Hey, Mom, let's download "Saw III" from Wal-Mart!

Wal-Mart just announced they're getting into the movie-downloading business next year, making "Superman Returns" available for zapping to your portable or PC. Probably your microwave, too, if you bought it there. Response from analysts and the media has been muted, since Apple and Amazon have already set up shop in this niche, and NetFlix and Blockbuster may be next if they can get the kinks out or work up the nerve. As for YouTube, now owned by Google and ready to go commercial in a big way, we'll see. Questions remain: Will Wal-Mart sell edited versions online? And does the average user of any of these outlets have the big honking hard-drive storage you need to keep more than a few movies in your computer? Because you'd better believe the content providers -- the studios and the corporations that own them -- won't let you burn DVDs of "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest" anytime soon. Even if the head of Time-Warner says he will.

However: Then there's BitTorrent. If you don't know what that is, ask your teenage son; basically it's the new Napster that allows file-sharing of music, movies, software -- whatever you want and other users are willing to put up, legal or not. The little company that could has been quietly making distribution deals with the studios over the past few months and will start making movies available for download next February. And the people using BitTorrent's software have those big honking hard drives and don't mind watching movies on a PC -- in fact, they're already doing it.

Note: This does not mean the end of DVD, at least not this year or next. And it certainly doesn't spell the end of movie theaters -- we'll always need a place to gather to watch the show (provided it's a good show; are you listening, Hollywood?). But the whole entertainment business is certainly due to morph hellaciously -- again -- over time. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy decade.