“Wal-Mart Stores Inc. disputed a report on Friday saying it was trying to dissuade movie studios from working with other forms of distribution, such as Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes,” Gina Keating reports for Reuters.
“The New York Post reported that the world’s largest retailer had warned Hollywood it may retaliate against studios for selling movies on iTunes amid concerns that Wal-Mart’s DVD sales will suffer,” Keating reports.
Keating reports, “Wal-Mart disputed the Post report and said it was not pressuring movie studios into shunning online delivery. ‘Customers want to watch movies and they want to be able to make the choice when and how they want to view them,’ a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said. ‘While we recognize there are various current and potential providers of this service, we are not dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers.'”
“Apple and Disney announced plans this month to sell movie downloads on iTunes. Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger said on Tuesday the company sold 125,000 downloads, worth $1 million in revenue, from iTunes in the offering’s first week,” Keating reports.
“A source familiar with the situation said while big retailers like Wal-Mart ‘freaked out’ earlier in the year when Disney and other studios began selling TV shows on iTunes and other Web-based platforms, they showed no particular concern when Disney became the first studio to offer movies on iTunes,” Keating reports. “The source, who declined to be identified, said the discount retailer learned over the intervening months that customers who download — primarily young, single males — are not the same as those customers who buy DVDs.”
Full article here.
If Hollywood has the green light as far as Wal-Mart is concerned, then we hope to see Apple’s announcements of additional iTunes Store feature-length content from non-Disney studios as soon as possible.
Related articles:
Wal-Mart threatens retaliation against Hollywood studios if they sell movies via Apple’s iTunes – September 22, 2006
Wal-Mart not happy with looming threat of Apple iTunes movie downloads – August 31, 2006
Wal-Mart loses ‘philosophical argument’ with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, gains top-selling iPod – November 29, 2005
Of course WalMart isn’t going to admit to doing that.
fuck Wal-Mart.
So…
Was this part of the article true?
Wal-Mart, worried that offering the shows for viewing on iPods would cut into DVD sales at its stores, sent ‘cases and cases’ of DVDs back to Disney,
Sounds rather monopolistic to me and rather damning.
What is the truth?
“The source, who declined to be identified, said the discount retailer learned over the intervening months that customers who download — primarily young, single males — are not the same as those customers who buy DVDs.”
The demographic that is techincal enough and wealthy enough to download movies online certainly isn’t a large portion of Walmarts target market anyway.
In fact downloading movies online is actually a loss leader and will drive more traffic to the easier (and cheaper) physical DVD sales.
Those hard core enough to not pay at all are still going to pirate bay regardless of what iTunes or Walmart does.
I for one have given up on iTunes and downloading of TV shows and movies because of the bloated iTunes 7 prematurely hobbling expensive hardware.
I’m well equipted with iPods and have a extensive music collection which, if iTunes 6 starts to refuse music downloads, I can revert to traditional methods such as Walmart cd purchases. I can also pickup my DVD’s there as well.
Walmart wins in the end anyway. Unless some sort of new compression standard arrives that will reduce the download movie files to the size of music files.
Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Wal-Mart will kick and screem but itunes or no itunes the delivery landscape will and is changing. Eitheir they adapt or they better put a gun to their heads and forget about it.
MDN, you just gave some credibility to Wal-Mart? Are you feeling okay today?
coolfactor,
Note the use of the word “if” in MDN’s take.
I wonder how the nutters feel now. You “Wal-Mart” is evil folks are really wacked out. Give us Mac users a bad name. Are you also part ofthe Bush=Hitler crowd? Sounds like it from posts in the last two threads. Yuk.
Was it the dramatic backround music on the Wal-Mart movie trailer that did it for you?
damn! a whole page of mindless rants about Wal-Mart for nothing! Come on, MDN, whip out something else from the tabloids – we’re bored now… how about ‘Bush tries to kill Brad and Angelina’s baby’, or maybe ‘Wal-Mart makes secret deal with illegal space aliens to harass gays’. You can do it! What’s in today’s Post? Or Times, for that matter? My torch and pitchfork stand at the ready!
From: Lick the Buffo Frog
“In fact downloading movies online is actually a loss leader and will drive more traffic to the easier (and cheaper) physical DVD sales”
Can you elaborate on this…
It’s all about control. Hollywood would prefer to keep control over their content. DVDs allow them to do that. Walmart as a big reseller obviously has some clout, but they do need to be wary of monopolistic behavior.
