Wal Mart Talks About Movie Download Service

Kevin Swint of Wal-Mart's (WMT) digital download division came into the MarketWatch studios to talk about the retailer's movie download service, which was launched this week. I asked Swint why the movies are priced so high, given the inconvenience of downloading them, and he said that the movie studios price the movies, so it's hard to bring the prices down even lower.

Swint tells me that the movie-download service will work on Firefox in a couple weeks, but there is no timeframe as to when the service will work on Apple (AAPL) computers. He also tells me that people will have the ability to take videos onto multiple computers this summer. For now, if you buy a movie on Wal-Mart, you can only watch the movie on that one computer. Swint also said that Wal-Mart's customers want to own movies, not to rent. But if customers are clamoring for rentals, Wal-Mart would evaluate offering a Netflix (NFLX) style rental model. Look out for my Net Sense column, out Thursday. I'll be giving my review of the service.