i don't know...i didn't even know that walmart was doing this to being with. Maybe if they spent as much on TV commercials as Apple does...
it's funny, I got an xbox 360 this weekend because I'm tired of waiting for (i know it sounds crazy, but i swear it makes sense!) the new Mac Pro....
I signed up for Xbox Live and saw that they have movies and TVs shows and stuff. I didn't know this. And then I saw that a lot of the things on there were in HD for a bigger charge (still less than 5 bucks in real money). They've got Ratatouille in HD for under 500 "MS points" and it is a 2-3 week rental...can't remember when it said it expired. I don't have an HD player, but I have an HD-TV hooked up in 1080p to a 360, so all of the sudden, for 1 dollar more than blockbuster, I can rent an HD movie for a couple of weeks instead of days. And from what I can tell, you don't have to leave it on your hard drive...download when you want, and delete, but as long as you're still in the rental period, you can download again.
They have a bunch of old movies on there, too. Pleasantville is 240 credits for a "rental" that expires in 2014 AD! That's basically 3 bucks for 7 years of "ownership."
It isn't a perfect system or a perfect model, but i've already spent money on it, and I haven't bought any videos of any type from iTMS yet despite owning an iPod video and a bunch of Macs and having 150gb of Apple Lossless music on an external hard drive.
The funny thing is, I presume all of that stuff on XBL is copy protected at the moment, but I didn't even think about it until now, and I certainly didn't notice anything interfering with my experience. I guess I find the video functionality of the ipod to be a gimmick. Just a way for Apple to sell me more stuff. I notice a lot of people talking about how they don't want to watch TV on a computer, so they want to get an AppleTV...
Well, I don't want to watch TV on a 2.5 inch screen. Ever. I have one that is capable, and I can't see the point. I want everything to be in HD and huge. I can't help but think that probably most people want something similar, because there are a LOT of big screen TVs going out the doors of electronics stores.
People who claim they can't tell enough of a difference to want HD programming have never seen real HD programming. Going to Wal Mart and looking at 100 TVs under fluorescent lamps with their brightness and contrast at 100% and a ratty HD-Lite loop of content playing on them that is being split and amplified and attenuated 100 different ways from a single source device is not HD programming. Apple's "almost DVD" purchases are of sub-par quality. They are marginally better than hulu's streaming video feeds (the SD ones, not the HD ones!). They look like SD digital cable that is being highly-compressed when you watch them through an AppleTV at an Apple Store. Sure they look good on an ipod, but I don't watch TV in my car or at my office or while I'm jogging. I watch TV on the couch or in the bedroom. Walmart's video service was probably junk. I didn't know it existed. The truth is that Apple's video service is only marginally better. If it were being asked to justify its own existence by being profitable, or even by bringing in hardware sales, it would have been closed already, too. Apple is sticking it out because they want to be there when the corner turns...Right now, as a fairly big media consumer, I'm very unimpressed with Apple's video offerings. I am certainly not willing to pay for what is currently available.