"Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

[gvf_in_sf]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I absolutely refuse to support Wal-mart and so with this acquisition, I will be cancelling my membership. If you think Wal-mart is a good company, well, your head is in the sand. They are one of the most un-American companies out there. Before you claim that lower prices on soda is so incredibly great, think about all of the small businesses Wal-mart has crushed, how much they buy from China, how they treat their employees, and how they force American companies to lower workers' wages. Oh, yeah, that's all so great. You're really quite short-sighted and foolish if you think so.

[gvf_in_sf]

Re: Wal-Mart to buy Vudu

I've just asked to cancel my membership. I WILL NOT SUPPORT WAL-MART.

[mhausig]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I'm not too surprised by this but overall disappointed because this most likely means that the Vudu brand will be absorbed into Walmart rather than being kept on as a separate entity.

One thing that had me puzzled once the adult content was enabled was why Vudu didn't make a big push for the hotel VOD niche. None of the other competitors were in a position to make a play for the hotel market as they lacked adult content and now that potential market is going to be closed to Vudu as well. Its odd that such a potentially lucractive path to mass adoption of the Vudu service would be passed up.

[Alan Smithee]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022403266.html

My earlier statement about "bullying" may have been a little overblown, but Wal-Mart has gotten bad press for things like encouraging their workers to get food stamps (why not just give them free or highly discounted food?) and at least one incident of forcing people to work overtime yet making creative adjustments on the time cards so that they were not paid for the overtime. It's also common knowledge that Wal-Mart actually PREFERS a high employee turnover rate, since that means fewer people they have to provide full benefits for. I laughed out loud at their "Save Money, Live Better" slogan- yes, that's true for their customers, but their EMPLOYEES certainly don't live better! (And maybe some of them aren't smart enough to work anyplace else, but that's another topic.)

Wal-Mart has already done other incredibly stupid things in regards to the entertainment industry- most notable being their refusal to carry any music albums with "Parental Advisory" labels. This has resulted in many albums being issued in separate edited versions just to appease Wal-Mart- they certainly didn't make these for anyone else. With this same mentality they should also only carry G-rated movies, but they do carry titles up to R-rated. I know that Wal-Mart WAS responsible for the issuing of separate so-called "Full Screen Edition" DVDs when both versions would not fit on one disc, because Wal-Mart demanded the movie studios do so after their uneducated customers complained about "the black bars". (There is already plentiful information on the internet about how widescreen is the CORRECT way to display a movie, I'll leave it up to you to find it rather than repeat it here.) Now those who have bought "Full Screen" DVDs get to watch their cropped movies on their new widescreen TVs with black bars on the SIDES, or else stretch out that cropped picture making it look even worse!

Another HUGE inconsistency with Wal-Mart's holier-than-thou approach is that media with objectionable content is not OK, but they also sell guns, cigarettes, and alcohol, which cause far more damage than any piece of recorded media. (And I'm not advocating the banning of those either- I don't buy them but don't support suppressing someone else's right to do so and don't boycott stores that sell them.)

So yet again, let me say I won't be doing any more business with Vudu or Wal-Mart should this acquisition and removal of content come to pass.

[raaurora]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I remember in the early days of Netflix, Wal-Mart tried their own DVD service...made a mess of it....and dropped it. Why they think they are better prepared for the VOD market is beyond me. I am worried this is the beginning of the end for my Vudu service.

[Alan Smithee]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

When Wal-Mart closed their rent-by-mail DVD service, they sold their subscriber list to Netflix.

[rstone]

Re: Wal-Mart to buy Vudu

The reality jstrait is that most Americans are only concerned only with themselves and the little bubble they live in, and rarely see past the 10 feet in front of them, or how their actions affects others outside their own little bubble. I doubt you will get any kind of "real reaction" from the majority of those on this forum, regarding Walmart. Most Americans could care less or are concerned enough to do a little homework to see what kind of businesses they are supporting. After-all they are more concerned about saving a buck than human rights violations in a country they can't even see. Nor are they concerned that Walmart offers the lowest wages in the retail industry, use sweatshops in China, offers less than half their employees any kind of health insurance, drives down wages and increases poverty in communities, forces local small businesses to close, cares little for the safety of its workers, discriminates against women, and repeatedly brakes child labor laws, etc. So you shouldn't be surprised jstrait by the lack of any real reaction from most of those on here. Captialism is alive and well in this forum.

[gibbs0828]

Walmart Acquisition & After Dark Closing

Hey everyone,

I found an article on line that's kind of a culmination of what everyone's been talking about.

My intention is to merge the comments into one thread...

Cheers!

