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Comment by hollerith | Hacker News Reader

I am tempted to think that maybe the DVD business should have been called Mailflix or Flix by Mail or Next-day Flix.

I have the feeling that they're trying to separate both companies completely in the long run. The DVD by mail business is ultimately doomed. Why use DVD by mail services when you can directly stream movies?

Granted, Qwikster will still stay around for a while, but I have no doubt that it will slowly die, just like Blockbuster right now.

The answer to your last question is the same one Jeff sent to all of us customers in his email yesterday. At the moment, there are a lot of titles only available on DVD. However, we still opted to drop DVD in exchange for streaming since our local 7-Eleven fills in the 'new release' gap for $1-per-movie with Redbox.

Maybe not as soon as you think. Studios keep a tight control over which movies can get digitized, some will not release some of their old movies to streaming.

Blockbuster dies rather quickly mostly because of Netflix. So, in order to predict DVD by mail business dying you have to show the alternative. Streaming currently is by no means a match. One could see Redbox putting more advanced kiosks with more selections (there was talk about kiosks with thousands of titles that would burn the DVD while you shopped) which might be threat.

To start burning DVDs while the customer waits probably puts Redbox in the same difficult negotiating position with the content owners that streaming movies does.

I agree. I said the same thing to a friend last night.

Or even Quickflix. Succinct and to the point.

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