What About Wal-Mart?

One issue the studios are going to have to grapple with, as they go with "date and date" release of DVD and video-on-demand movie content, is channel conflict. Specifically, Wal-Mart sells about 40 percent of all DVDs. Target sells about 15 percent. Add in Best Buy and you probably have half the market for retail DVD sales.

Those three mass market retailers won't be happy if DVD sales, used as loss leaders to drive shopper traffic, start to dwindle. Surely studio executives are thinking about this problem. Ultimately, they'll want to come up with some sort of kiosk operation allowing buyers to sideload rental or sale content directly to their iPods.

You'd think USB flash drives might do the trick. The issue will be the cost of storage required to hold a two-hour HDTV movie. And then there's the issue of moving that content directly to the TV for viewing.

The studios will figure this out, or somebody will help them figure it out. The studios won't want to make a key channel partner too angry.