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Comment by parpfish | Hacker News Reader

i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix.

the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable levels of screentime and VERY diverse content.

i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of watching them someday, but always put them off because something about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave something light and simple.

the disk-in-the-mail era was "remember that three-hour subtitled classic film you always said you should watch but haven't? well, today's the day you're watching it." and i always ended up being glad i did.

the streaming era is "ugh, i don't have the mental bandwidth to watch that three hour thing that's been on my queue forever. lets just rewatch some background content to zone out" and i always lament wasting hours of my life in front of the screen.

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I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to build a library that has content from many different publishers.

(of course, this could only work as long as publishers keep producing physical media)

Scarecrow Video does this in Seattle. Their library is amazing.

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

We have these guys in NZ, they're amazing. + overnight delivery. https://www.aliceinvideoland.co.nz/

and the wonderful https://arovideo.co.nz

The pirates version of blockbuster is still alive and well at your local library.

Slim pickin's, but, yeah.

Library. I order DVDs to my local library all the time. Maybe your library system is terrible, but if it isn't you certainly can do this. There are hundreds a big wide release films with, effectively, are only available on DVD from a library (legally).

Bonus when I go I can still get that browsing the aisle experience like in an old video store (but in this case I am lucky, my local library has a large DVD / Blu-ray collection to browse)

Before someone comes in and says something moronic (because physical media isn't a VC funded B2B SaaS business), I'd like to remind everyone that Redbox was going strong until Chicken Soup for the Soul bought them. Even in the late 2010s when streaming was really taking off, you could often go down to your local corner store and rent a DVD or BluRay out of a Redbox machine.

The only reason people went to streaming in the first place was that Netflix was cheap and, arguably, a heavily subsidized monopoly in the streaming space.

So yeah, some kind of DVD/BluRay business could very well work in the US and Canada.

There are still services. Here is one:

https://www.dvdinbox.com/

Haven't used them, but I am planning on setting up a dvd player,

I relate to this. Also, I am not the best person in the world, but recently this hit the point where I decided because of these very same thoughts + nudging from my much better partner to donate to NPR, to cancel Netflix and move that money to NPR. Now no more Netflix, which is sort of a relief in ways, and I have to be more intentional about what I download / consume.

For a few years Mubi solved this. They only had 30 movies at a time. Every day the oldest movie left and a new one was added. All well curated and movies you'd remember. No empty calories. Because of the timing it had the same effect as you described. While Mubi is still one of my favorite platforms it now has a regular catalog.

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