Asda fancies itself as the new Amazon

Asda is following the likes of Tesco and Amazon into the world of online home entertainment sales.

The Wal-Mart-owned supermarket chain has announced it will kick off with a range of 140,000 CDs, games and DVDs, which it will sell from a Jersey base. Operating its home entertainment operation out of the Channel Islands will enable it to avoid sales tax on the products - a saving which it says will be passed onto the consumer.

Chart CDs will retail for £8.97, nearly a pound cheaper than its in-store pricing.

Asda's decision to use the web to boost its non-food business follows a similar course taken by other supermarket chains. Tesco has already got into the music download business and last week announced it will be stocking home electronics products in its stores, having sold a selection through its website for some time. The retailer recently announced it had grown its non-food revenue by 17 per cent year-on-year.

Wal-Mart - the uber-retailer and Asda parent - already has an online home entertainment store, selling CDs and video games.

Despite its presence as one of the largest music retailers in the US both on and offline - selling an estimated one in every five major label albums, according to Rolling Stone - Wal-Mart could not transfer its success into the nascent online DVD rental business.

Wal-Mart withdrew from the market, ceding its rental subscriptions to more costly rival Netflix after failing to attract a fraction of its customer numbers.