People are learning to rip DVDs like CDs 7 years back. Is Hollywood going to start losing sales like the record industry before them? Is digital DLs the way to go for them? Other movie services have Hollywood on board. I wonder what the kickbacks are for those? And how does Apple’s model differ?
Is it just that no one like Apple’s success? Seems to me that they would rather deal with a large number of small services because Hollywood can dictate the price better.
Success will rather depend on whether Apple’s offering is better in quality and usability. In reality only 30 songs have been bought from iTMS per iPod. Collectively that’s a lot of revenue, but considering that each iPod holds an average of 1000 songs, it suggests that most people prefer ripping their own music.
I for one am in that boat and will be unlikely to buy that many songs or movies from iTS in the near term.
A very crafty “non-denial denial.
Story is “disputed,” not denied.
Wal-Mart “not shunning online delivery” — obviously, since they’re planning to do it themselves.
Not dissuading from using “other providers” — such as Amazon, Napster, other alsorans.
Charge that iTunes is being specifically targeted is never denied or disputed by the story — only that they’re not trying to block downloads generically.
Nothing in this Reuters story convinced me that the Post got it wrong.
Wallmart’s trying to save face. And even if they are not, they are still the devil.
Everybody,
It is so obvious that Wal-Mart is lying here, just like they LIED to the public about not using sweatshops in China. And then, after they were CAUGHT for using sweatshops in China, they CONTINUED to do so after they told the public they weren’t doing so anymore.
Also, as calpundit stated above, note that they are not DENYING the report, they are DISPUTING the report.
Folks, everyone please rush out and rent the incredible eye-opening documentary called:
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
http://www.walmartmovie.com
That movie shows how absolutely EVIL Wal-Mart really is, in every way imaginable. Ways that you can’t even begin to imagine right now.
I’m proud to say that i have NEVER stepped foot inside of a Wal-Mart, and if any of you have in the past, you will never want to step foot inside of a Wal-Mart again after seeing that documentary.
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
http://www.walmartmovie.com
“In fact downloading movies online is actually a loss leader and will drive more traffic to the easier (and cheaper) physical DVD sales”
Can you elaborate on this…
Certainly.
Walmart might be taking at first what they perceive as a loss of DVD sales, but eventually the constraints of iTunes, and everything associated with downloading large amounts of copy protected, non-DVD player usable, no potential resale value, hard drive space using media will catch up to the user.
Sure the typical online demographic, young single male, might not see a problem with iTunes downloads, thinking only about themselves and their symbolic relationship with their computer. But DVD movie watching and owning is a social event categorized by group behavior, trading and interacting. People use DVD’s as a method to initiate human interaction and contact.
This is where a more universal, cheaper (in terms of hardware needed, just a simple DVD device) portable media format reigns. Plus the avenue of recuperating one’s investment in a sizable iTunes video collection is not nearly as easy (or even possible really due to lack of packaging) as DVD movies are.
Statistically speaking, with the average iPod owner only downloading less than 185 songs per unit sold from iTunes, combined with the fact that movies sales pale in comparison to music due to it’s higher per unit cost, leads credence to the possibility that iTunes movies sales won’t be all that fantastic. The demographic is very small and piracy is still the cheapest alternative.
Certainly hardware hobbling bloated iTunes updates doesn’t help those who wish to participate legally.
I said it before and say it again(even tho someone else has said it)
FSCK WAL-MART
f wal mart
i wont buy a thing from them ever again
if wal mart wants to take it to the matresses then bring it. Its on!!
Apple’s main purpose in offering online content is to motivate hardware sales. They use iTunes updates as a leverage to get people to upgrade.
If it was Apple’s true intention to offer a online store they would have variable options to meet the broader requirements of the real world online public. (varying download sizes, iTunes hardware tailored features etc)
Apple used to be about value, but now it’s using media as a leverage to increase the upgrade cycle of hardware.
The shockingly bloated iTunes 7, the increased content resolution testifies to that.
Lick
What do you mean when you say “increased content resolution”
As for broadening the options, i think you will need a wait and see attitude. We dont know the whole plan yet as the iTV component has not been released. Further, I disagree with you that the digital model will not work.
I think your idea here is obsolete, and in fact faulty. Apple has sold over 1.5 billion songs and made millions off those song sales alone, regardless of device sales. Digital media is the future, having to go down to a store to buy data is old news, it was old news the minute the internet came about, after all, thats what the internet does best, allow us to share data. As for download times, that doesnt really matter much since you can start your movie in about 5 minutes time without having to have downloaded the whole thing. Plus with in home broadcasting you dont need a DVD player in everyroom any more, i mean what a waste to have 5 dvd players for each of my 5 tvs. Further, the next gen ipods might support HD video that can hook up to your buddies tv to watch a movie off of. And who knows, with .mac already inplace, capable of moving gigs of data, perhapes we can use it in conjunction with our home pc to access our digital content from anywhere? .mac can facilitate a stream from home model.
