Wal-Mart’s Movie Download Service Will Fail
As you saw from my last post, I had a little bit of trouble getting into Wal-Mart’s new movie download service. I like many other millions of people use Firefox as my browser and Wal-Mart does not support it. I would suspect the reason for this is that Firefox is open source which means they have absolutely no control of it and that scares the pants off of them. Even though my bank, my health care provider and my stock broker all support Firefox. Oh well, let’s put that aside for the moment, shall we…
Wal-Mart’s foray into online video downloads will fail and it will fail miserably. I believe this for several reasons, but the most important one is that it is Wal-Mart. You have to really take a look at how this service works. Once you buy a video and download it, you can only watch it on your computer or a “portable device”. Though portable device means only 13 devices that Wal-Mart supports and obviously, no iPod. You cannot burn the movie on a disc so the only way a user could watch it through their TV is if they have their computer hooked up to their TV. Now be honest, how many people who would shop at this service will know how to do that?
The difference in price is neglegable. The movie Departed with my buddy Jack can be downloaded for $14.88 or I can buy the actual disc online or go to Wal-Mart and pay $15.88. Is that dollar savings going to really make people download the movie compared to buying it online or in the store and actually having the disc that they can watch on their big screen TV and have forever?
I think it is grave leap to make from iTunes selling songs and even half our TV shows to Wal-Mart customers willing to watch a two and a half hour movie on a portable device let alone their computer. I think people are dramatically taking for granted that we Americans like to have stuff. We are stuff hounds and we like having that nice DVD case sitting up on our DVD rack waiting for us to have the craving to watch that movie again.
I give the over/under 6 months until this Beta is pulled and added to the Wal-Mart scrapheap where their online video ordering service that was supposed to compete with NetFlix already lives. What do you think?
Technorati Tags: Firefox, Wal-Mart, video downloads, iPod
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Totally agree Hip.
Wally world will not be able to sustain this service and it will clearly fail form may reasons beyond even what you have noted.
The thing that kills me about this whole packaged media video thing online is that the information is available so many different ways at so many different costs. So many different companies are spending so much time trying to make so much money on it.
At the end of the day its just a TV show or Movie.
A show on cable or Direct TV cost me nothing above my service plan. I can TIVO it and watch it whenever I want. I can also record Pay Per View movies at 3.99 a pop and keep them as long as I like on my TIVO.
However, If I want to purchase all the shows I TIVO into Itunes and drop my television service all together, It doesn’t make financial sense. I have done the #s.
Just a single season of the Daily Show costs me $15 bucks on Itunes.
So, I have to keep my media separate. Online Media in itunes and off line in my Tivo.
I am excited about I-TV though.
I could just find pirated versions of everything I want but I make too much $ to warrant being a pirate anymore.
Why can’t the media companies just release everything online. Open it up, there is nothing to be afraid of.
Improve their commercial delivery to be more targeted to each user through feed based advertising and stream the show to anyone who wants to watch them.
I wrote a couple of posts about online TV last month that are related enough to check out.
http://adamschultz.com/2007/01/22/the-new-television-on-line-tv-has-officially-arived-almost/
http://adamschultz.com/2007/01/23/summary-of-some-cool-on-line-tv-shows-i-subscribe-to/
Adam,
Thanks for the links, I have never heard of Democracy player, I will check it out. I also could not agree with you more on why companies won’t just release their stuff online. Again, I think it is a control issue and I don’t know if they will ever get over that. Thanks for the comment.
Well, they’ve basically written off anyone who uses a Mac because Microsoft doesn’t support IE for OSX any longer. I can only imagine the conversation during the planning stage of this service where somebody asks about Macs and another person chimes in saying that there’s not enough of them to worry about. Meanwhile Apple’s market share steadily increases.
Under.
Dave, to be honest, I doubt very much that there was even a discussion about Mac’s or other PC browsers. It was assumed and nothing changed that.
Jeremy, your under bet is in. Don’t you still owe me something from our last bet?
Developing just for Windows and IE might be the smartest thing Wal-Mart did in rolling out this product. As anyone who has ever developed web-based applications knows that uniformity across multiple platforms and browsers is tedious at best and a coding nightmare at worst. Remember this application is delivering copyrighted material, not just your bank statement. A “smart startup†who is developing a application for mass consumption would find it in there best interest to get their product out to the largest consumer group as fast as possible. That’s Windows and Internet Explorer with an 85% market share. You could loss valuable time in coding cost and lost market share by waiting until your app functioned consistently across IE, Firefox and some other browser. Sorry Apple. With all those iPods Apple OSX still doesn’t have a market share greater then 5 or 6%.
Wal-Mart may or may not fail but it won’t be due to the fact their initial rollout was for Windows and IE only.
OMP,
Thanks for the comment and I hear what you are saying, but places like my bank, healthcare provider and stock broker are delivering much more than a statement. They have more regulations when it comes to Hippa and the federal government than any copyrighted material.
More importantly, forget about Apple’s OS, what’s the market share on iPod’s for portable players? 60%, 70%, 80% or more? My issue was not that they had not built a system to support everyone, they are forcing users to either watch a movie via their computer or a portable device and the most popular portable device by far is not supported. This is about a poor customer experience and this will have a factor on why this service fails.
Thanks again for your comment.
Ok Wal-Mart getting into the movie biz again. Hmm I read couple of the posts and being a former 11 year (associate) of wal-mart in the logistics side i have this to say. Wal-Mart want it all on the cheap. I mean they are a discount retailer. They want everything as cheap as possible(china), with the fewest man hours possible(unpaid overtime). So its no suprise that they went on the cheap to target the greatest population. This being IE users. Whats the fuss about, maybe if it does take off ( i doubt it) they will then make it available to other browsers and devices. THey need to name it something else like Downloadflix.com and just take the Wal-Mart name out of it. Wal-Mart in the minds of most americans is known for cheap crap and poor customer service, and my own personal complaint of nothing is priced in the stores.