Walmart is offering a new video download service. What makes this different from other download services is that they have the backing of all six major studios.
Of course, like the RIAA, the movie studios are still woefully behind the times. Here’s why: you’re paying 19.98 for new movies. You can’t transfer them anywhere. You can’t burn them to DVD. They are not in high definition. So what’s the point?
You can go out and buy a DVD for at many times less than 19.98. You can take this DVD anywhere, play it on any DVD player (at higher quality than the download no less). Plus you have bonus features on the DVD. Why would anyone pay the EXACT SAME PRICE for downloadable content when they can have all this for an EQUAL or REDUCED price? Hmmm…greed perhaps? Or maybe this is sheer idiocy. Or perhaps this is the movies studios way of setting up Walmart to fail, and having more ammunition against downloadable content.
Look! Downloadable content doesn’t work! It didn’t work for Walmart, do you think it’ll work for anyone else?!? (and somewhere, Steve Jobs and laughs, and counts the next million he’s made)
Either way it seems ludicrous, destined to fail before it gets out the door. They should take the hint from Apple, who already have a system in place that seems to work. Or better yet, listen to the consumers. Making things more difficult for them doesn’t work, it only pushes them further from cockamamie schemes to keep their content locked down. Of course, they won’t listen. Instead of cashing in, they’ll play greedy, dumb and paranoid. Too bad for them.