The possabilites are endless….
Why not call it the iTunes Media Store?
Uh oh. Does Wal-Mart sell mattesses too!
Noooooooooooooooo!
I get my favorite cereal for $2.50 at Wal-Mart, why should I go to Safeway, Albertsons, etc., and pay $4.89 for the same thing.
it’s clobberin’ time
where’s the DoJ?
Lick the Bufo Frog
Joe just summerized what I was about to say and to add to all that, the cost of a decent storage shelf for all your DVD’s is the same as buying a decent size hard drive to store your digital content. That’s digital content I can share with others by taking my entire movie library with me on my 80 gig iPod.
I can do this with complete confidence knowing that I have a backup on my computer at home. And iTunes now allows you to backup to another computer through the use of your ipod.
Mac4Lfe you just brought up another GREAT point, APPLE in the next OS implementation is adding its seemless backup solution, like nothing ive ever seen before, you can pull up a backup from any day in the past and pull out just the files you want. So all your media is now stored safely.
FUCK WAL-MART shop Kmart instead.
Lick (nee MacDude): “the bloated iTunes 7 prematurely hobbling expensive hardware.”
Please expand on that.
I’m using an iMac G4 800 Flat Panel to play iTunes movies just fine. Not exactly a state-of-the-art platform. True, I can only run iTunes 7 and other zero-processor-use-when-idle programs to get flicker free iTunes movie video. Still not bad for a 4 1/2 year old computer that’s below the 1 GHz Apple movie requirement.
My iMac and G4 867 MHz Powerbook work just fine with iTunes 7. There’s a bit of a delay when Cover Art has to pull art from music files but is almost instant when pulling art from the iTunes Album Artwork folder.
So what hardware has been prematurely hobbled?
“A very crafty ‘non-denial’ denial.”
The Wal-Mart guy said, “…we are not dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers.” That’s so incredibly crafty that it is, in fact, a denial of what was said in the Post.
Lick – While your statements are cogent and grammatically elegant, it has been my experience that most people don’t have any idea why they buy DVD’s. They buy them the same way grandma bought a computer in the 80’s and early 90’s – because someone told them they needed one. Most folks haven’t really made the connection between their lower disposable income level and the complete “Ernest goes to…” collection in the living room.
The best thing that the studios have going for them is the drive of people to have a ‘complete set’. For some, this means all 12 Rocky movies – for others, it means a financially disastrous quest for every movie ever made. Why else would anyone buy ‘Missing in Action 3’?
When people realize en masse that only movies you truly love and want to watch repeatedly should be in your collection, these DVD sales will level out to a sane level. By that time, downloads will be faster, more feature-filled, and more desirable in general than lugging physical disks around. That’s what Apple is setting themselves up for.
Or not.
Here’s a good site for all you Walmart bashing lemmings that talks about who’s behind a lot of the smear Walmart news:
http://www.paidcritics.com/
By the way, Walmart created over 240,000 jobs in the last 3 years. I guess all those people are poor saps who’ve been duped by the Walmart juggernaut? Elitist snobs.
I think there is a solution to the digital download problem and I have posted this stuff before, but it is useful to revisit the possibilities here. It comes down to download time and that is a matter of bandwidth and compression algorithm. There was a story a few months ago about a dramatically superior compression algorithm for graphics – I don’t know if it was for just images or movies – that could have resolved the problem. But I have heard nothing of this since. If that leads nowheres, then perhaps we will find out that this is where Google really fits in.
Look at Europe. European Internet users pay far less for far more bandwidth. The telecoms constitute an oligopoly screwing the American consumer by overpricing and under delivery. The way such things are resolved in a free market is that high easy profits attract competitors. The telecoms, by restricting bandwidth and overpricing, are hurting Google’s business, which is very dependent on advertising, which – in turn – is very volume sensitive.
