Walmart will convert your discs to digital from your home
The retailer is expanding its Disc-to-Digital service so that consumers can have their DVDs converted without leaving home.
Walmart will soon be able to convert your DVD movies to online digital content right from your own PC.
The company's Disc-to-Digital service already handles that type of conversion. But the current process requires you to hop over to your local Walmart store to get your DVD converted.
Starting sometime this month, the expanded service will handle the whole conversion with you driving it from your PC. Using its Vudu video streaming service, Walmart will convert your DVD and Blu-ray movies and TV shows into UltraViolet digital copies. Those copies are then stored in your own online libraries where you can watch them from any supported computer, phone, tablet, game system, TV, or Blu-ray player.
Free Vudu mobile apps are available for iPad and Android devices. Walmart promises that iOS users will be able to download as well as stream titles starting mid-February.
What's the cost? You can convert a standard DVD or Blu-ray movie for $2 and upgrade a standard DVD to an HD digital copy for $5.
To push the service, Walmart is offering customers 10 free pre-selected movies if they sign up for an UltraViolet account or link to an existing account.
Rival retailer Best Buy recently rolled out a similar feature called CinemaNow that lets you convert discs into UltraViolet copies from the comfort of your home.
Both Vudu and CinemaNow have the same limitation: You can't just convert any movie or TV show from your own library. It has to be a title supported by each respective service and the UltraViolet format.
Walmart and Best Buy each support around 3,500 different movies from such studios as Sony, Universal, Warner, and Lionsgate. Though relatively small in number, the selections do include a healthy variety of both recent and classic films.