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I did the exact same thing in high school. I would rush home from school, and on a good day I could get all 3 DVDs ripped and back to the post office before 5pm

I did the exact same thing in high school. I would rush home from school, and on a good day I could get all 3 DVDs ripped and back to the post office before 5pm for same-day turnaround. I even remember taking note of how the shipping delays differed based on the day of the week. I think if you got the phase right you could get two entire turnarounds per week. For the dual layer discs I would need to keep enough hard drive space for the raw image and then do the encode and burn after the post office run. During summer break I would try to do a month or two of the 8 DVD plan, but that was too stressful. I also remember trying a few small online businesses that did the same thing but with more interesting curated DVD collections. I don’t think any of them lasted long. Heck, some of those could have been a single person mailing out and restocking discs.

troupe 4y ago
I wonder if Netflix DVDs going away will create a market for some of those small businesses again.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  It’s conceivable given the laughable behavior of streaming services lately (e.g. HBO removing recent flagship original content from its streaming service is just ludicrous). Of course if it became common again it would probably be met with a new era of IP lawsuits, even though it seemed to have been settled previously. Oh, and it would likely only be doable legally with content that had a legitimate physical media release, which is becoming somewhat rare.
- coredog64 4y ago
  I wonder if we’ll see a group of Netflix employees take their hoarded cash comp and buy out the business from Netflix to make a go of it. Probably more likely that Redbox will soak up most of the business and we’ll lose out on the interesting long-tail part of this.
james-skemp 4y ago
> I even remember taking note of how the shipping delays differed based on the day of the week. I think if you got the phase right you could get two entire turnarounds per week. I need to go in and fix broken links, but I tracked 5+ years of Netflix mailings (dropped DVDs into my sixth year). What I rented, when I got it and shipped it back, when they received and mailed another, and what mailer I got (local address or further away). One of the posts: https://words.strivinglife.com/post/netflix-shipping-for-madison-wi-year-3-part-2/ https://words.strivinglife.com/post/netflix-shipping-for-mad... It was definitely interesting to have a record of how turnaround changed over the course of the month).

troupe 4y ago

I wonder if Netflix DVDs going away will create a market for some of those small businesses again.

tshaddox 4y ago
It’s conceivable given the laughable behavior of streaming services lately (e.g. HBO removing recent flagship original content from its streaming service is just ludicrous). Of course if it became common again it would probably be met with a new era of IP lawsuits, even though it seemed to have been settled previously. Oh, and it would likely only be doable legally with content that had a legitimate physical media release, which is becoming somewhat rare.
coredog64 4y ago
I wonder if we’ll see a group of Netflix employees take their hoarded cash comp and buy out the business from Netflix to make a go of it. Probably more likely that Redbox will soak up most of the business and we’ll lose out on the interesting long-tail part of this.

james-skemp 4y ago

> I even remember taking note of how the shipping delays differed based on the day of the week. I think if you got the phase right you could get two entire turnarounds per week. I need to go in and fix broken links, but I tracked 5+ years of Netflix mailings (dropped DVDs into my sixth year). What I rented, when I got it and shipped it back, when they received and mailed another, and what mailer I got (local address or further away). One of the posts: https://words.strivinglife.com/post/netflix-shipping-for-madison-wi-year-3-part-2/ https://words.strivinglife.com/post/netflix-shipping-for-mad... It was definitely interesting to have a record of how turnaround changed over the course of the month).