Wal-Mart buys streaming movie provider Vudu, cuts adult content

Against declining DVD sales, retail mega-ultra-giant Wal-Mart is jumping into the digital movie distribution pool by acquiring Vudu. Few details about the acquisition have emerged so far, but our sister site, Engadget, is reporting that Vudu will continue its development operations, including work on Vudu Apps. Not a bad move on Wal-Mart's part, considering that Vudu already had major-studio contracts in place, giving it a library of 16,000+ streaming movies.

Vudu also offers social networking sites and other non-Hollywood content through its Vudu Apps platform. What remains to be seen is how drastically Wal-Mart ownership will affect Vudu's selection.

Techcrunch reports that Wal-Mart has already nixed Vudu's "After Dark" adult content service, but the retail giant is famously conservative, and the cuts could go deeper than that. Will Wal-Mart's principles cut Vudu off at the knees, or will the new bosses go easy on the censorship in the interest of profit? After all, the generally tech-savvy streaming video audience doesn't exactly have a lot of overlap with Wal-Mart's in-store customers.

This ... should be interesting.

Tags: dvd, hollywood, movies, streaming, vudu, walmart