People who shop at Wal-Mart watch Vudu

Retail behemoth Wal-Mart aquired Vudu, Inc. today in a deal with terms undisclosed. Vudu, the struggling HD streaming service that was on the verge of extinction, had attempted to lure gadget freaks, movie-lovers and general consumers to its service by way of a pricy ($400) set-top box that really never caught on and spelled certain doom for the company as other, less-exclusive services, simply made alliances to be carried by myriad HD hardware manufacturers. Even after ditching the receiver box concept, the combined competition from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Boxee, meant that Vudu was never quite able to mainstream itself. Full Story

Look out Netflix, Walmart is getting Vudu

Retail giant Wal-Mart will now enter the internet movie delivery world currently dominated by Netflix, by purchasing Santa Clara, CA based Vudu within the next couple weeks. With the acquisition, Wal-Mart will now be in direct competition with Netflix who offers movies by mail, internet on PCs, and streaming to your HDTV. Full Story

Walmart to carry exclusive Twilight New Moon Fan Edition

A sneak peak of upcoming film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will be found on special fan edition Blu-ray and DVD releases of Twilight: New Moon. Walmart (now taking pre-orders) will exclusively carry “The Twilight Saga: New Moon Ultimate Fan Edition” which contains seven minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and a scene from the upcoming film. Full Story

Best Buy dips into digital content delivery

The L.A. Times this morning reports that Best Buy will be going the pure digital route, and offer content direct to the consumer with possible music and video-on-demand services.  As the market for DVD’s continues to shrink, it seems the new Blu-ray format doesn’t even seem to be getting a fighting chance amid consumer interest in getting content via broadband rather than through physical discs.  Full Story

Walmart PS3 w/gift card sold out online – no Best Buy match

The current offer from Walmart that includes a $100 gift card with the purchase of a 40GB Playstation 3 has been sold out online. The gift card offer is still available in-store where the PS3 model is in stock. But rumors of Best Buy offering the same deal in stores seem to be just that, rumors. Full Story

Walmart Hi-Def Sale a Flop

I went to check out those “Secret in-Store” sales items that Walmart promoted on their site for today. They advertised a Sanyo 50″ plasma for $998, a Toshiba HD-A2 for $98, and HD DVD movies for $14.96.

First of all, they didn’t even have the Toshiba HD DVD player. They didn’t have ANY hi-def players. I asked if they were going to get some in for the sale. They didn’t know, and the manager was hard to find.

The Sanyo 50″ plasma, while normally priced at $1297, was not such a bad deal at $998. Is this the best plasma out there? Hell No! But for someone who wants big, and has a budget, this non-1080p flat screen might not be too bad. Problem is, they only had 2 in boxes, and one floor model. Huh?

Now let me tell you I got excited about the HD DVDs. $15 bucks for a hi-def disc is about as cheap as you can get them. But their selection was grim. They had a total of 3 titles. They had a module that was scheduled to be set up, but wasn’t up yet. Was there a library of HD DVD titles just sitting in the back room?

I think Walmart forgot to tell their store managers about this secret Friday sale. Maybe if they did they would have had the products in-stock and visible.

The funniest part about checking out HDTVs at Walmart was that they were not displaying hi-def images. I peeked under some fake snow decoration that was hiding the video source to find that a row of HDTVs were being fed by one standard-definition cheapo DVD player. Now that’s how you sell hi-def Walmart! Good for you!