"DVDs are going away. This already happened with music. One day that vast majority of us will no longer buy physical copies of movies and keep them on a shelf. Netflix realizes this - which is exactly why they want to get out of the expensive rent-by-mail business and completely focus their efforts online with streaming content."
I perceive NetFlix's DVD-by-mail strategy as an ingenious hack to get market penetration into a market which required eventual movement by large entities -- (1) the telcoms to provide sufficient bandwidth to consumers and (2) the studios to allow their content to be streamed. It was obvious that #1 and #2 would have to happen eventually, but only a fool would have built a business whose success was contingent on the timing of these changes. Brilliant.
"DVDs are going away. This already happened with music. One day that vast majority of us will no longer buy physical copies of movies and keep them on a shelf. Netflix realizes this - which is exactly why they want to get out of the expensive rent-by-mail business and completely focus their efforts online with streaming content."