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The way I heard it, Netflix started with the intent of being a streaming company but found it more difficult than expected so they pivoted to mailing DVDs, but
by pavon 4y ago
The way I heard it, Netflix started with the intent of being a streaming company but found it more difficult than expected so they pivoted to mailing DVDs, but continued to work on the streaming in the background until the market forces made it viable to pivot back (licensing, residential internet speeds, etc).
- paxys 4y agoThey may have had an idea for it in their heads, sure, but in the mid 90s (when they started their business) online video streaming was very, very far from reality. This was before the first online stream, before RealPlayer, before Broadcast.com. None of the mainstream video compression standards existed. You couldn't even stream video over ethernet back then. It was only the internet infrastructure upgrades over the next decade which made it feasible for general consumers.
- johnwalkr 4y agoI think the public-facing story of Netflix's start in 1997 (that DVDs came out in 1997 and they looked like they would be easy/cheap to ship). But, the the first version of realvideo was released in early 1997. I remember using it to watch pirated streaming video of Star Wars special edition and South Park season 1 (I just checked and those were both in 1997). It was acceptable quality (slightly worse than VHS or video CD) if you had a cable modem.