Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) (WMT) is the farthest along after selling 3,000 movie downloads in its first month, February. Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) spokeswoman Karen Raskopf said the movie rental chain intends to enter digital downloads by the end of this year, perhaps in partnership with another company.
"We don't see digital downloading becoming a huge business in the next year or two, but our view is we need to be in the business, and we don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage," she said.
Online movies have a long way to go before they're as easy-to-use as downloadable music. Even compressed movie files can be a hundred times larger than an individual song, and Wal-Mart says a full-length movie may take as long as an hour and a half to download, even over a high-speed connection.
Meanwhile, some online businesses already have tech-savvy customers. Netflix Inc. (NFLX), the online-only service that ships DVDs through the mail, is rolling out a streaming-movie option. And of course there's Apple, which has begun selling movies at its iTunes store online. Video-on-demand from cable offers another option for avoiding a trip to the store. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) offers downloadable movies that can be sent to your TiVo, and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s XBox Live marketplace does, too, some of them in high definition.
The largest advantage I can see with being able to download movies will be never having to wait if your local movie store is out of that new release that you really were in the mood to watch...Then again, some of my best movie rental experiences have been the nights we were a bit more adventuresome...
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