When I started this blog it was to relate the tech industry to the ski and snowboard industry. This is the kind of news I'm looking at.
The subject of interest to skiers is whether ski videos should be available online, how much should they cost to view online (if anything), and how will this affect DVD sales, the bread and butter of guys like TGR, Matchstick, Poor Boyz, Rage, and Level 1?
In the tech or Hollywood parlance, ski movies are considered "long-form video." While no one is giving them away just yet, several platforms have been selling them. I had used the Wal-Mart service to download and watch Nacho Libre. The playback was great, and I was quite used to watching videos on my computer by then.
But this was back when I was using a Windows XP machine. And the culprit behind Wal-Mart pulling the plug seems to be compatibility with Mac devices such at iPods and I'm assuming Macs themselves (which I'm on now).
What's next for Wal-Mart? Seems like they've backed completely out of the online video anything market. Back to just selling DVDs in the stores? This market is starting to yo-yo. Either Apple and Amazon squeezed them out through a mix of business acumen and technology, or this online video thing isn't quite suited to long-form video.
Via DigitalMediaWire
Little Rock, Arkansas – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has shuttered its online movie download service, the AP reports. The company launched the service in February with 3,000 titles, but customers could not watch them on an Apple Inc. device.
The company decided to abandon its online DVD rental service in 2005, a unit that comprised 40% of overall DVD sales.
Amy Collella, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, released a statement saying that the closure came after Hewlett-Packard Co., which ran the software for the service, “made a business decision to discontinue its video download-only merchant store service."Wal-Mart’s decision removes a major player from the online movie download world, as Apple’s iTunes store and Amazon.com Inc.’s Unbox dominate the landscape. AOL cut its movie download service last month as well.
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