this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
439 points (97.8% liked)

Today I Learned

17733 readers
140 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And people forget that Netflix's original model was also sneakernet. Before streaming was viable they would physically mail you a DVD, which when you were done with you had to drop off someplace or physically mail back. The difference with Netflix was that if you didn't give the disk back they'd whack you for a (rather inflated, as I recall) purchase price for the movie. DIVX would just disable your ability to play it until you coughed up, obviating the need for a return trip for the disk.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

If you had a subscription, you could have a Netflix disc indefinitely. You just couldn't rent any new movies/shows until you returned it.

If you cancelled your subscription and kept the disc, then yeah they hit you with a "higher than cost" fee.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

And it was a pretty great deal when you watched a load of movies, like my family did. We were very early adopters. Queue over a hundred titles deep and it never shrank because we added as fast as they came.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Ohh yeah. A huge movie buff buddy of mine had the 8 disc plan and rigged up a multiburner pc. His mail was also dropped off in the morning.

Dude would get up, grab his 8 movies, get them burning, go to work and drop them off in the post box same day before pickup. He'd have new movies every couple of days. He built a hilariously large movie library in just a few months.

That good "early to no broadband" pirating.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Also unlike modern day streaming, they didn’t have to worry about obtaining the rights to the movies. They could just buy the DVD from any retailer.

So there were no platform exclusives to worry about.