submitted 307 days ago by pablos17 in "Stores / Merchants"
It was just last year when Walmart bought out Vudu. A very tactful move on its part. Now they have streaming available with movies available as soon as they are released on DVD -months before they are available on Netflix. Netflix better watch out this time.
The world's largest retailer on Tuesday started streaming many movies the same day they come out on DVD, in a second bid for a share of popular movie rental and streaming website Netflix Inc.'s business and just two weeks after Netflix announced new price increases.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. bought video-streaming service Vudu.com 18 months ago and now offers 20,000 titles that can be viewed on almost any device with Internet access, from computers to televisions to Sony's PlayStation3 and other Blu-Ray disc players.
Movies are available at Walmart.com to rent for $1 to $5.99 or to purchase for $4.99 and up. Wal-Mart is not offering subscriptions, making its service more similar to Apple Inc.'s iTunes, which charges $3.99 to rent newly released movies and $14.99 to buy a movie.
That explains my recent Direct TV survey about my viewing online videos from places such as Netflix and Hulu. With more competition maybe prices will drop even more!
Good timing for Walmart to jump into this market. Prices have gone in the opposite direction with Netflix. Their recent announcement of a price increase effective 9/1/11 has irate customers complaining on social media and threatening to quit. There are over 80,000 angry comments on the Netflix Facebook wall in response to the announcement. Netflix said they underestimated the number of subscribers who would like to still get DVDs, and had hoped they would all switch over to the streaming service. Now they claim the price increase is necessary to cover their costs to offer both. The costs for licensing the STREAMING content is pretty high, although it's a cheaper service to provide than mailing the DVDS.
Blockbuster: Blockbuster offers new releases a month before Netflix; includes games in the rental mix; limited number of mobile devices, Blu-ray players and HDTVs.
HuluPlus: Hulu is right behind Netflix with convenience in being able to stream on multiple devices. Hulu’s strength is with television series.
Amazon Instant Video: This is the cheapest online streaming service per month, but it has the fewest devices available for playing shows on a television. Amazon’s instant movie collection should appeal to multiple tastes, and has the strongest movie library to compete with Netflix.
Zediva - new company; cheap to try: one movie credit is $1.99, or 10 credits for $10.
Redbox and Blockbuster Express kiosks: The $1-a-day DVD rental, usually free with lots of codes.
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