Our sources who ferreted out the news that VUDU was going to be purchased by Wal-Mart have turned out to be correct. According to the word on the street, Wal-Mart is paying $100 million to buy the streaming technology provider; and this puts Wal-Mart in the streaming video distribution game.

Of course, this big move isn’t without some changes. As part of the deal VUDU will be shutting down its After Dark service. What we don’t know if whether this is actually something that was mandated in the deal or just something that Wal-Mart has decided that had to go in order to better fit with the company’s family-oriented image.

Analysts that we have spoken with see the move as a significant play by Wal-Mart to gain a bigger foothold in customer living rooms. Still, issues with Wal-Mart’s previous stand on content could lead to some interesting decisions in the future. While we know that Wal-Mart offers no adult content in its stores, we have to wonder about how the company will handle mature or R rated content on the VUDU platform going forward. We will have to wait and see where this leads, but as we told you yesterday, this decision is a significant move by the retailer.