In early December we mentioned that US supermarket giant Walmart is getting into the movie download business. Now Walmart has announced that they have done deals with six major Hollywood studios to offer movies for download. That’s pretty much all the major studios, with downloads starting at US$ 7.50. Television programmes will also be on offer, starting at $1.96 per episode. Like Apple’s iTunes video download service, Paramount and Disney are on the list. Joining them are Warner Brothers, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal. There is no advertising on the service, which is purely subscription based. But it does herald a new era of media delivery to the mass market, which is the sort of stuff MediaSoon is always going to get excited about.

Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart’s divisional merchandise manager for digital media tells us:

“This marks a significant step for Wal-Mart in home video, and enables us to better serve our customers as they begin to complement their DVD
purchases with downloading of digital video content. With thousands of movie and TV titles now available for download, coupled with the strength of our successful physical DVD business, this is an unprecedented offering of video content, features and capabilities currently unmatched in the market. Also, we’re excited to launch a service that has the support of all the major Hollywood studios.”