Netflix shipped DVDs from 1997 to 2023, predating Redbox by 5 years. This is essentially how we got to streaming. GameFly still ships movie and game discs as a service.

> easy business to get into

Good luck getting rental rights.

The very reason modern streaming sucks so much is that every other production company wants to be a streaming distributor; pulling rights from other streaming services.

Just holding a DVD does not give you the rights to lease it out. At least, that's if you believe the legal spiel on the disc.

You can. The Right of First Sale gives you the ability to do anything you want to your DVD. You can loan it, rent it, mortgage it, whatever. You cannot copy it, so you'll need to buy enough copies to sustain your rental model, but you can certainly rent out DVDs you own. That's how Netflix started.

For clarity, this is indeed the case in the USA and is the huge advantage physical media have. That's why mom and pop video rental stores with their own interesting taste were so common in the late 20th century.

It's possible the OP is from another country with slightly different IP law?

Discs don't survive too many mailings. I used a niche rental by mail service before I moved to Netflix, and they were more open about their logistics.

I don't recall if they said how many mailings a disc would typically survive, but they also had a lot of back and forth with the postal service to get a mailer that qualified for lower price postage, but they had to drop their cardboard insert that helped with longevity of the discs.

There were some series where the early discs tended to be broken, which made it harder to stock, especially if the sets were out of print.

Then you've got things like recent shows may not even get a release on disc at all.