Wal-mart to offer DVD conversion

Wal-mart Stores Inc. announced plans Tuesday to enable customers to convert their DVD and Blu-ray movie collections to digital versions that could be accessed through the company’s Vudu online video-streaming service.

The service will be available April 16 in more than 3,500 stores.

Wal-mart outlined plans for the service at an event in California that included executives from major movie studios including Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros.

The company said customers will be able to convert standard DVD or Bluray movies to digital for $2 or upgrade a standard DVD to high-definition for $5. Customers will be able to set up free Vudu accounts and to keep their original copies.

“Disc to digital is the service customers are asking for,” John Aden, executive vice president of general merchandise for Wal-mart U.S., said during the event, which was carried live online via a webcast.

Aden said the company polled thousands of customers, who said they wanted more options for their existing DVDS.

“We see digital movies as a complement to physical DVDS,” Aden said, adding that the move could “dramatically change the face of entertainment.”

Ronald Sanders, president of Warner Home Video, said during the webcast that Wal- Mart’s move will help bridge a gap between how customers currently view their movie collections and how they would like to see them.

“They love their films, they love their movies,” he said. “We think it’s a game changer.”

The company said it intends to market the new service through a “massive

campaign” on television and radio.

Wal-mart said customers will be able to access their content via Vudu with more than 300 Internet-connected devices, including televisions, tablet devices, smart phones and game consoles.

The company said it is not requiring that the original disc had been purchased at WalMart.

The movie industry has been seeking to develop marketing strategies to boost DVD sales, a profitable but shrinking business, as customers increasingly use online services such as Netflix. The industry has developed a project known as Ultraviolet that enables customers to purchase content and play it repeatedly.

“If this actually is the trigger and consumers start seeking the Ultraviolet rights, this is a huge win for Wal-mart” depending on how long exclusivity lasts, Scott Smyers, an analyst with Sunrise Digital Technologies and a former Sony executive, told Bloomberg News. The Wal-mart deal will be exclusive for a period still under discussion, Wal-mart’s Aden told Bloomberg.

Wal-mart’s stock closed Tuesday at $61, up 32 cents, or 0.53 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock has traded between $48.31 and $62.63 in the past year.