The world's largest retailer is going Hollywood.
Walmart Entertainment has created a licensing program allowing consumers to go to any of the chain's stores, present any number of DVDs they own (distributed by any of five Hollywood studio partners) and have digital versions placed online for their use through a personal VUDU account. Consumers pay $2 for access to each standard DVD or can get upgraded to a high definition version for $5.
Walmart is pitching lifetime access to the content when and where consumers want it. If you've got an extensive movie collection and live in a house where small children use DVDs as mini-frisbees then it might make more sense to pay the per disc fee than keep buying replacements.
"Walmart Entertainment's new disc-to-digital service will allow our customers to reconnect with the movies they already own on a variety of new devices, while preserving the investments they've made in disc purchases over the years," said John Aden, executive vice president for general merchandising, Walmart U.S., in a statement. "We believe this revolutionary in-store service will unlock new value for already-owned DVDs, and will encourage consumers to continue building physical and digital movie libraries in the future."
![[Image: Walmart Entertainment]](/public/images/discussions/15879/walmart-vudu-still.jpg)
The service supports UltraViolet, Hollywood's format for placing purchased movies on the cloud. Walmart's partners in the venture include Paramount Home Media Distribution, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
Count All Things Digital's Peter Kafka among the unconvinced. He can't figure out why people, aside from those with kids, would have much interest in the service.
For those who do have kids, Mr. Kafka wrote, "I think lots of people would jump through lots of hoops to get copies of kids' movies on as many devices as possible. But the absence of all those Disney movies, and all those Pixar movies, sure looks like a problem for that pitch." Disney and Pixar are not among the studio partners in the venture.