Starting on April 16 consumers will be able to take their home videos to some 3,500 WalMart stores and have them converted to digital files stored in the retailer's Vudu digital storage facilities for Internet streaming.
It will cost $2 to transfer a DVD or a Blu-ray disc, and $5 to have a DVD upgraded to a high-definition file.
"It will encourage customers to continue buying physical DVDs," says John Aden, WalMart's EVP General Merchandise. [source]
That kind of thinking is why Kodak is bankrupt.
Aside: Kodak's plan to reverse its fortune was to sell printers? Really?!
Digital home video needs a Qin Shi Huang.
The manufacturing and selling of printers is ridiculous. It's the shaver & razor theory – sell the device so cheap it doesn't matter if it breaks, so long as they buy insanely priced ink – and if they don't, they'll just buy another printer. This cycle continues forever. Housewives love buying new printers. HP's last resort for it's $1.2 billion dollar screw-up purchase of Palm OS was for it to operate printers. There's always money in the printers (banana stand).
There's money in printers…for now.