As you may or (most likely) may not know, Wal-Mart started its own movie download service in February of this year. However, users of the service will have noticed something a little different when they visited the video download site recently: instead of the usual catalog of media available for download, a simple message said that the store closed on December 21.

The decision to shut down the movie download service came after Hewlett Packard discontinued the technology that powered it. Wal-Mart has decided that it will not look for another technology partner citing poor performance of the download service as the main reason. Wal-Mart also abandoned their online DVD rental service in 2005, they just don't seem to be having a lot of success in this area.