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.