Google has developed storage and communication modules all packed into shipping containers that can be dropped off and set up anywhere – so I have read. Now imagine adding a modern kick-ass wireless capability and what you have is a way to bypass the local competition. I do not know what Google is up to in long haul communications. Perhaps it will be some combination of make and buy – competition and cooperation. But such a strategy is needed by Google to get the telecoms grubby fingers off of its corporate throat. And having high volume traffic ready to pay for Google’s investment is needed. Bingo, in steps Apple with Hollywood to supply the volume to get the business rolling. I have heard no rumors of a deal, but it certainly appears to me that such a deal would work.
grok —
The Post story specifically references iTunes. the Wal-Mart guy only references “other providers”, of which there are already several.
The spokesman’s statement can be true if Wal-Mart issued threats only about iTunes, and not about any of these “other providers.” Had he said they are not dissuading *any* other providers, then it would have been a denial.
In this statement, Wal-Mart has not denied or disputed sending back the DVDs, or pressuring studios not to become involved in iTunes — which, unlike the “other providers” is a real threat. They do not deny sending their henchman into meetings with studio honchos to specifically lobby against becoming involved in iTunes (as has been reported here and elsewhere).
I’ve spent a career parsing this stuff, grok. This is the sort of wordsmithing that PR flaks are paid to do. And Wal-Mart’s flaks have had a lot of practice lately.
What do you mean when you say “increased content resolution”
The video downloads from iTunes is now 640 x 480 instead of 320 x 240.
Further, I disagree with you that the digital model will not work.
I think your idea here is obsolete, and in fact faulty. Apple has sold over 1.5 billion songs and made millions off those song sales alone, regardless of device sales.
Music is a different animal than video, the files are considerably smaller and easily managable. I have several iPods and considerable amount of TV shows from iTunes, the problem with managing all this content manifests itself rather quickly and the extra costs of backing up this data to other hard drives, dvd burning etc is a consderable waste of effort.
Digital media is the future, having to go down to a store to buy data is old news, it was old news the minute the internet came about, after all, thats what the internet does best, allow us to share data. As for download times, that doesnt really matter much since you can start your movie in about 5 minutes time without having to have downloaded the whole thing.
Digital video media is not the future unless we are able to burn a DVD player version of the content as a lowest common demoninator format for maximum versitility, much like audio cd’s are.
Plus with in home broadcasting you dont need a DVD player in everyroom any more, i mean what a waste to have 5 dvd players for each of my 5 tvs. Further, the next gen ipods might support HD video that can hook up to your buddies tv to watch a movie off of. And who knows, with .mac already inplace, capable of moving gigs of data, perhapes we can use it in conjunction with our home pc to access our digital content from anywhere? .mac can facilitate a stream from home model.
Apple doesn’t offer a “home broadcasting” device, it’s a violation of FCC rules. Therefore a device in addition to a DVD player at each of your 5 TV’s to stream video via non-FCC regulated channels would be needed. With current slow broadband speeds, I just can imagine what would happen if two to five people at each of your TV’s decided to download a different movie from iTunes all at the same time.
I think you demonstrated a perfect example of my point.
Point being, for the target online demographic, single young male, movies via online services is a option, but it’s a limited one. Problems arise with scalability and versatility with the iTunes model. Seperate DVD’s are much more easily and cost effetctiverly managed, exchanged, shared rented and resold. They are universal and iTunes video is not because the content isn’t allowed to be burned to regular DVD player format for any player.
I say it’s a loss leader for Walmart as they may lose some inital sales to iTunes, from a small demographic, but the overall interest in buying content will increase, the fustration of managing that content will motivate the now habititual buyer to seek easier and cheaper alternatives which Walmart has a monopoly on.
I’m using an iMac G4 800 Flat Panel to play iTunes movies just fine. Not exactly a state-of-the-art platform. True, I can only run iTunes 7 and other zero-processor-use-when-idle programs to get flicker free iTunes movie video. Still not bad for a 4 1/2 year old computer that’s below the 1 GHz Apple movie requirement.
My iMac and G4 867 MHz Powerbook work just fine with iTunes 7. There’s a bit of a delay when Cover Art has to pull art from music files but is almost instant when pulling art from the iTunes Album Artwork folder.
So what hardware has been prematurely hobbled?
Apparantly yours by your own admission.
You should have stuck with iTunes 6 for music and gone with DVD’s for movies.
Lick the Bufo Frog
Your missing the point of movie downloads. The reason why I download movies is beacause I don’t want a physical dvd. I don’t want to burn a copy of my downloaded movie to dvd. That to me serves no purpose. I just store all my downloads in iTunes, my iPod and one backup hard drive. It’s as simple as that. No need for dvds anymore.
