Walmart will be launching a beta version of a new service named "InstaWatch."
The beta product is aimed at helping consumers more easily access digital copies of movies that they buy through the retail giant.
Consumers will be able to use the Walmart Mobile App to scan their receipt when they purchase a Blu-Ray or DVD at Walmart stores, or enter a receipt number for purchases from Walmart.com, and have the digital copy go immediately into their library in Walmart's streaming service "Vudu."
The company said the service supports UltraViolet copies, but is designed to be format agnostic.
Even though these digital copies have been sold with DVDs and Blu-rays for three years, "we hear that a very small percentage of customers who purchase a movie with a digital copy redeem it," said Senior VP For Mobile and Digital For Walmart E-Commerce Gibu Thomas. "We think that's unacceptable. They're not getting the full value of the movie purchase."
At launch, 800 packaged media titles including Fox's X-Men: Days of Future Past and DreamWorks Animation's Mr. Peabody & Sherman, will be available through InstaWatch, supported by partnerships with DreamWorks Home Entertainment, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Media, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Warner Home Video.
Disney, also the only major studio that is not a member of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem consortium that developed cloud-based digital rights system UltraViolet, is absent from the list of partners.
