[cfgeeks] Another one bites the dust

[Gilbert Young]

On Dec 31, 2007, at 9:51 AM, Shawn McMahon wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-12-27 at 21:43 -0500, Gilbert Young wrote:
>> http://tinyurl.com/3b656u
>>
>
> Keating reports, "HP spokesman Hector Marinez said the company decided
> to discontinue its video download-only merchant store services because
> the market for paid video downloads did not perform 'as expected.'"
>


A wise prophet heckler one asked "You say it's a win-win, but what if  
you're wrong-wrong and it all goes bad-bad?"


> Gosh, I'm sure glad those Hollywood writers went on strike to get a
> piece of that pie a little early instead of waiting for their contract
> renewal to come up.  I mean, they'd have missed out on dozens of cents
> in income between now and then!

My favorite part:

"the service was stopped on December 21 and Wal-Mart offered no  
refunds for the downloaded videos.  Videos purchased on Walmart.com  
can be played using the Microsoft Windows Media Player or the Wal-Mart  
Video Download Manager, but cannot be transferred to a computer other  
than the one used to download them, according to the site.""

Once again half hearted offshoots of "partnered" services (in this  
case, two "race to the bottom" corps, HP and Wal-Mart) fall apart and  
the consumer gets it in the rear.  The funny thing is that HP and Wal- 
Mart are not fly by nights, they will be around for a long time,  
they're just saying screw you it was fun but homey doesn't play that  
game anymore.