It’s all so simple to manage and will become simpler when iTV is released. Right now I simply plug my iPod to the tv with a cheap a/v cord from Radio Shack. Hopefully soon I can play all my movies wirelessly as I do my music with Airport express. No need to burn cds anymore either, especially with all these cars being iPod compatible now.
Ok Bufo Frog. You seem to have an answer for everything, so answer this: Your first post was under “Lick the buFFo Frog”, but now you are going by “Lick the BuFo Frog”.
Why is that?
And for the record I disagree that iTunes 7 has hobbled any of my expensive or even not so expensive Mac hardware. There are a few bugs in iTunes 7 that Apple will clean up soon, but that hardly equates to hobbling my equipment.
calpundit –
point taken, and it may well be so…
It’s fascinating to see this stuff at work – a story leaked to the Post could be so many things. My guess is that it is a trial balloon – either to issue a deniable threat to the studios, or to test the reactions of the various parties involved to a possible shift in Wal-Mart’s policies regarding DVD’s.
Either way, the official denial here, I think, makes outright boycott of the studio’s DVD’s inplausible, and indicates a more subtle message to the studio execs.
Hell, maybe Steve planted the story to get a little outrage started against any hindrance to Apple’s move to movies.
Ya never know. But you can guess.
“Wal-Mart disputed the Post report and said it was not pressuring movie studios into shunning online delivery. ‘Customers want to watch movies and they want to be able to make the choice when and how they want to view them,’ a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said. ‘While we recognize there are various current and potential providers of this service, we are not dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers.'”
Wasn’t it Richard Nixon who said, “I am not a crook”?
Lick the Bufo
I certainly don’t consider my iMac 800 prematurely hobbled when I can run iTunes 7 and the latest iTS movies on a 4 1/2 year old computer. Hell, an iMac 800 is below the stated requirements for iTS movies. iTunes 7 plays my music just fine, list and group views are just as responsive and Cover Art view is fine after the art is loaded. Why would I want to go back to version 6?
Double Hell!! OS 10.4 runs faster than the OS 10.1 that this iMac came with. It’s my home office media center faultlessly playing my iTunes music, TV & movie collection. It’s my DVR with EyeTV and an external hard drive. EyeTV recordings converted to the 5.5G iPod specs are smaller files, play fine and are beautifully managed in iTunes.
Triple Hell!!! In the PC world, what is it, half the PCs sold this month won’t run all the new features of Vista if it does come out in January.
I don’t expect a 4 1/2 year old computer to to run High Definition movies when Apple gets around to it, but you never know.
When you say “prematurely hobbled” you imply iTunes 7 and iTS movies won’t run on Apple hardware released within the last 12 or 24 months. That’s FUD.
“Wal-Mart disputed the Post report and said it was not pressuring movie studios into shunning online delivery. ‘Customers want to watch movies and they want to be able to make the choice when and how they want to view them,’ a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said. ‘While we recognize there are various current and potential providers of this service, we are not dissuading studios from conducting business with other providers.'”
Or maybe it’s more like Obiwan, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
I wonder if Whore-Mart makes a little beeping noise when they back up…Ya know; like a garbage truck
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All it took was a little phone call from us, and they baked off. Losers.
Wal Mart bested by Apple…. what will happen next? Apple will take over MicroSlut? HEHEHe
All I can say is:
WALMART – YOU ARE PATHETIC!
Do your fucking market research before trying to blackmail the movie industry!
Walmart has been feeding and clothing millions of America’s poor for years.
The fuck Walmart crowd all have their heads up their asses.
Walmart moves into a new area and puts the high markup businesses that have been screwing their local customers for years in jeopardy. Good for them.
Walmart outsources to the countries with the lowest labor costs. So does every other major American business. It’s good business for Apple to outsource to China for almost all of it’s hardware but Walmart is evil for doing the same damn thing? Bullshit!
America’s labor force has priced themselves out of the world’s labor market. That’s not Walmart’s fault.
Your missing the point of movie downloads. The reason why I download movies is beacause I don’t want a physical dvd. I don’t want to burn a copy of my downloaded movie to dvd. That to me serves no purpose. I just store all my downloads in iTunes, my iPod and one backup hard drive. It’s as simple as that. No need for dvds anymore.
You lead a solitary life, exactly iTunes movie target market.
Downloading iTunes movies and video serves me no purpose, as I can’t burn a dvd and share/trade amongst friends or resell the content to recooperate a portion of my investment. The iTunes video content swells up over time, take valuable hard drive space or takes hours of work to burn to a dvd-r which won’t play on DVD players.
