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Is it unprofitable? The article seemed to imply the business was still profitable, it was just small relative to the success of streaming. Or perhaps it suffers from adverse selection... the only people still using the service are the least profitable heavy users? I wish the article delved into that instead of being a Netflix puff piece.

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Right? With $60 million in revenue, that's quite a few customers (and if they haven't switched to streaming by now, those are loyal customers indeed). If there's any profit in it at all, that's a lifestyle business waiting to happen.

There's a ton of smaller players that have gotten a huge bump. The era of discs via mail is far from over.

https://scarecrowvideo.org/rent-by-mail

https://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com

https://www.gamefly.com

are the main three so far I believe. More are in the works though.

Disc via mail can win these sorts of people:

* People/areas with poor internet connection. Or no internet connection (but a way to occasionally get on e.g. a library)

* People who want to make watching a movie a special event at home, not just a dooms-scrolling life filler.

* People who want to see decent movies :-) that are not available for streaming

* People who want to rip the DVDS :-)

* People who are set in their ways have a DVD connected to a big TV and don't want to mess around with tech.

Plus the quality. I do not think any streaming service offers the same fidelity as a local Blueray.

Even DVD to be honest; the resolution of the stream is basically unimportant, what really matters is the bitrate, and DVD is high, Blu-ray is insane (10.08 Mbit/s vs 40-100Mbit/s).

While you're right that bitrate is king, most common HD streams will look better than a DVD.

This would be true if you’re still using Huygens satellite internet lol.

Do you mean "Hughes"? What a throwback. I cannot believe they are still in business!

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Network_Systems

DVD’s mpeg 2 is vastly inferior to h.265/av1 used by most streaming providers. And there’s only so much quality you can get out of a 480p frame.

4k blu-ray is much better than any streaming provider, though. And 1080p blu-ray about equal to 4k streaming.

Ironically, with 4K on a good OLED TV, I actually find HDR to be a bigger deal than the res. The res works both ways...stuff that was shot well is gorgeous...but stuff that wasn't filmed so well - you're going to see tons of grain, any dirt on the print, etc.

Black and white films in HDR are gorgeous.. and filmic in a way they've never looked before on home media.

Usually on 4K discs they've been rescanned and restored, but not always, and sometimes even a good restoration job leaves a lot behind.

You're right, I completely ignored HDR. That can make a large difference as well.

This might be it - some of the content that was mastered for DVD feels better (admittedly upscaled DVD content via the player) than badly remastered "HD" content where you end up seeing things you're not really supposed to see.

You're right that bit-rate is king, but for most content, AV1 and HEVC will have superior subjective perceptual quality. Most content lends itself to being heavily compressed with minimal loss of quality.

Resolution stops mattering much at a certain point, but that point is higher than a slightly widened standard definition.

And other people mentioned that codec matters, but not the full extent. Not only is the encoding on a DVD about 10x worse than a modern codec, 10Mbps is a peak you're unlikely to ever see. I'm skeptical that a well-encoded 1Mbps 720p stream would ever lose to a DVD, and I'm confident that at 2Mbps you'd leave the DVD in the dust.

> * People who want to see decent movies :-) that are not available for streaming

Or people who don't want to juggle 10 different streaming services

Good call!! Also people that want the original music on older TV shows.

> Good call!! Also people that want the original music on older TV shows.

A DVD rental service won't necessarily get you that either. For some stuff filmed before buying DVD sets was a thing, you may only be able to get the original music from a tape someone made off of TV. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKRP_in_Cincinnati#Music_licen....

> Or people who don't want to juggle 10 different streaming services

That's the huge one. Availability is so fragmented for streaming that it's just not worth it. A DVD service that has everything in one place is gold.

"store-3d-blurayrental.com" is one of the scamiest sounding .coms I've ever seen.

Actually, are you sure they're legit? It LOOKS scammy as hell, too, and copy like "No Black-out period...why wait up to 56 days! Rentals ship same day as the official Blu-ray!" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

The link to check their SSL certificate is also invalid. '

There is no readily available contact info, or corporate info.

Every hallmark of a scam site.

Funny enough, they’ve been around for 12 years and I’ve been a member for 5.

They feel like a one person shop. The turn around is slow and the system isn’t the slickest, however, it was the only place to get 4k discs for a very long time.

It would be less than 1% of their revenue. So imagine a programmer on $100k/y, who makes $600/y on a side hustle, that $600 cannot grow but needs to do extra tax paperwork, devote attention to it. And the customers of that hustle will leave if they sell the business on. At the same time they are on an upward trajectory at work and expect to get to $500k/y and are putting their focus into that.

I'm not arguing that it isn't a negligible percentage of Netflix's profit, I'm arguing that this is a service with high demonstrated demand and it's a shame to see it shut down despite that demand.

I would love to see a survey, but my guess of those customers is that streaming is not a viable option. An unfathomably large percentage of the USA still has meager internet connections.

Personally I'm in a metropolitan area, but I just liked the far greater selection on the DVD service, and the availability of French and Spanish language tracks.

They tried to spin the DVD business off in 2011 (as “Qwikster”) and the user base revolted. I wonder if it would be more successful if they tried it today.

They weren't really trying to spin it off.

Regardless, that's not why people "revolted"; people were annoyed that their legacy subscriptions (streaming + DVDs) would no longer exist and that they would have to buy two 10usd subscriptions, essentially doubling the price overnight.

That is the thing. Renting DVDs provide way more value for less dollars for most consumers. Especially movie watchers.

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