For about a minute today, I thought Wal-Mart’s announcement that they are entering the movie download market might slow the Apple plan for world media dominance. After checking things out its seems like the Apple world domination plan is still on track. Wal-Mart’s Video Downloads store is only going to have an effect on Windows users. Wal-Mart’s Video Downloads store is a “Windows Only” deal. You can’t even try to check out without Explorer and the “Terms Of Use” for the store are completely “Windows Only”. You can’t play the movies on your iPod, more on that later.
Put that major hurdle aside and take a look at the store and you find that Wal-Mart has some pretty cool titles that iTunes doesn’t - Superman Returns and X-Men 3 for starters. The lack of titles in iTunes Store has been one major bummer for me when using the store. I was excited when iTunes Store picked up the Paramount catalog, but then after looking at the Paramount titles, I couldn’t remember why I was excited in the first place. Overall, Wal-Mart seems to kill the iTunes Store in a title selection battle.
Wal-Mart appears to be pricing titles slightly lower than iTunes, albeit by a few cents on each title. Wal-Mart has always been into that .88 thing instead of .99 or .95 like the rest of the retail world. A quick check on the price of Cars at iTunes Store shows $14.99 and $14.88 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wins on price.
The really interesting part about the Wal-Mart Video Downloads Store is the ability to purchase two formats of the movie for the same price. Wal-Mart is offering a PC Format and PC and Portable option to download. They explain the options as follows:
PC Format: Recommended for our customers that do not own or intend to purchase a compatible portable video player. PC/Laptop videos can be played on a PC/Laptop or on the TV via a Windows Media Extender (e.g. Xbox 360) or through direct connection from a PC to a TV. Videos in this format have the highest image quality. Technical Specification: 640 X 480 maximum resolution, 30 fps, 1,500-1,700 kbps average bit rate. THIS FORMAT WILL NOT PLAY ON MOST PORTABLE VIDEO PLAYERS.
PC & Portable: Recommended for our customers that own or intend to purchase a compatible portable video player. This bundle provides the greatest flexibility providing you two files: one to play your on PC, and one for your portable players. This bundle requires approximately 30% more storage space and time to download as a stand-alone PC/Laptop format. PORTABLE BUNDLE FILES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH iPODS.
Available TV Episode Formats:
Portable Format: Our TV episodes are optimized for fast downloads and viewing on the go. All TV shows can be played on both your PC/Laptop and compatible portable video players. Technical Specification: 320 X 240 maximum resolution, 30 fps, 500-810 kbps average bit rate. PORTABLE FILES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH iPODS.
Notice that last little bit there “PORTABLE FILES ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH iPODS.” It actually seems like iPods (5th Generation) should be able to play the PC format of the 640 x 480, 30 fps but Wal-Mart won’t let them. WTF? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
You can buy an iPod in a Wal-Mart store. You can buy ooodles of accessories for your iPod in a Wal-Mart store. But you cannot play movies downloaded from Wal-Mart Video Downloads on the iPod you bought at the store?
I’m starting to think this may be the first legitimate reason to hate Wal-Mart.
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