[Electric Frenzy]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I'm done with Vudu now. I haven't shopped in a Wal-Mart in 2 years. I refuse to support Wal-mart and prefer to support the "little guy" (aka Vudu in this point).

Selling out to Wal-Mart is the simultaneously the most and least american you could've done.

I'm very disappointed....but money is money right?

Anyone wanna buy my STB before I a brick it?

[Schwack]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I love this Wal-Mart hysteria! Let's see how Vudu operates moving forward. If, in fact, Vudu changes for the worse...then I can see dumping it and canceling my subscription. however, I'd rather wait and see.

As far as caving into a big player, nowadays -- who isn't? Apple, Google, etc...are all scooping up smaller companies. It this economic climate, can you blame the smaller companies? It's a form of survival.

[redwein]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I know that Wal-Mart WAS responsible for the issuing of separate so-called "Full Screen Edition" DVDs when both versions would not fit on one disc, because Wal-Mart demanded the movie studios do so after their uneducated customers complained about "the black bars". (There is already plentiful information on the internet about how widescreen is the CORRECT way to display a movie

Excuse me, it isn't really a matter of being "correct" or not. I prefer full screen to the bars on top and I am not uneducated and I know exactly what the tradeoff is. With the bars on top (let's say they occupy 25% of the total screen just for argument sake) I really only have 700-800 lines of resolution to display the image. It's true that I see more "information" on the left and the right of the screen but much of that isn't terribly important and the overall picture is smaller and lower resolutiion vertically. With full screen I use the full 1080 lines of resolution so the part I can see is higher resolution than the widescreen format, at the expense of losing some information on the periphery. Even if they just used the original number of lines and zoomed it to fit, the image is still bigger and more enjoyable for me to watch. That is what I prefer.

[MaxH]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

I love this Wal-Mart hysteria! Let's see how Vudu operates moving forward. If, in fact, Vudu changes for the worse...then I can see dumping it and canceling my subscription. however, I'd rather wait and see.

Well, it was stated by someone involved in the deal that After Dark would be removed "immediately". Whether you use it or not, removing content that has already been purchased AND at the same time reducing the content selection are troublesome choices based not on whether they are profitable, but on the company in question trying to limit the behavior of their customers. Of course, we're free to use another VOD service that has adult content, but that's not the point; Vudu customers are (or were) free to turn off the ability to even see After Dark as a choice in the interface via their online account, but now that choice is being taken away, and questions about already-purchased content haven't yet been answered. The Kindle 1984 debacle made it obvious that refunding licensing fees is not satisfactory compensation for "stealing" content that the customer had purchased through DRM revocation.

Personally, I will of course wait to see how they handle this in practice, but if they carry out the changes as predicted, I know I'll be very disappointed.

[Citizen Erased]

Re: "Wal-Mart Is Said to Be Buying Vudu Movie Service"

Excuse me, it isn't really a matter of being "correct" or not.

Yes it is, the set up you've described is simply the wrong way to watch anything that was originally filmed in widescreen. You may 'prefer' watching an incorrect setup or a pan and scanned reproduction, it doesn't make it the correct aspect ratio.

You wouldn't go to an art museum and look at the works on display though a piece of black cardboard with a 4" by 3" hole cut out, would you?

[aaronwt]

Re: Wal-Mart to buy Vudu

The reality jstrait is that most Americans are only concerned only with themselves and the little bubble they live in, and rarely see past the 10 feet in front of them, or how their actions affects others outside their own little bubble. I doubt you will get any kind of "real reaction" from the majority of those on this forum, regarding Walmart. Most Americans could care less or are concerned enough to do a little homework to see what kind of businesses they are supporting. After-all they are more concerned about saving a buck than human rights violations in a country they can't even see. Nor are they concerned that Walmart offers the lowest wages in the retail industry, use sweatshops in China, offers less than half their employees any kind of health insurance, drives down wages and increases poverty in communities, forces local small businesses to close, cares little for the safety of its workers, discriminates against women, and repeatedly brakes child labor laws, etc. So you shouldn't be surprised jstrait by the lack of any real reaction from most of those on here. Captialism is alive and well in this forum.

If I boycotted all the companies that have issues, I wouldn't be able to purchase anything. Every company I've worked for, and every company that anyone I've ever known has worked for(including the US government) falls into at least one of those categories mentioned.

Time to leave your fanatsy world.

[Schwack]

Re: Wal-Mart to buy Vudu

If I boycotted all the companies that have issues, I wouldn't be able to purchase anything. Every company I've worked for, and every company that anyone I've ever known has worked for(including the US government) falls into at least one of those categories mentioned.

Time to leave your fanatsy world.

Amen.