Walmart rolling out program allowing customers to convert DVDs to digital copies

Walmart is the latest weapon in Hollywood’s battle against slumping DVD sales.

The nation’s largest retailer is putting some new muscle behind UltraViolet, a disc-to-digital program backed by most major studios that got off to a shaky start when it was announced last year.

Walmart said yesterday it is rolling out a new program that will allow customers to convert their dusty DVD collections into fresh digital copies that they can store in the “cloud” and beam to smartTVs, computers, tablets and mobile devices.

The retailer will charge customers between $2 and $5 per disc to make movies available through its Vudu online streaming service. It doesn’t matter where customers bought the discs so long as they bring them into the store.

Walmart is expected to roll out a huge marketing campaign for the program, which will launch April 16.

Most of the major studios are involved, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner, Sony and Universal.

Disney, the lone holdout, has a separate digital initiative in partnership with Apple’s iCloud service.

The studios hope to keep the idea of owning DVDs alive at a time when a growing number of movie fans are renting instead. According to the Digital Entertainment Group, sales of DVDs fell 13 percent to $8.95 billion in 2011. While digital sales of home entertainment product grew 9 percent to $553 million.

While the program seems to be a positive for consumers, one Wall Street analyst worried that it might be too difficult to figure out for rank-and-file Walmart customers.

“When you buy a DVD, they’ll give you a code, and then you enter the code” at Walmart’s Vudu website, the analyst said. “There are way too many friction points for the consumers.”