedded cued lyrics?
Neither of those exist yet, but the odds are good them or something similar to them will be invented in the 10+ years that you'll probably own your Samsung TV.
If you bought the best TV you could find and it happened to have this extra feature - great! You made a wise choice. But other people should be cautious about trying to mix computer functions into their television. By the best television you can find,
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Walmart already sensors the media you buy, so why not?
Not competition for Netflix... (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
Are they getting rid of Redbox? (Score:1)
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I would think that Redbox would be more in competition with Wal-Mart's in-store DVD sales than with their online streaming service.
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I doubt it. The reason being that in order to use those machines you'd have to visit those stores. At any rate, I doubt this detracts from their rentals anymore than the Redbox option detracts from their DVD sales in store.
Hopefully Wal-Mart will bend over content producer (Score:2)
It would be nice to see Wal-Mart push their weight around and lower streaming licensing costs. Netflix is reportedly going from around $180 million in licensing fees to $1.98 billion in licensing fees in 2012. If Wal-Mart could shatter the greedy content producers then not only Wal-Mart, but also other streaming providers like Netflix could possibly expand their streaming libraries and not have to hike subscrption plans in the process.
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Walmart is only going to ensure fatter profits for themselves, what makes you think it will benefit consumers or competitors?
Red box does it for $1 (Score:2)
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'
Not interested (Score:2)
All these other companies seem to be missing why Netflix is doing as well as it is - it's business model is essentially an all you can eat buffet. Whereas Blockbuster and now Walmart are offering what's essentially a McDonald's value meal by comparison. What makes Netflix so likeable is being able to be an absolute glutton of video entertainment for as much as your bandwith holds out.
I'm not a movie snob, I'm a movie slob.
Anyone care to suggest an alternative to Netflix? (Score:2)
I like Netflix, but I watch movies on my computer and they don't offer streaming for Linux users. I seriously don't like Walmart to the point where I don't want to give them my business if I have an alternative.
Would anyone care to suggest a streaming movie alternative ( Linux friendly ) to Netflix that is comparable in selection and price?
Is there such a beast?
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Would anyone care to suggest a streaming movie alternative ( Linux friendly ) to Netflix that is comparable in selection and price?
Is there such a beast?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I've looked, and there just isn't. And that's even ignoring your Linux compatibility requirement.
Personally, I get most of my TV via OTA broadcast and Tivo. I've already got a reminder to myself to cancel Netflix streaming in early Sept before the rate increase. The netflix streaming is the best in the industry by far, but haven't you noticed that it is still extremely limited in selection? I hardly ever use it.
I'm also goi
Meh - Walmart (Score:2)
I'm sure that lots of people won't care, and if Walmart can make the system simple enough for Walmart shoppers, it can succeed. However, Walmart is the company that forces artists to make CDs with the radio versions of their songs - because Walmart doesn't want us to hear the word "fuck" in something they sell.
Are they going to bleep the movies I'm not streaming from them too?
48 hours (Score:2)
Thank goodness, finally there is an online rental that is not 24hours only. With real lief my wife and I never get to finish a movie in one night anymore, 48 hours is in the right direction. But only some of the movies are priced this way on vudu. None of the films have captions/subtitles on vudu either, that's a real bonus for us. We watch the movies pretty quietly that we do to not wake the kids. Netflix is starting to have subtitles on more of it's streaming content, it's been great!
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But it is competition for Amazon Unbox.
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But are the content cartels really going to allow unlimited streaming for their most prized movies at any point in the near future?
Personally I don't mind "renting" a really good movie to stream it, as long as the price is in the $0-$2 range.
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Consider the music case: once the labels realized that they had fucked up and let Apple get the upper hand, rather than the other way round, they cut some fairly sweetheart deals on pricing for Amazon in order to try to limit the power of the single middleman.
In the case of video, the pre-existing cable based VOD services mean t
Re:Enough with the "digital" crap. (Score:4, Funny)
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!
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Just 'sayin.
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He doesn't have a dash -- he has a hyphen. (Not that he needs a hyphen either.)
Also, what are you doin' with that apostrophe before "sayin"? Apostrophes are used to denote where you elided letters, so unless you meant "gsayin" rather than "saying", you're doing it wrong. (If you did mean "gsayin", you're doing something different wrong...)
Ah, it's pedantry all the way down.
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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
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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.
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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.
Easier. Take off your glasses. Remove the hearing aids.
Everything will be fine.