Information Madness

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is trying to charm people by launching an in-house movie streaming service facility directly on `Walmart.com’. It acquired a video service last year by the name of `Vudu’ and it is integrating it fully online now. Vudu will allow its customers to buy or rent movies over the internet and stream them to their television sets, Blu-Ray players or a variety of Vudu-enabled devices like Sony’s PlayStation 3 and high definition TVs from LG Electronics, Sharp and Panasonic.

Starting from today, Wal-Mart has announced that its customers have the facility to buy or rent a movie on its website in Vudu’s wide-ranging library. They can pay for it and stream it directly. The movie prices will vary depending on whether the movie content is high definition or standard definition. The rentals on `Walmart.com’ will range from id="mce_marker" to $5.99 while purchases will range from $4.99 to id="mce_marker"9.99. Vudu’s 3D movie rentals will range from $3.99 to $6.99 while the 3D movie purchases will range from id="mce_marker"1.99 to $21.99. This is going to be a direct attack by Wal-Mart on Netflix. There is another war going on here. Earlier today, we got to hear about how Samsung is anxious to launch its Galaxy Tab 10.1 to pull back some market share from Apple’s iPad2.

Wal-Mart will also offer a daily `Movie of the Day’ on just 99 cents’ rental on the Vudu platform. Wal-Mart said that every Friday, the `Movie of the Day’ rental will be decided by the consumers who will get to vote on Wal-Mart’s Face book page for the most popular pick among new releases.