If my expensive computer breaks down and is either unable or too cost prohibited to repair, it takes my video content with it. My content is held hostage unless I buy new expensive hardware and all the third party software upgrades because Apple switched processors.
At least with DVD movies on disk, if my $99 DVD player breaks, it’s only another $99 to get another one at the local electronics store, my DVD’s play fine. My content is not held hostage by a $600-$4500 investment in new Mac hardware plus new software.
With DVD movies on disk, if my friends stop by with a DVD movie I haven’t seen, I can trade one they haven’t seen in return, immediatly and without fuss. This can’t be done with computers because of the complications of authorizing, my friends may not have a computer or a broadband connection, or don’t use iTunes or a myrid of other factors. Heck, even if spend the time to SnapZ Pro X the entire movie, process it and burn it to a dvd-r in iDVD, not all DVD players can play dvd-r disks, so I found out.
So iTunes movies are impractical for most socially active people because it can’t be burned to dvd-r to play in any DVD player.
iTunes music, on the other hand, is extremely socially acceptable because it can be immediatly downloaded and burned to a cd to play in any cd player.
I have tried the iTunes way, it’s impractical for video and when your life and needs changes you’ll see the same problem.
“Customers want to watch movies and they want to be able to make the choice when and how they want to view them,”
Typical sanitized corporate BS. Sounds like something from Microsoft.
Wal-Mart: we’re not fighting iTunes Store movie downloads
LOL. So, Wal-Mart, you’re “not fighting” iTunes or movie downloads, but you’re making Mafia-like threats to studios, saying there’ll be “consequences” for working with iTunes. For “not fighting” your actions are certainly hostile.
Here’s to the day Wal-Mart takes its place alongside Woolworth and Wards.
I only wish I could boycott them beyond having not shpped there for 5+ years. Maybe and EMPHATIC boycott… yeah thats it.
If Wal-Mart is a great company then why do they spend 100’s of millions of dollars of advertising on improving their image and the “benefit” of having Wal-Mart in their towns? Why are their movies and news media about how shitty Wal-Mart is to its employees?
The only thing I will give Microsoft credit for is they publicly admit their goal is to put companies that they compete against out of business and they give out free towels in the employee exercise room.
While I’m sympathetic to the sufferers when WalMart uses their marketing pressure to destroy other small businesses, I must remind those of the North American persuasion of two things:
1. That is what capitalism is, it is what the US has prided itself on years and has now ‘sold’ to the rest of the world (Europe, Oceania, Far East Asia and now the Middle East), as ‘the American way of life’ that we all need, even if now China now does capitalism better than the US.
2. The rest of the world has had 50+ years of Walmart-ism by US firms coming in, taking over indigenous firms, undercutting prices and changing the cultures.
I am not trying to be pro or anti capitalism or cultural imperialism, but just noting the irony of history that the biggest complaints about WalMart are coming from the country who prides itself on being the biggest and best in these exact commodities.
The fact remains that the capitalism and cultural imperialism of WalMart has a downside that drastically affects people’s lives. Like in the movie ‘When Harry met Sally’ Harry Fox says “business is not personal”, to which Sally, who is being put out of business by Fox Books, replies “well its personal to me”.
So I’m a few days late to this party…
If you’ve got 5 DVD players hooked to 5 different TVs then you have a dysfunctional home and probably a dysfunctional family.
Trading DVDs works with a single $99 DVD player hooked to one of those TVs that you seem to think you need AND an iPod full of digital movies. An iPod is better because you can take a whole selection of movies to your friend’s place and a $20 cable lets you play from the iPod to any TV. Sometimes the group dynamic or mood suggests you play a different movie than the one you originally planned to show; I’d rather carry an iPod than a whole box of DVDs.
I don’t think paying DVD price (plus bandwidth and time) for less than DVD quality and no bonus features is a good use of my money, but others may prefer convenience to price.
As for the evil that is WalMart, let’s face one simple fact here: Target, Fred Meyer, Loblaws, Sears, all the large retailers use the same basic supply chain with the same goal of making profit by driving costs down and prices up. That naturally leads to exploiting cheap overseas labour markets, employing the vulnerable whose desire for employment leads them to accept poverty line wages, ignoring the environment, misleading regulatory agencies, using predatory pricing to bankrupt competitors and generally doing absolutely everything possible to increase profits. The goals and methods employed by all corporations are the same, just to differing degrees. Few are big enough to wield the power of WalMart, but if they were to disappear tomorrow someone else would quickly take their place.