Their DVD service may still exist, but my DVD player does not.

DVD players are cheap, so that's an easily solved problem.

My willingness to deal with physical media, let alone the postal service (any more then I am forced to, anyway) disappeared a few years ago.

How is Netflix able to get rights to send physical media, but not stream? It seems to me that literally the only real difference is physical media means there is a limit on number of concurrent viewers.

Physical media is subject to the Doctrine of First Sale, which means Netflix doesn't have to get a special license for DVD rentals.

From a copyright perspective, that's a fundamental difference from streaming.

I understand the desire for instant gratification, not to mention the desire to be free of the money pit called the USPS.

That being said, physical media has far superior audio and video quality. A Bluray disc vs streaming 1080p (especially a Netflix stream) is a world of difference. Streaming media is usually bit-starved to near death. If you care about quality (and you very well may not), it's the only way to fly.

If you don't mind the subpar video and audio quality, then I can understand why people use the streaming service. It's just not for me, though. I have a 49" 4k TV and a Bluray player that upscales for a reason. I don't want that swill they serve up over ethernet, lol.

By this logic, torrents are then the best of both worlds. :/

An unfortunate situation.

Netflix has 4K native content at a pretty decent bitrate.

That's not really a flaw of netflix, is it? If you believe it is, I'd love to understand your reasoning.

I'm not the OP, but I'll give it a shot :)

The value Netflix provides is primarily convenience. There are other ways to watch movies and TV shows, the reason to use Netflix is that it's more convenient than the alternatives.

Having to deal with physical media (and wait for them to be delivered) is less convenient than other alternatives to Netflix. Therefore, it's a flaw of Netflix.

Streaming is definitely more convenient, but since Netflix's streaming selection is atrocious, it's not worth my time or money.

I'd much rather put up with the minimal hassle and a bit of a wait to get a great selection of DVDs.

The "hassle" amounts to me opening up an envelope, putting the DVD in to my DVD player, putting it back in to the envelope when I'm done and throwing it in to a mailbox on my way to work.

Sure, it's not as easy as hitting play in a streaming app, but not really a big deal, either.

The hassle involves the latency of wanting to watch something and it being in the envelope in your home.

I'd rather wait a bit for something good than stream garbage.

> Streaming is definitely more convenient, but since Netflix's streaming selection is atrocious, it's not worth my time or money.

Which was exactly my point. It's a flaw of Netflix that it's streaming collection isn't as good as it's DVD collection.

I'm pretty sure hackney cab drivers argued similarly about automobiles.

I used to love going to blockbuster to rent a flick, because I could do it on a whim (near-instant gratification). Because of streaming services like Netflix, blockbuster went out of business.

I don't plan for movie night days in advance. I'm not going to rent that shit in the mail. So after a few years of not touching my DVD player, I threw it out.

The content owners are the real ones losing out here. I'd pay $4 to stream any movie, there's just no service I'm aware of that offers them all digitally at that price.

You can rent and stream many movies from Amazon for 3.99 SD and 4.99 HD. I'm not sure if these prices are discounted since I am a prime member.

I just recently started using VidAngel though, and I'm happy with it so far. They advertise being able to filter movies, but you can always just filter a single word if you don't want anything filtered. It's $1 for SD and $2 for HD. They have an interesting licensing model though so you sort of have to have a constant $18-$19 deposit with them.

Isn't that about what the cable PPV channels charge? Or am I out of date?

Then you'd have to get cable first, with whatever that entails. I don't have any kind of TV connection to my apartment at all.

You can play DVD's in your bluray player ;)

Are these still a thing? I've never seen one in use..

Do they do blu-ray?

yes

We stopped DVD service because we moved. After the move 4/5 disks came unplayably scratched. And it somehow took two weeks for the next disk to come in the mail. So you can imagine we found we were getting zero value for our subscription fee.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but my Netflix history shows I've watched close to 100 DVDs, and only one of them was unplayable for me. For that one, they shipped me a replacement right away and it worked fine.

Yes. That was our experience before we moved. Customer service kept blowing us off, too. So very likely where we are now is not a priority market or something. Which is sad because serving rural america was supposedly part of the whole long-tail thing.

I'm nostalgic for Blockbuster's disk-by-mail service, which had a much better selection than Netflix's ever did. (Ironically; considering how poor the selection in actual Blockbuster retail stores was.)

Whenever I wanted some mega-obscure Japanese or Thai movie, Netflix never had it and Blockbuster always did.

Oh well.

There was a company called GreenCine which had the same business model as Netflix, but focusing more on independent and rare films.

I meant to give it a try once I ran out of interesting movies to watch on Netflix. But I guess I waited too long, because now they're out of business.

Despite Netflix not having absolutely everything, I think Netflix still has a really good DVD selection, with plenty of relatively obscure films (along with tons of mainstream ones).

It could definitely be better (on selection, and also wish they offered more letterboxed and full-length films instead of shortened ones), and I wish there was more competition in this field. But overall I'm pretty satisfied and would recommend their DVD service to others.

Unfortunately it exists only in the U.S. :-( (while their streaming service is available in many countries.)

(In the USA)

That was my thought as well.. no, it isn't instant gratification, but it does have value... I wonder how legal a dedicated feed rental system would be. Effectively, you rent a movie (as available) and someone puts it into a drive in a data center, that is then played for you directly, with the software interface controlling playback... you then click "return" when done watching... maybe a bonus for early returns (vs checked out for 24hrs).

It might take some custom hardware, but just a few larger central stores vs something like redbox for example.

Believe it or not, this was tried years ago:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/is-zedivas-new-re...

It turned out that the courts were not impressed by this workaround.

There was a company that did this. They don't exist anymore:

https://www.wired.com/2011/10/streaming-movie-service-zediva...

https://www.vidangel.com/ does something similar. You buy the movie for 20$ and then can stream it whenever, but if you return it within the first 24 hours, you get 19$ back.

Is there anything that competes with that in terms of catalog? Redbox has replaced all the local rental places around here (Colorado) If something isn't streamed then dvd.netflix.com is the only option I know of.