It’s official: Walmart is no longer in the video download business.
If you purchased videos from this service, you’ll probably want to read this FAQ for more information.
It appears that your videos will remain playable with Windows Media Player.
Farewell, Walmart Video Download store. Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye.
PREVIOUSLY: Walmart’s Video Download Service Predictably Sucks
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Is this a bad thing?
“Please note that videos purchased from Wal-Mart Video Downloads are NOT compatible with Apple iPod, Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), or Microsoft Zune portable players.”
Well . . . there you have it. Did anyone really expect this to succeed?
They had a video download store?
Better crack the DRM before your next Windows reload…
It totally cracks me up that Microsoft created a DRM scheme for audio and video called PlaysForSure and then created a new media player that doesn’t even support it. Way to go guys! This must have been their plan all along right? To confuse and scare the consumer so much that they stop buying DRM “enabled” media? I guess that doesn’t make sense… there must have been a good reason.
The closing was cited with reports of mispackaged downloads. Your movie would come in a 30gb file stuffed with 1′s and 0′s that served only as air padding.
Everyone knows that walmart was just trying to create this so that it was in place when they finially released there $19.99 100GB mp3/video player made in Asia by people who work for $0.64 an hour, unfortunatly, Asia’s market has emerged and $0.69 was too much to pay for labor, would have cut their profit on the product down to $18.74.
A shame really.
What happens if I purchase another computer and would like to use it to play my videos?
You cannot play your videos on another computer. You can only play your videos on the computer you used to download the video files.
Reason #1 why DRM must die. At least Apple’s FairPlay lets you move your stuff to multiple computers, de-authorize a computer you no longer use, and offers a non-DRM version to you if it becomes available.
I never actually met someone who ever used WalMart’s video download service.. a lot like the Zune – you hear about it, but rarely see it in the wild.
Nice try WalMart, stick to selling 25 pound bags of carmel popcorn and pocket fishermen.
@Wormfather: That doesn’t even make sense.
Yeah this wasnt going to stay long, any takers to how long amazon lasts for its video service too.
@chaosium
Sure it does. Sarcasm-straight up.
@Zoom: That’s certainly one of the more humorous examples of Microsoft “innovation.” But what I’ve come to realize recently is that Microsoft is really a perpetual revenue machine, and they’re geared towards that mentality. The only important thing is to create and sell the “next big thing” for 2 years, then move on, regardless of how successful (or not) the “last big thing” was. Any consumer benefit to their products is seriously just a side-effect of revenue calculation. I guess that makes Apple a perpetual hipster machine… at any cost, we MUST be cooler than those other nerds!
The new Zune, in reality, is pretty good. Sadly; I can never get my networked hard drive to be recognized by WMP, so I can’t really use it for my music (which is on said networked HD)
@D3Anon:
I have TiVo UnBox, and because of amazon’s general UNavailability to rent movies (you have to buy them), and the obscene PRICE of renting them, I don’t think it’ll be around long.
I love my Netflix.