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I remember reading an article (don't ask me to find it, it was a long time ago) about how they don't actually "store" many DVD's, they unpack them, see who is next in the queue to receive it, and put it in the pile to ship back out. This sped up the turnaround and reduced storage costs significantly.

I'm surprised too by the manual process described in the article.

I wonder why it itsn't more automated, they could photograph the disc to see if it matches the sleeve for example. It seems like a terrible job to manually check the discs.

How quick and accurate is image matching? They can recognise the sleeve quickly but not, it seems the discs. OCR-ing movie titles from discs would be near impossible with any degree of accuracy.

Is there not a unique code/barcode around the central hole on the back though? Or could they overprint a barcode?

afaik, they try not to store popular items. otoh they do the opposite for the long tail titles. probably from ny times article, they also have changed their package format (both material and shape) 10 times or more.