“Wal-Mart Stores Inc. quietly canceled its online video download service less than a year after the site went live, a company spokeswoman said on Thursday,” Gina Keating reports for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: We thought we heard something new about Wal-Mart today. 
Keating continues, “Wal-Mart shut down the download site after Hewlett Packard Co. discontinued the technology that powered it, Walmart.com spokeswoman Amy Colella said in an e-mail. She added that it will not look for another technology partner.”
Keating reports, “HP spokesman Hector Marinez said the company decided to discontinue its video download-only merchant store services because the market for paid video downloads did not perform ‘as expected.'”
“Colella… declined to disclose the number of downloads sold on the site,” Keating reports. “A message at http://www.walmart.com/videodownloads said the service was stopped on December 21 and Wal-Mart offered no refunds for the downloaded videos.
Keating reports, “Videos purchased on Walmart.com can be played using the Microsoft Windows Media Player or the Wal-Mart Video Download Manager, but cannot be transferred to a computer other than the one used to download them, according to the site.”
Keating reports, “The news of the Wal-Mart download service’s demise comes on the same day that reports surfaced of an agreement between News Corp’s (Other OTC:NWSAF.PK – News) Twentieth Century Fox and Apple to offer the first movies for rent at the iTunes store.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Keiran D.” for the heads up.]
Wal-Mart pulled the plug on December 21st. Nobody noticed until today.