Wal-Mart announced that it will test a video download service on its website next year, the New York Times reports.

The Times reports that Wal-Mart is the country's largest seller of movies and that Hewlett-Packard is providing technology for the download service.

Wal-Mart took a tentative step yesterday with the service by offering customers who buy the physical DVD of "Superman Returns" in a Wal-Mart store the option of downloading a digital copy of the film. The price for the download was $1.97 for portable devices and $2.97 for personal computers.

"We feel like it is really important that the DVD business stays healthy and stays quite central to consumers' lives," says Kevin Swint, a divisional merchandising manager at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart has made moves to keep up with the evolving digital consumer landscape. Last month, Wal-Mart was said to be in talks with Apple negotiating a deal that would give Wal-Mart a cut of iTunes movie download sales in exchange for selling digital download coupons.

Wal-Mart also experimented with social media with a blog that turned out to be a disaster for the company. For more insight on Wal-Mart's failed social media venture, read "Wal-Mart: Blazing the Trail to Distrust".