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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

If that was profitable, the service you describe would not have shuttered.

It may actually be profitable again. The entire reason media rentals ended up dying is because of Netflix coming out with just about every bit of media available for streaming.

Now that everything has fractured into a million pieces, media rental once again seems like it may make sense. Redbox is still around still lending out blurays. It wouldn't shock me if that model made a resurgence.

redbox isn't nearly as convenient as having it delivered to your house.

however, it does make me wonder if owning/operating/maintaining all of the boxes is more or less expensive than paying the USPS to deliver and collect on behalf of your service.

Redbox is about as convenient as the library (or more so, with a cost) and it has all the latest.

The key is they don’t have to pay for mailing, AND I can get something last minute with a short walk or a short drive (which puts three in range).

I don’t think that’s true; it might be the case that mailing out dvds is profitable, but too low revenue for modern Netflix to bother with. I mean, it was possible to build a business on it at some point…

> I don’t think that’s true

Easy to find out by coming up with a business plan, and then pitch it to investors. If you are right, then you'll be the next Reed Hastings. If not, you'll just be another person with an idea nobody else believes is worth investing

I think your are missing the GPs point. Netflix, of course, started with mailing dvds and recently ended it. As far as I know, it was always profitable. Unfortunately being profitable is not the same as "worth investing", investors are chasing the highest returns and won't invest in something with a low return on investment.

You are kind moving the goal posts with your first statement "If that was profitable, the service you describe would not have shuttered." and this one.

No, I'm not missing the point. Yes, I said profitable. But let's all agree that profitable doesn't just mean making one dollar more than all of your expenses. By definition, that's making money which is technically profitable, but that's not what anyone would consider a profitable business. So while technically right might be the best right, it's technically useless in this conversation and does nothing to actually move the conversation in a positive direction.

Saying that a company is profitable but not worth the investment is not going to solve the streaming is our only option. We are looking for a solution other than streaming that is still legal so that people do not have to resort to pirating. If you are suggesting that a service providing shiny round discs through the mail or any other brick&mortar Blockbuster or mom&pop video rental solution is going to be profitable to the point of sustaining a business, then there's a bit of realism that needs to be brought back into the conversation. This seems to not be wanted and instead point back to me not understanding what words mean.

The trend has been clear for a long time. The future is a streaming, not physical media. Profitability is necessary but not sufficient to be a successful business over the long term, you also need to grow and change according to market dynamics, otherwise you will find yourself dead.

This article is all about how streaming is a big money loser for almost everyone. So it has growth without profitability. I'd rather have profitability without growth.

I disagree that that is necessary to run that experiment, somebody already did it, proving that it is possible.

Also I don’t think suggesting a giant task like starting a business is anything but a bad faith rhetorical tactic. I’m not going to pitch a DVD mailing company to investors for reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not it is viable (I’m a programmer, not a businessman, and I don’t care to run a business, for one thing).

Of course I wouldn't expect some person as a programmer become a CEO of a physical media shipping company. I always forget that I must be explicit in these types of forums where the you is never considered as the royal you. Everyone takes things so personal.

It seems a little unnecessarily confusing to have “you” refer to different people in the same sentence.

But anyway if you meant “you” as just a hypothetical person, we’ve already got one, Reed Hastings.

right, and Mr Hastings has decided it was no longer a viable business and shut it down. what's confusing about that, and how it was applied to this conversation?

it's like we just want to argue and not actually have a conversation

CafeDVD [0] is still going strong.

[0] https://www.cafedvd.com/

Is it actually dvd or do they have Blu-ray’s?

They have Blu-ray all over the site.

I believe they have both.

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