• USA Today, Tuesday, February 6, 2007 11 AM

The DVD business has begun its long, slow transformation into digital downloading. A milestone begins today, as Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, unveils a new video download store that has the participation of all the major film studios and most major TV networks. A typical movie download takes about 45 minutes.

The move is significant for a couple of reasons: This is the first time all the major film studios are on board in one place, and two, Wal-Mart is by far the biggest movie destination in the U.S., accounting for some 40% of domestic DVD sales. Of course, Wal-Mart doesn't expect download sales to eclipse DVD sales for some time, but today's move is a major step into what many believe is the future sales channel for digital media.

The new service, Wal-Mart Video Downloads, launches in beta. It offers about 3,000 movies and TV shows to buy and download--but only for Windows-enabled PCs using an Internet Explorer Web browser; movies go for between $9.88 and $19.88, while TV shows cost $1.96 per episode. New releases will come out on the site the same day they're released on DVD. Nine movie studios and 14 TV studios (not including ABC, NBC or CBS) are selling their films via Wal-Mart's download store.

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