Another choice for downloading movies?

If you prefer downloading movies onto your computer or television, thus avoiding driving to Blockbuster and standing in line next to the tempting snack rack, you may soon have another company to pick movies from.

Big-box retail giant Wal-Mart is buying VUDU, an online movie on-demand service, to compete with other digital movie distributors like Netflix and Apple's iTunes store. Financial terms for the deal were not disclosed.

VUDU operates a library of 16,000 movies and is already built into television from LG Electronics and Mitsubishi, among others. Wal-Mart says VUDU has one of the largest high-definition movie libraries, which gives it an advantage.

Netflix offers both movies by mail and Web streaming of about 12,000 titles through its "Watch Instantly" service. It has 12 million subscribers, but most of its offerings are older Hollywood titles, because major studios have been reluctant to make new releases available for digital streaming.