• The New York Times, Wednesday, November 29, 2006 11:45 AM

Wal-Mart will begin testing a video download service on its Web site next year. Media executives involved in the deal said that all the major studios are either on board or in active talks with the retailer. Hewlett-Packard is providing the technology for the download site.

In another sign that the race to put video content online is accelerating, the Internet firm BitTorrent plans to announce today that it has struck distribution deals with eight media partners, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount and MTV Networks.

Wal-Mart is the country's largest seller of DVDs, and the decade-old technology is not going away any time soon. A vast distribution system is still built around it, and downloading can still be slow and cumbersome. But the latest steps show that studios and retailers have concluded that the future of home-video sales is online.

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