News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A Cartrivision Player TV. Parent comment

Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by BugsJustFindMe on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @03:04PM (#28305556)
Blockbuster did not mail directly to the customer at any point that I can remember. I think OP has it correct.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by jandrese on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @08:08PM (#28308873)
They did in fact have a DVD by mail service. It came out a year or two after Netflix ate their lunch. You could also return the disks at your local Blockbuster for a quicker turnaround. It was too little to late to save the company.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by DaiPlusPlus on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @06:52PM (#28308226)
Blockbuster (in the UK, at least) started doing DVDs-by-post since at least 2007 (probably earlier…) to compete with companies like LoveFilm that did DVDs-by-post since 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoveFilm

Doing DVDs-by-post makes sense (makes cents?) because their mailing cost is negligible and library operations can likely be fully-automated - and low media-costs mean damaged, lost, and unreturned media won’t materially affect the business.

VHS-by-post, on the other hand, has issues:

* Large bulky media will cost far more to mail because it can’t be handled by existing postal equipment for letters/envelopes.

* Tape signal damage caused by EM fields - I don’t expect 1970s/1980s post office equipment to have much EM shielding.

* VHS picture quality is awful: people subscribed to HBO instead.

* Handling: DVD libraries are automated thanks to barcodes and robots - both of those things weren’t really ready to build a VHS-by-mail library. Not to mention needing to rewind tapes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by kazinator on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @03:12PM (#28305639)
Which is why the inconvenience of the customer waiting for a mailed rental would be a foobared, inconvenient prototype of Blockbuster that never happened, compared to the real one where you just get the item over the counter and take it home to watch.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by oriki on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @06:00PM (#28307670)
Mailing DVD rentals was literally what Netflix did before the advent of web streaming in the mid to late 2000s. They could offer a wider selection than Blockbuster, and people generally find it more convenient to sit around at home instead of putting on pants and going to their local video rental store.

While web streaming becoming popular (and the selection available for streaming becoming much wider) definitely dealt a killing blow to Blockbuster, Netflix was already successful with their mail-in rental service, and had made a name for themselves with it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by gwbas1c on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @09:20PM (#28309409)
From what I understand, Netflix always intended to get into streaming. The DVD by mail thing was just a stopgap while the technology improved.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Cartrivision Player TV by anonAndOn on Wednesday August 25, 2021 @07:29PM (#28308530)
https://dvd.netflix.com/

Like this? AKA, the "original" Netflix.

[ Parent | on HN ]